Town Hall – a history

The first meeting of the Mackay Municipal Council was held in December 1869. The first mayor of the council was DH Dalrymple, with five other Councillors. In 1872 the council bought an allotment of land on the eastern side of Sydney Street for the construction of a council chambers. The building was finished in 1872 and was a single storey building constructed of timber with a shingle roof.  However this building had not been long completed before the council began discussing the need for a new council building that reflected the prosperity of the region.

In 1902 Mackay was declared a town in accordance with government legislation of that year. There were several attempts to design and construct a new town hall that faltered before Alderman Christie made the construction of a new building one of his key issues in his election campaign in 1909. He believed that the town was progressive and yet the council had the worst building in it. Upon his election as mayor he established a town hall committee to oversee the project.

A design competition was held in 1910 and Mackay architect A. Rigby’s design was selected. In 1911 the ratepayers of Mackay were asked to approve the council borrowing money from the government to construct the building. After an inspection of the existing building by Queensland Treasurer W.H. Barnes a loan of 2,750 pounds was approved and construction by local builder Charles Porter commenced.

The new Mackay Town Hall as finally opened on 2 October 1912 at an official function, with the mayor H.D. Petersen presiding over preceedings, sitting in the mayoral chair in the Council Chamber. The new building was acclaimed by the local media and the general public.

In January 1918 a violent cyclone hit Mackay destroying many of the timber buildings in the centre of the town. The Town Hall was one of the few buildings to survive the destruction and many people took refuge in the building to escape the floods. During the emergency a baby was born in the town hall, reputedly on the council table.

The ongoing development of the city meant that the Town Hall eventually proved to be too small for the purposes it was designed for, despite renovations and extensions in the 1930s and 40s. The construction of the new Sir Albert Abbott Administration Centre (which opened in 1975) meant that the Town Hall was left without a major use and plans were made for its demolition. A protest led by state member for Mackay Ed Casey collected over 8,000 signatures for a petition which was presented to the Council. The Mackay City Council retained the building and refurbished it in the 1980s at a cost of $120,000 and the building was rented to the Queensland Government Department of Community Health in the 1980s and 1990s.

In the late 1990s the building was vacant. The study ‘Old Town Hall Mackay ca. 1912’ was prepared by historian Berenice Wright and Anne Jacobs for the department of Environment in 1996 and a detailed conservation study was undertaken by Allom Lovell Marquis-Kyle Architects in 1997.

The latest refurbishment of the building was made possible with $500,000 funding from the Queensland Heritage Trails Network, a $110 million partnership between Commonwealth, Queensland and local governments to celebrate the Centenary of Federation in 2001. The network developed a series of stimulating tourism pathways that trace Queensland’s social, natural and cultural heritage. The refurbishment was designed by Mackay architects Sanders Turner Ellick and project managed by Root Projects.

The Town Hall was reopened in December 2001 by the Hon Matt Foley MP, Queensland Minister for the Employment and Training, Youth and Minister for the Arts and De-Anne Kelly MP, Federal Member for Dawson and Cr Julie Boyd, Mayor of Mackay.

The Town Hall is managed by Artspace Mackay on behalf of Mackay Regional Council and houses the About Mackay historical exhibition; an accredited Visitor Information Centre operated by Tourism Mackay; the administration for the Shaping Mackay City Central Project and the Artspace Mackay Studio Space which shows exhibitions by local artists and hosts workshops, presentations and seminars.