General News
6 August, 2025
Hard work and determination the key to rodeo's revival
After a turbulent 12 months, a new-look Mount Isa Mines Rodeo team is ready to bring life back to the event.
As the dust flies in Kalkadoon Arena this weekend, it’s worth remembering that seven months ago, there was no board, no money, and not a lot of hope for this year’s Mount Isa Rodeo.
Some of the key players in the iconic event’s revival spoke to MATT NICHOLLS about the hard work required to get this year’s event up and running ...
This will be the biggest week of Mark Thompson’s life.
On Monday, “Tommo” and his wife Kate welcomed their second child into the world, daughter Tilly Kate Thompson, as mum booked in a few days early to avoid the prospect of giving birth behind the chutes at Buchanan Park.
By Sunday night, the chair of Mount Isa Pro Rodeo Ltd will be able to sit back and enjoy the sight of the stadium emptying and watch the dust settle after an action-packed weekend.
“I don’t drink rum anymore, but we’ll have a few quiet beers,” said Tommo, who believes the crowds will return in full force for this year’s Mount Isa Mines Rodeo and Indigenous Rodeo Championships.
“I’m very excited that it’s all come together and I’m hoping for a massive weekend.”
Before telling the story of how the 2025 event was revived by a group of hard-working locals, you have to rewind and take a look at how Australia’s biggest rodeo fell in a major hole.
Once run by the Rotary clubs of Mount Isa, control was ceded in 2018 to a new board of limited guarantee, led by Darren Campi as chair and Natalie Flecker as the rodeo manager.
Rowena McNally eventually took the reins as chair, while Ms Flecker (now Gardner) was given a new title as CEO.
By the time Isa Rodeo Ltd went into voluntary administration in September, just one board member lived full-time in Mount Isa, while the CEO was residing in Brisbane.
The pandemic was blamed by the leadership for the demise of the iconic event – Ms McNally said the loss of the 2020 rodeo put a big dent in their reserves – but the reality is much different.
Frivolous spending by putting on additional events and extravagant entertainment, plus a failure to connect with the local audience, led to the event’s downfall.
So desperate to recoup their costs from overspending, tickets to last year’s event were nearly $100, which led to poor crowds. In contrast, entry will be just $50 for an adult on any day of this year’s rodeo and drink prices will also be slashed to make it more affordable in a cost-of-living crisis.
Much has been removed from the transition story from old to new, but what’s most important to know is that the Tommo-led board didn’t hold its first official meeting until February 3 – just 185 days ago.
Board member Peter Gogsh, who was the treasurer for 10 years when it was still the Mount Isa Rotary Rodeo, said the achievement to pull this year’s event together should not go unnoticed.
“It’s been very, very difficult,” he said.
“It was always going to be a challenge, particularly given the circumstances, with no starting capital.
“We’ve been very fortunate with some good, strong support from sponsors and various other parties to assist in kicking it off.
“With a lot of the sponsors, they were very happy to support us and get some dollars into the bank fairly early in the piece, rather than the tradition of waiting up until much closer to the event.”
Peter, who spent a decade putting together budgets for the rodeo in the hope of building up enough of a reserve to cover the possibility of a bad year due to weather (or a pandemic), said it was hard to come up with new figures from scratch.
“It was difficult and – given how we got here – a budget was extremely important,” he said.
“We needed to understand where our costs lay and what our cost centres were going to be to put on a successful event.
“Fortunately, with previous experience on the board as treasurer for over 10 years, we did have an idea in terms of the broad-based costs, albeit slightly different levels to what we were used to a number of years ago.”
Marcus Curr was once in the mix to be chair of the new-look board, but said he’s been happy to play second fiddle to Tommo in the lead-up to this year’s rodeo.
A Julia Creek product, Marcus and his wife Shelley own and operate Yelvertoft Station, about 100km west of Mount Isa.
In recent years, their annual rodeo has grown in popularity and is also part of the Great Northern Rodeo Series, which was founded by Tommo.
“He’s been great,” Marcus said of Tommo as chair.
“He’s very passionate about Mount Isa and about the Mount Isa Rodeo. That showed from the very start when he and I were talking on the phone about it.
“The whole board is, to be honest, every one of us is passionate about making this event as good as it can be.”
Tommo, who was a latecomer to the rodeo and became a top steer wrestler, said he never thought he’d end up as the chair of the Mount Isa Mines Rodeo.
“I definitely wouldn’t have believed you, I would have thought you were a bit of a nutter,” he said when asked what a younger self would have thought about the prospect of his current role.
Tommo, who barely knows his way around a computer, said the diverse skills of the board allowed him to perform his role as chair.
“I’m definitely not a computer guy; I’m very low-tech, but yeah, with the support of the board and the likes of (paid staff) Di Atkins and Ally Finlay, we’ve been able to get it done.
“People like Ally have gone above and beyond, too. She’ll be sending emails and doing stuff until 10 o’clock at night. That’s not what the job description said.
“My strength is bringing people together. People and, you know, organising. I’ve got quite a large business myself, and so has my wife.”
The chair paid tribute to Kate, who he said was the unsung hero of his achievements in building up the Great Northern Rodeo Series.
“You know, my wife’s a great organiser. And, to be honest, she does a lot of that behind-the-scenes stuff that people don’t see.
“Every now and then she might get a little bit cranky with me, but she’s been great. We’ve got the little fella at home, he’s only 15 months old, and now we’ve got a little girl.”
Tommo admitted the step up from running a one-day event to a massive three-day gala rodeo was a major change.
“(The Great Northern Rodeo) is nothing of this magnitude,” he said of the Mount Isa Mines Rodeo, which includes the Indigenous Rodeo Championships on Sunday.
“It’s been a steep learning curve.
“To get it done in the six short months we’ve had with this board has been a tremendous effort.”
Marcus said the key to rebuilding the rodeo was bringing in the right people.
“Touch wood, but I think we’ve surrounded ourselves with a really good team of people,” he said.
“And that doesn’t mean just the board. That means the officials, the judges, the pick-up men, the bloody contractors, everyone involved. I think we’ve made a very conscious effort to pick people who are team people and are good at running events.
“I have been surprised by the ‘real’ people in and around Mount Isa who have been supportive.
“I think most people understand that we’ve only had six months to put this together. Have we made mistakes? Definitely. But, we’ve had great support with a lot of people going above and beyond.”
Peter said the response from the local business community had been pleasing.
“The support, and particularly from smaller, locally-based businesses, was incredible,” he said.
“They were all very keen to see it return and come back with a vengeance, if you like.
“They all understood the circumstances. They all understood where we were as an organisation.
“They knew it was very difficult to do anything with nothing.”
Tommo said he expected to see full grandstands on every night of the rodeo, but particularly Sunday afternoon, with the return of the finals to their traditional slot.
“It’s very humbling to run an event of this magnitude and have the support of the locals,” he said.
“I get people coming up all the time to say that ‘we’ve got your back’ and ‘we’ll be at the rodeo’.
“They’re saying that about the whole board, not just me. They’re so grateful that the board’s local and the people on this board have put so many hours in that’s out of their own time, you know no one’s getting paid.
“They’re doing it for the love of the sport and because they want to keep the Mount Isa Rodeo going and make it as strong as we can and build it up to be even bigger and better in the future.
“The nominations are strong and I think lifting up the prizemoney has helped.
“It’s a long way to come to Mount Isa to compete and we’re grateful to those who make our rodeo the best in Australia.”