Early opposition

Gympie Salvation Army was opened on 3 October 1886 by Captain D. Buckingham. Its first officer was Lieutenant John Reid.

The first meeting was held in an empty shop on the corner of Mary and Smithfield Streets.

In a history written for the Gympie Salvation Army centenary in 1986, Alisa Dawson recorded that: As in many other places, heckling and abuse was followed by actual violence, but, in a gold town over-supplied with hotels and drinking problems, Gympie was a rewarding field in which to work and in three weeks, 167 converts were pointed to Christ.