Andrew Fishers Cottage

This cottage in the Gympie Gold Mining and Historical Museum was the home of the first Queenslander to become Australian Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher. It was relocated in 1972 from its original site in Maori Lane at Red Hill, Gympie. Fisher hailed from Ayrshire in Scotland, having worked in the mines there since the age of ten. He was involved in miners’ unions and had been blacklisted for his association with the 1881 miners’ strikes. He came to Queensland in 1885, initially working at the Torbanlea colliery. Moving to Gympie in 1887, Fisher continued his union association, being secretary and president of the local Amalgamated Miner’s Association. He was elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly in 1893, but lost in 1896. He then started the ‘Gympie Truth’ newspaper. He was endorsed as the Labour candidate for the new Federal seat of Wide Bay, which he won in 1901, and married the daughter of his landlady on 31 December 1901. He had lived at Crown Road since 1896 and the house site straddled Crown Road and Maori Lane. Following Prime Minister Deakin’s resignation in 1908, Fisher served as Prime Minister on three separate occasions from 1908-1915. He was treasurer from 1914-1915.