THE SHOW MUST GO ON
It has more than 100 years of history behind it – and it is a history that is as colourful as the Gold Coast Show itself
ANOTHER year and another Gold Coast Show has passed us by. The event, which brings in more than 30,000 attendees each year is celebrating 114 years of fun in 2015.
Much of the debate this year has surrounded the future viability of the event in the wake of a Gold Coast City Council decision to stop the creation of a carpark that show bosses said was essential to the show going on.
While this issue is yet to be resolved, it is not the first the event has faced since it was first held, back at the turn of the 20th century.
It first opened in 1901 and was originally known as the Southport Show.
In its earliest years the event was held at Woodroffe Park in central Southport where annual celebrations of produce were held for the growing community from 1901-19.
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 just weeks before that year’s show did not deter organisers who pushed ahead regardless.
But just five years later the event faced its first major hurdle – it had become too big for Woodroffe Park.
Organisers secured a move to nearby Owen Park on Queen St which became the show’s home for more than 70 years.
But by the 1980s the big development boom was on and the show was told it was time to leave.
The search began for a new site and by June 1986, a site was found at Parkwood, which had just become a horse and greyhound racing site.
The first show at Parklands was expected to be held in August 1987 but was delayed.
The final show at Owen Park was held in August 1988 and the event was relocated to Parklands in 1989.
Delays continued to plague the move and the final show of the 1980s was postponed from August to October 1989.
According to reports in the Bulletin in 1989, the crowds turned out in a big way.
Grey clouds, wind and dust didn’t keep thousands of determined thrillseekers from the Gold Coast Show with hordes packing into Parklands for three days filled with balloons, fairy floss, rides and dagwood dogs.
The show was opened by new Queensland premier Russell Cooper who had seized the state’s top job from Mike Ahern just weeks earlier.
Russell, who lost the 1989 state election just less than two months later, spoke fondly of visiting the show as a young man with his wife Penny.
Show president Garth Carey told the Bulletin he was confident the relocated event would flourish.
“It is going to be hard to compare this year’s show with any other because it is the all-new show on allnew grounds,” he said.
“The benefits of the Parklands showgrounds are absolutely limitless.” And flourish, the show did. Parklands became its permanent home and crowd numbers grew throughout the 1990s as the once two-day show grew to a three-day extravaganza.
In 2003 the State Government announced the site’s tenants would be forced to leave Parklands to make way for development.
The Newman government signed off on a deal to relocate the show to Bundall in 2012, something that was confirmed in late 2013 before the bulldozers moved into Parklands and cleared away the facilities.
For a brief period in late 2013 it seemed the show would return to Owen Park but the move was halted by the government. Parklands is now a construction site as work begins to create the athletes’ village for the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.