Golden Gumboot
Encyclopedia
Far North Queensland
Far North Queensland, or FNQ, is the northernmost part of the Australian state of Queensland. The region, which contains a large section of the Tropical North Queensland area, stretches from the city of Cairns north to the Torres Strait...
towns of Tully
Tully, Queensland
Tully is a small town in Queensland, Australia, adjacent to the Bruce Highway approximately south of Cairns by road and north of Townsville. At the 2006 census, Tully had a population of 2,457....
, Innisfail
Innisfail, Queensland
Innisfail is a town located in the far north of the state of Queensland, Australia. It is the major township of the Cassowary Coast and is well renowned for its sugar and banana industries, as well as for being one of Australia's wettest towns...
, and Babinda
Babinda, Queensland
Babinda is a small town 60 km south of Cairns, Queensland. It is located in the Cairns Region.The town is noted for its proximity to two of Queensland's highest mountains Mount Bartle Frere and Mount Bellenden Ker....
in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
for the wettest town of Australia. These towns exist in the Wet Tropics and on land that was previously covered by rainforest
Rainforest
Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with definitions based on a minimum normal annual rainfall of 1750-2000 mm...
. These areas experience some of the highest level of rainfall in Australia through monsoon
Monsoon
Monsoon is traditionally defined as a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation, but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with the asymmetric heating of land and sea...
al rain
Rain
Rain is liquid precipitation, as opposed to non-liquid kinds of precipitation such as snow, hail and sleet. Rain requires the presence of a thick layer of the atmosphere to have temperatures above the melting point of water near and above the Earth's surface...
and cyclone
Cyclone
In meteorology, a cyclone is an area of closed, circular fluid motion rotating in the same direction as the Earth. This is usually characterized by inward spiraling winds that rotate anticlockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere of the Earth. Most large-scale...
s. The winner for the competition (since 1970) was awarded with a rubber
Rubber
Natural rubber, also called India rubber or caoutchouc, is an elastomer that was originally derived from latex, a milky colloid produced by some plants. The plants would be ‘tapped’, that is, an incision made into the bark of the tree and the sticky, milk colored latex sap collected and refined...
boot
Boot
A boot is a type of footwear but they are not shoes. Most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle and extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. Most boots have a heel that is clearly distinguishable from the rest of the sole, even if the two are made of one piece....
.
Despite the fact that Babinda has had more rainfall than Tully in the last 40 years, The Golden Gumboot monument was erected in Tully by the Tully Lions and Rotary Clubs on 10 May 2003. The boot stands at 7.9 metres (25.9 ft) and represents the record rainfall for Tully in 1950. This is despite the fact that the floods that Tully experienced in 1967 and 1973 were greater than 8 metres. The boot is composed of fibreglass and has a spiral staircase to the top of the boot that allows a view of the town.
Tully holds a Golden Gumboot Festival annually.