Stop the Rot at Boggo Road

May 29, 2016, 8:16 pm

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Are you concerned about protecting the heritage and history of the Boggo Road heritage prison?

I am. I've devoted a big chunk of my life to the old place, as a labour of love without financial reward.*

There has been some recent debate about whether people should support or oppose plans for the future of Boggo Road. The best approach to this is to step back and look at the big picture.

Unfortunately, what we see is that the old prison buildings are dying a slow death. Ever since it closed as a working prison 27 years ago, Boggo Road has been in gradual decline.

There are no plans to demolish original red-brick 1903 buildings such as the cellblocks, but they have visibly decayed over the decades. Rust is eating metal, brickwork is weakening, gutters are collapsing, wood is rotting, invasive plants are spreading, and paint is peeling away.

Paint peeling in a Boggo Road cell, 2012. (M Wilson)

Plants growing into brickwork, Boggo Road, 2012 (C Dawson)

Inside an old office room, Boggo Road, 2012 (M Wilson)

New money is needed to fix this

The immediate problem is that, in a time of spending cuts across Australian society, there is insufficient public funding available to preserve Boggo Road into the future. The government can provide some, but only so much.

And although the prison has been used for occasional tours and functions since the 1990s, these activities have never raised anywhere near enough money to look after Boggo Road properly. As they stand now, the buildings are badly underused. Most of the time they are empty and dead.

New money is needed to save Boggo Road. This is the reality of the situation and it needs to be faced up to. If we continue with the same old failed approach, it is only a matter of time before the decay of the heritage prison gets past the point of no return.

As the most recent heritage report on Boggo Road, written by one of Queensland’s leading heritage architects, warned us:

‘Without adaptive re-use of the site there is little prospect of maintaining the cultural heritage significance of the place. The buildings are currently vacant apart from a limited use by a private tour operator. Unless the place is adaptively re-used, at least in part, the site will continue to degrade and ongoing maintenance will be further minimised.’

It is time to bring Boggo Road back to life

To protect the future of Boggo Road, we need a brand new way to attract thousands more people to discover its history, appreciate its unique heritage qualities, and contribute to saving the buildings.

But how can we re-use Boggo Road in a way that has a strong focus on history and generates substantial revenue to help protect it into the future?

The answer is to create a brilliant new heritage, arts and dining hub at the old prison. One that retains the old buildings and is home to new exhibitions, educational tours, drama and music activities and events, community meeting spaces, history research facilities, and top-class dining and coffee venues.

A place that is always alive with a constant stream of visitors, where things are always happening, each day and night. A place that becomes one of Brisbane’s very best cultural destinations.

Some of Brisbane’s leading history, visual arts, drama and music organisations formed the Boggo Arts and Heritage Alliance and have already been developing plans for just such a centre for over two years. Working closely with other stakeholders, the vision of a thriving cultural hub at Boggo is now very achievable.

The official Boggo Road development plans put forward by Calile Malouf Investments Pty. Ltd in October 2015 come close to enabling that vision. Those plans include refurbishment of the decaying parts of the old prison. They also include adapting some internal spaces for re-use.

The main compromise is that some of the 126 cells inside two of the three cellblocks would be modified to create larger rooms and the spaces needed for sustainable community, dining, arts and heritage facilities. The third cellblock would be left as it is and used exclusively for History and education. The clear assessment of heritage professionals is that the cultural significance of Boggo Road would be retained, and that new works would be carried out in a reversible manner.

Evidence suggests that some of the opposition to the plans is disingenuous and based on stakeholders trying to protect their own financial interests. However, I understand how some people can have genuine concerns about these changes. I know where they are coming from. I too wish modifications weren’t necessary. But the big picture cannot be ignored. This is the only viable plan there is to fix and sustainably protect the physical heritage of Boggo Road into the long-term future.

To just carry on under-using the place - as is happening now - is not an option. It has been over ten years since the prison was fully open to the public. Another ten years like that and the place will continue to slowly rot away. And the huge educational potential of this unique heritage site will continue to be wasted.

So if you are genuinely concerned about protecting the heritage and history of Boggo Road, remember that the current plans have two massive benefits:

• PROTECT HERITAGE: A sustainable way to raise revenue needed to fix and protect the heritage of the old prison buildings for generations to come.
• PROMOTE HISTORY: More people than ever before will discover the history of Boggo Road, and in exciting new ways.

While they might not be perfect, the proposals do present a very rare opportunity to create and fund a brilliant new heritage venue for Queensland.

On balance, I think that is an opportunity that we should be brave and forward-thinking enough to take while we can.

Chris Dawson, MPHA (Qld)
May 2016

*  I am a professional historian; former councillor of the National Trust of Qld; founder and committee member of the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society (Inc.); author of 14 publications on prison history; the curator of the Boggo Road Gaol Museum; and currently serve on the managing committees of the Boggo Arts and Heritage Alliance, the Brisbane Southside History Network, and the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery. I have also been closely involved in the Boggo Road planning process since it began well over a decade ago, and has met extensively with other stakeholders and decision makers during that time.

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A Trip to the Gold Diggings #3: Ipswich to Fassifern

June 29, 2016, 4:33 pm

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In 1859 a wave of gold fever hit the newly independent colony of Queensland, and hundreds of men headed southwest to Tooloom, approximately 150 kilometres over the border into New South Wales. This journey of around four or five days on horseback was also taken by J. Robinson, a correspondent of the 'Moreton Bay Courier' in November 1859, and he wrote a detailed account of his travels both there and back (see map below). The result is a fascinating insight into life on the road during the earliest days of colonial Queensland, as well as the rough-and-ready atmosphere of the goldfields. The writings are reproduced in this 'A Trip to the Gold Diggings' series:

Moreton Bay Courier, 30 November 1859

'IPSWICH TO FASSIFERN

MY last left you informed of the state of my mind as to the business I had undertaken after my arrival in Ipswich, and to begin with the beginning, I must tell you that I met an old friend of my own on Tuesday morning, and seeing him in company with Mr. Jarrott, of Brisbane, after passing the time of day, the usual salutation came of ‘what are you doing now.’ ‘Oh,’ said my friend, ‘I am just returned from the diggings - they did not suit me!’ This gentleman was of the quiet order of the genus, homo; his silence was more powerful than many people’s words, and I could not gather sufficient from him to guide me in my undertaking. Saddled and off again. A sharp canter of a mile brings the traveller into a beautiful open country -thinly timbered- grass looking greener than in the neighborhood of Brisbane, and the country partaking of that character to give one a realization of profitable pastoral occupation. The country was almost as splendid as a gentleman’s park, the cattle seemed to be perfectly aware of the undisputed possession they held of the broad acres; they gave a kind of contemptuous yawn as I galloped by; and the object having passed they resumed their lazy and luxurious mastication of the tender tops of the young summer grass.

With gentle undulations and as fine a country as the hard wrought millions of England could need to cure their poverty and enable them to taste plenty and peace, did I pass through, until I reached ‘the murdering hut,’ eleven miles from Ipswich, and from this spot the appearance of the country improved.

I need not say that the reason why the hut mentioned bears such a dreadful name, is in consequence of ‘murders by the blacks’ in early times; the same gentlemen having, on the particular occasion adverted to, sent all the whites to ‘kingdom come,’ so that they, the blacks, might consume the shepherd’s and stockkeeper’s earthly rations.

And here, permit me to remark, that imagination would lend willing fancy to suppose a blackfellow indignant at the white man taking possession of such a domain. I am not exactly a novice in judging by comparison, having seen ‘the Gap’ country - of course I mean Brisbane Gap for Cunningham’s Gap has yet by your humble servant to be seen, but there is no country in the neighborhood of Brisbane equal to that I have seen in this my second day’s ride. Even the flat country of Sandgate or at least the approach thereto from the German Station, is barren in comparison.

But here it is time to halt. I have reached the ‘Fifteen Mile Water Hole,’ and so take myself to a spell. The Peak Mountain makes this spot look remarkably picturesque - the grass is tall - there is a strong breeze blowing, and I cannot help feeling that such ‘a great country’ should not be in the hands of a few.

Away again - country still improving - to mention the names of the owners of the various runs would be invidious. I can only say that no nobleman of the United Kingdom has more splendid scenery or more productive land than some I passed over. The sand of Ipswich is changed for a dark soil much resembling the ground so eagerly sought after by practical agriculturists in the old land, and everything looks fair for a great future for settlers when the land regulations shall have been put on that tack which will induce people to settle for other purposes than the mere pastoral.

The road was alive with traffic. I saw no fewer than twenty-one drays, and had an opportunity of yarning with a good-natured lot of bullock-drivers, who were regaling themselves with rum 30 o.p. and making themselves as happy as a king could be, surrounded with the pomp and pageantry of a court. The goings and the returns were doing their hobnobbing and discussing the events of their favourite oxen. A lady with feathers flying rode her horse in company with the first lot I passed. The difficulties and dangers of the way from Ipswich to Balbi’s are not to be mentioned. The whole distance was a well-beaten road; and I have passed over many worse in many of the inland counties of England

Ten thousand acres are open and fair. There had not been cattle enough to eat off the grass; and it having grown rank and tall fire was doing its work. The flames reared their heads - the fire crackled, and onward and onward flew the flames, fanned by a good stiff breeze.

The description I have given of fine land applies to the whole thirty miles of country between Ipswich and Fassifern; but goodness excels for about three or four miles before Fassifern station is reached. One broad and open tract of land here presents itself - clear from trees, with green grass and indications of plenty for the settlers that shall assuredly some day partake of the benefits which the colony will offer.

German farming family and farm, Fassifern, c.1890 (State Library of Queensland)

On an eminence by the side of a fine lagoon stands a shepherd’s hut. Here the flies were very troublesome and curiosity was prompted to ask how the residents managed to save themselves from the perpetual annoyance? They did manage to live, and appeared comfortable under the circumstances. I could not help thinking that fortune had been very kind to those who could use the lands between the places I have mentioned; and from henceforth the riches of certain graziers will not be a wonder.

The day’s journey done finds me comfortably located at Balbi’s. Comfort makes the traveller forget the past and lose sight of the troubles that may be in the distance Mr. Balbi, as an innkeeper, evidently understands his calling - no greater praise need be given by your correspondent.

As I give my horse into the hand of the black boy to take to the paddock, I catch sight of a party of seven or eight diggers on foot off to Tooloom. They are to camp three miles away from the ‘Bush Inn’ and I determine to ‘pick them up’ in the morning and keep them company the rest of the journey.

I learn that the escort was expected here to-night returning from Tooloom. I am sorry it has not reached - but you will probably hear the report before I have another opportunity of sending. I find also that two diggers have been for the past fortnight prospecting between Balbi’s and Cunningham’s Gap. ‘The colour’ they have obtained in most places, and hopes are entertained that a gold field will soon be found within fifteen miles of Fassifern. One of the prospectors regretted to me that he could not keep on. He said ‘the money is nearly run out, and I shall soon have to go and look for a job.’

Here I must close. The ride has made me not exactly fit to study concisely how I should round my sentences. Rough and ready as the letter may be it contains truthful impressions and statements not only relative to the land but also as to other matters. The weather is cool, clear, and delightful.
Tuesday night, Nov. 22.'

The route described by the author of the ‘A Trip to the Diggings’ reports, Moreton Bay Courier, 1859. (C. Dawson)

The 'Trip to the Gold Diggings' Series

A Trip to the Gold Diggings #1: Gold Fever at Brisbane
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #2: The Fields From Timbarra to Tooloom
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #3: Ipswich to Fassifern

Western Maps & the Dreaming

July 2, 2016, 6:45 pm

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The map to the right is not of downtown Moscow, but is instead how my hometown of Heywood, Lancashire, looked on a mid-1970s Soviet map of Britain. It was produced for a potential Soviet invasion, and Russian mapmakers used existing Ordnance Survey maps, satellite images, road atlases and their own spy network to create a highly-detailed map that highlighted potential tank routes and included sites such as nuclear research facilities that were considered too secret for many British-produced maps. There was a colour code for different targets, and so industrial sites were black, administrative buildings purple, and military installations green.

It was how Soviet occupiers would initially interpret the British landscape had they made the trip: a militarily strategic roadmap with place names transliterated into Cyrillic. This act was nothing new, as invaders always create their own maps of lands they have ‘acquired’ (or intend to). It is an administrative extension of conquest. Back in the 11th century the Domesday project had been a way for the Normans to create a social map of their newly-conquered lands.

My involvement with the ‘Mapping Brisbane History’ project got me thinking about maps, especially as different cultural concepts of space and time had been a favourite subject area during my undergraduate Anthropology days. I was

So creating a map is an essentially political act. Peoples of different cultures perceive and chart the same landscape in different culturally-specific ways, and attempt to impose their own worldview on that landscape, or seascape, or even on the stars.

In the Australian context, European arrivals of the 18th and 19th centuries were largely incapable of comprehending (or at least acknowledging) the existing Aboriginal cultural landscape. Indigenous peoples have often been conceptualised as being detached from the landscape and, in a process described by anthropologist WEH Stanner as ‘zoomorphic’, were made invisible in that landscape like nocturnal fauna.

The new arrivals saw the new continent as essentially ‘empty’, a wilderness. Terra nullius. They set about transposing their own names to the country and attaching their own values to places and resources within it. This act was clearly at odds with Indigenous perceptions of a landscape that was not only filled with meaning, but had already been mapped and demarcated according to their own cultural conventions.

Indigenous connections to landscape are primarily based on a history of total dependence on local resources and the development and maintenance of the knowledge that allows sustainable use of those resources. In these small-scale cultures, experience is locked into a relatively limited space over a large time-span, and knowledge becomes highly refined and the landscape infused with a great deal of meaning.

The relationship between Aboriginal peoples and territory is strongly expressed in the form of language, which becomes a repository of knowledge about landscape. Languages are seen to be landed, as each different one is associated with particular territory, and even Dreaming figures are held to change their language as they move from one country into another. At the same time, land is said to be languaged as place names are imbued with myth and personal experience, establishing relationships between people and place. Because of this, place names are a repetitive feature of Aboriginal songs and storytelling and help to link people to their heritage through land, people and ancestors.

Indigenous language map, 1996 (AIATSIS).

Aboriginal songs emerged from the creative process of Dreaming figures transforming themselves into country, and these figures are believed to continue to exist through the performance of such art forms. There is a circular relationship of culture and environment, as culture is a product of landscape, and landscape is maintained through cultural expression.

Sacred sites and song lines associated with certain ancestral powers, and landmarks associated with human historical events, and all resultant place names are ways in which landscape is culturally marked in Aboriginal society. Related songs and stories not only explain country and infuse it with meaning, they also create spatial boundaries and serve as a map in a political sense, demarcating those areas a clan is responsible for maintaining. Knowledge of particular songs and stories identifies a person as being responsible for the territory that those songs and stories refer to.

Of course times change, and Indigenous peoples around the world have long used Western cartographic methods to help validate claims to territory. These maps help ‘authenticate’ Indigenous legal claims and as such are powerful cultural symbols. As subjective statements, they are as much cultural constructs as the landscapes they depict. Also, books such as Dr Ray Kerkhove's 'Aboriginal Campsites of Greater Brisbane' use maps to demonstrate the extent of Indigenous use of country prior to European arrival. The result is that maps are becoming an important medium of expression in cultural conflicts, highlighting the fluid nature of perceived cultural boundaries.

The Burleigh and Bilinga Sperm Whales

July 13, 2016, 5:42 pm

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On the hot afternoon of 27 December 1926, hundreds of holiday-makers on the main surfing beach at Burleigh Heads, Gold Coast, were horrified to see a massive white object floating out in the ocean. Most of the onlookers presumed that it was an overturned boat. The Southport police were quickly called to investigate, and they discovered that the object was in fact a dead 24-metre Sperm Whale.

By evening time the whale had drifted in to shore and was stuck hard and fast on the beachside rocks. News of this spectacular sight spread fast, and during the following morning thousands of people from the neighbouring holiday resorts of Southport, Coolangatta and the Tweed arrived to watch as a gang of men employed by the shire council began the process of trying to dispose of the carcass. The whale had also attracted a great number of sharks which were engaged in eating it.

Although the sharks kept the waters free of bathers, a number of surfers refused to be deterred by the danger and even ignored warning blasts.

Progress in chopping the whale into smaller pieces was slow, and the workmen reportedly found that 'trying to chop blubber is just like trying to chop rubber.' There were at times as many as 100 men working on the body, and an attempt to burn it was unsuccessful, as was an effort to tow the carcass out to sea.

The ongoing decomposition created an awful stench in the local area that reportedly caused 'much alarm to residents in the vicinity' and drove nearby campers from their campsites. On 31 December a large crowd gathered on the shore to watch what promised to be a New Year's Eve show with a difference when 30 plugs of gelignite were inserted into the carcass in an attempt to speed up the cutting process. The spectators had been expecting something of a spectacular explosion, and were reportedly disappointed when the big moment resulted in no more than a dull thud and a low geyser of oil shooting into the air.

Despite the low-key detonations, it was now easier to butcher the body. In preparation, a large grave was excavated several chains from the beach, to the objection of some local residents but the satisfaction of the council health inspector. The pit measured 10 metres long, 6 metres wide, and 4 metres deep. Steel cables were placed around the carcass and attached to two 2.5-ton trucks. With the help of skids and a double block and tackle, the remains of the whale were rolled up the beach to the point of burial.

The whale at Burleigh Heads (Sunday Mail, 27 December 1931)

There was a bit more drama a few days later when two massive jaw-bones were recovered from the surf near the site of the stranded whale. They were over 5 metres long and about 1.6 metres thick, with 12 giant teeth on each side. It was speculated that they must have belonged to some 'marine monster' which had fought with the whale and been killed, but Heber Longman, director of the Queensland Museum, arrived to identify them as the jaw bones of the Sperm Whales, and had obviously become dislodged during the efforts to destroy the carcass. The jaws were donated to the Queensland Museum and within 12 months were on display in their 'Mammalian Court'.

A week after the burial of the whale, a poem on the subject appeared in the Brisbane Courier:

BURLEIGH! Burleigh!
Sour and surly,
You're ungrateful,
Which is hateful!
Neptune sent you,
To content you,
From his restive
Fold a festive
Gift, at Christmas!
That grey, triste mass
Reached you early,
Thankless Burleigh!
Worth much MONEY,
But you're funny,
That great drift-whale,
That rich gift-whale,
You, complaining
And restraining,
YOU would ignite -
Used gelignite!
Tried to blow-up
What a show-up!
Santa Claus will now turn surly -
"No more Christmas gifts for Burleigh!"

13 years later a similar-sized Sperm Whale washed up at Bilinga, just south of Burleigh Heads. This one had apparently been dead for several months and was badly ravaged by sharks. 10,000 sightseers were reported to have visited the scene, which was great for local tourism businesses. The Bilinga Surf Club even organised a 'community beach concert' only 50 metres away from the whale. However, the stench soon became overpowering and the whale had to be removed. Council workers cut up the carcass with knives and axes, and the pieces were towed up the beach by tractor for burial. The whole process took five days. Once again the Queensland Museum requested the jaw bones.

The whale remains, Bilinga 1939 (Courier-Mail, 30 December 1939).

Workers cut up the Bilinga whale (Courier-Mail, 30 December 1939).

Decomposing remains of whale, Bilinga (Courier-Mail, 30 December 1939).

A Trip to the Gold Diggings #4: Fassifern to Koorelah Range

July 18, 2016, 4:37 pm

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In 1859 a wave of gold fever hit the newly independent colony of Queensland, and hundreds of men headed southwest to Tooloom, approximately 150 kilometres over the border into New South Wales. This journey of around four or five days on horseback was also taken by J. Robinson, a correspondent of the 'Moreton Bay Courier' in November 1859, and he wrote a detailed account of his travels both there and back (see map below). The result is a fascinating insight into life on the road during the earliest days of colonial Queensland, as well as the rough-and-ready atmosphere of the goldfields. The writings are reproduced in this 'A Trip to the Gold Diggings' series:

Moreton Bay Courier, 6 December 1859

FASSIFERN TO KOOREELAH RANGE

MY last left you advised of my arrival at Balbi’s, and of my intention to fetch up with some intending Tooloomers, who were leaving the ‘Bush Inn,’ Fassifern, when I arrived.

On Wednesday morning, I made an early start, and, with Mr. Macdonald as a guide, I passed down the marked tree line, of which so much has been said as saving a distance of five miles, and soon after I was on the track for the noted scrub through which passengers have to pass. Under the shade of mountains, beautiful in appearance and majestic in height and boldness, the track winds circuitously until a creek is reached, at which point, skirting the water, the way is made into the scrub, which is about one mile and a-half through. To describe the roadway for horses and foot travellers here would not increase the desire that might animate the settlers in towns to try their fortune at the diggings. The reader may picture a stone staircase, very irregularly laid, by the hands of dame Nature, and ornamented with overhanging trees, from which the traveller on horseback must be extremely careful to protect his cranium. A horse also requires to be sure footed and well bottomed; and, if possessing both these qualifications, the journey may be made with an occasional slip, which, to a nervous temperament, is not the most agreeable shock though it may help eventually to induce a cure. At the top of the hill and end of the scrub, a slip rail has to be passed into Messrs. Hardy and Wienholt’s Paddock, which, by the way, is of considerable size, as large as a comfortable estate ; and after descending from no mean elevation the way is good to Moograh.

I might have been disposed to have said something of- the extent of what is called a paddock in the bush, had not my previous ride given me some faint notion of the runs, and have led me to expect that such princely estates would have also enclosures corresponding with the vastness of the country.

Moograh, an out station belonging to Fassifern, is delightfully situated on the top of a gently-rising knoll-has a small lagoon in its front, and is sheltered by mountains on all sides, save the road on which I was to travel. It gave me a clear insight into the wisdom and shrewdness of those who had made the selection. This place is delightfully situated for a village, and there is land enough, and fertile enough, adjacent to it to give all the requisites for a thriving agricultural community.

If the road I had passed through the scrub was the only approach to Moograh it would, for the purpose my fancy has indicated, be useless. Near to this point, however, the dray road joins the foot path; and having reached the point where I might with safety pursue my way alone, my guide returned, having received my thanks for his kindness. I am not prepared to discuss the prudence of the way. I was told five miles were saved by pursuing it. If I cannot praise the road I must praise the guide, Mr. Macdonald. It is difficult to become accustomed to some ways. My guide had seen the path often enough to say, using the colonial phrase respecting it, ‘Oh man! it’s nothing.’

View over the Moogerah Dam, 2012. (image here).

For two or three miles after leaving Moograh the road is level and easy to travel. I soon caught the foot passengers previously mentioned, and, as Hopeful said to Faithful, hoped to have some pleasant and profitable discourse. They were Parramatta men, who had been induced to try their luck from the representations made, but they were not in the best trim for yarning - they began to show symptoms of fatigue, and when a foot traveller is in that condition he does not want to be bothered by questions.

After descending a sharp hill I came up with a bullock-dray laden with goods belonging to Mr. Fleming, who also happened at that time to come up on his road from Tooloom. He acquainted me with the fact that the escort was ‘close up,’ and that some six hundred ounces of gold wore in their possession. I learned afterwards that two men, who were in Mr. Fleming’s company, had some three hundred ozs. in their possession, of which they were the bona fide owners and finders.

The road from this point to the ‘Fourteen Mile Station,’ belonging to Fassifern, is a series of gentle slopes, but at the time I travelled over there was a scarcity of water. From the ‘Fourteen Mile Station’ to ‘The Accommodation House’ at the foot of Kooreelah Range is about eight miles. The way is not first-class, but the road is so well beaten that a stranger cannot miss it.

Wednesday night brought me then, to the foot of Kooreelah Range, and not being disposed to try the journey further that night, I made up my mind to camp with Pat Carney, who has erected a large shanty, where he dispenses board and lodging, and gives information of the grounds of Beulah to the tired and footsore wayfarers.

I ought to have mentioned that several parties passed me during the day bound for Ipswich, and as I wanted information, I was not above asking questions. It is no easy matter to worm into a digger’s confidence. His vocation has taught him secrecy; and this, added to a trifling predominancy of acquisitiveness, which has no small degree to do with inducing the digger to leave home and friends, makes him not the most communicative subject in the world. From the various parties I learned that Tooloom was not the El Dorado it had been represented but they agreed that there was gold in payable quantities, providing a man’s desires were moderated to a fair day’s wages. One of the party, whom I will not mention, gave the average at a penny-weight a day – blowed the Ipswich Herald to Jericho for its blowing; but he sadly wandered from the path of consistent speaking when he confessed to having been on the diggings nearly five months, and was intending to return again.

Thus much for the road yarns. The Parramatta men and others also passed the parties alluded to, and when they reached the ‘Accommodation House’ were quite down in the mouth at the doleful news which they said they had heard. Mr. Carney heard their story - asked who was their informant, and when he was told he altered the tune by tolling the intending diggers that that fellow had, to his certain knowledge, taken down his ‘pile.’

A night at Carney’s, peeping between sheets of bark at the stars, though fairly lodged beside - a talk with a model bushman who took pot luck at the foot of the range - a lesson in damper making in the morning, after wandering four or five miles to find my yarraman, a stomachic foundation for the ranges, and then once more under weigh. But as a story of such a trip is better told day by day and in equitable divisions I halt and take breath before going up hill.

Koorelah Range

Up! up! up! for three or four miles, until ‘Vinegar Hill’ is neared. At this ‘pinch,’ what with loose stones and the steepness of the ascent, the place had better been named ‘The Mount of Difficulty.’ Up and down - now slipping, another time scrambling, all the while careful to make headway, with perspiration oozing from every pore, and the horse groaning and rushing until the top is climbed. Then there is a sight worth looking on. Mountain seems piled upon mountain. In the distance beneath lies range after range - the line of mountains near to Balbi’s looks small, and Switzerland cannot boast of finer mountain scenery; though in that land of poverty and independence the tops of their hills may be snow and ice-capped, the mountains of Koorelah are storm and cloud capped and there cannot be a finer sight or sketching place for a painter than the spot I have mentioned. Parrots of the most beautiful plumage chattered in the trees, seeming to exult in the grandeur, and far away as the eye could reach were ‘bush’-covered mountains, and under the eye deep glens with precipitate sides, not at all inviting to descend.

From the heights, by a circuitous course of some four miles, the traveller descends to the flats, at which point it will be found time to liquor. This, for a biped, is not very difficult, as there are a succession of deep, clear, and beautiful wells. The traveller can slake his thirst, but there is no drinking place for cattle without going half a mile down the flats, which, as I was then not acquainted with the fact, compelled my Rosinante to go thirsty a few miles further; an arrangement not at all agreeable.

All travellers over the first Koorelah Range from the ‘Accommodation House’ will be told that for the first nine miles of the way there is no water, and if they are wise they will provide themselves with some - as the difficulty of carriage will be amply repaid by the pleasure of a drink.

Along the flats the traveller passes until he reaches a solitary gunyah, which some bushman has erected, and which now serves the Escort for a halting and refreshment place. The country is good until other hills are reached. Water is to be found every three or four miles, and grass is abundant. This day I caught sight of a few cattle, the only ones I had seen for forty miles – and yet I have often heard it said that the country is taken up and stocked. All I passed up to this point may be taken up but that it is stocked as it ought to be, if the country is to remain entirely pastoral, is more than my faith will permit me to believe.

This day (Thursday), I made about thirty miles to the foot of Tooloom Range, at which place I camped under a bullock dray-heard the yarning of six return diggers, and in the morning at an early hour made haste to Tooloom.

Ascending and descending hills for a few miles brought me to a fine level country like a succession of beautiful lawns, until the slip-rail of Tooloom cattle station or paddock was reached, and an easy distance from this brought me to a splendid water fall called

Tooloom Falls

Fortunately for myself, I found a bullock dray and its attendants camped at the falls, and was, through this circumstance, enabled to devote some little attention to this natural wonder. The reader must picture some fifty or sixty feet of rock roadway, on one side of which is deep water level with the rocks, and on the other side a depth of thirty feet, that part nearest the falls being in the shape of an arc. The passage over the rocks is extremely dangerous. The action of the water has worn deep chasms and holes in the roadway, not at all favourable to the wheels of bullock drays or the legs of horses and man. That part of the rock road-way nearest to Tooloom is not more than fifteen or sixteen feet in width, and requires all the care of the drivers to make a sure passage. The usual mode of transit is to fasten on a double team of bullocks, so that those in front may keep the line straight, and thus drag over the drays. When the water rushes over the falls with great rapidity, which is always the case after heavy rains, passing would be an utter impossibility. Foot passengers have resorted to a log of timber when the water has been rushing over to secure themselves while passing the most dangerous part; but, judging from the appearance of the place in dry weather, and the not very pleasant passage afforded at such a time, when only a small quantity of water is running, I cannot say that I should feel any great inclination to risk my neck on so perilous a passage as it must be in the wet season, even though Tooloom nuggets were plentiful on the opposite shore.

The passage of the rocks I have only just barely noticed is over the Tooloom Creek, being a portion of that creek which is now so well known to many hundreds of diggers. The water on the side where the water falls must be a great depth. I saw several small turtles amusing themselves below, and I feel certain that if Albert Smith or Gordon Cumming, had seen so grand a place in their travels, the one would not have forgotten to have had it represented in transparent picture, and the other might, with poetic fancy, have pictured a lion lapping the water on the side nearest him in clear moonlight. Gold induces us all to do strange things - and gold is the guiding star over ‘Tooloom Falls.’ It is certain that many who travel in that quarter know only duty, and such I may certainly denominate the bullock drivers; since to make the passage of the falls with a laden bullock dray is not a trifling affair, or one that can be passed over without a few words of comment.

Sugar Loaf Mountain

A level road of two or three miles brings the traveller alongside the Sugar Loaf Mountain, so called in consequence of its appearance resembling a sugar loaf of gigantic magnitude. Round the base of this mountain, and for an easy distance up its sides, have prospecting parties visited. In all parts between the Falls and Tooloom proper have prospectors tried their luck, but it is difficult to report with what success, as many preserve almost a sullen silence, and labor on in hopes of meeting a rich reward.

From ‘The Falls‘ to Tooloom is called twelve miles - a long and weary twelve miles it is - but what of that, when the diggings are so near! A continuation of ups and downs and gullies, now and then a glimpse of ‘The Creek’ and at last the slaughterhouse is reached, about half-a-mile from the township, where the smell of the refuse of slaughtered bullocks is wafted to the olfactory sense in any thing but a sweet resemblance of those gales which are said to come from Araby the blest.

And now, in one half mile, we make the township of Tooloom, which, as I have run on to a great length in bringing the reader to the point, must be left for another letter.

The route described by the author of the ‘A Trip to the Diggings’ reports, Moreton Bay Courier, 1859. (C. Dawson)

The 'Trip to the Gold Diggings' Series

A Trip to the Gold Diggings #1: Gold Fever at Brisbane
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #2: The Fields From Timbarra to Tooloom
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #3: Ipswich to Fassifern
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #4: Fassifern to Koorelah Range
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #5: Tooloom

Whaling Days at Tangalooma

July 24, 2016, 6:16 pm

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Tangalooma, 1957 (State Library of Qld)

Every southern winter, thousands of Humpback Whales migrate from the Antarctic and up the east coast of Australia to their breeding and birthing grounds in warmer tropical waters. Thousands of people head to the coast to witness these magnificent creatures, and whale-watching generates millions for the local tourism industry, and around $70 million per annum Australia-wide.

However, there was a time, well within living memory, when the Humpback migration generated big profits for a completely different industry. Instead of being admired and protected, the whales were slaughtered in their thousands and then stripped, hacked and boiled down for the marketplace. During 1952-62 a whaling station on Moreton Island was so successful in this task that it helped to bring the eastern Australian Humpback population to the threshold of extinction. In doing so, it sowed the seeds of its own demise, and so like any industry that depletes the very resource it relies on, the Queensland whaling business died.

Australian whaling had originally been based in the southern states, with Sperm Whales, Blue Whales and then Southern Right Whales killed for their oil, baleen and meat. The Australian Whaling commission was established in 1949 to develop the whaling industry's capacity to meet the rising demand for whale oil after the Second World War. The introduction of more efficient methods of killing whales saw an increase in the harvest rate, and there was a new focus on the east-coast Humpback migration routes.

Oswald Brierly, 'Whalers off Twofold Bay, New South Wales', 1867 (Art Gallery of New South Wales).

The Australian Company Whale Products Pty Ltd was formed in Sydney in 1950 for the purpose of carrying out east coast whaling, and during the following year they began construction of the largest land-based whaling station in the southern hemisphere at a 12-hectare site just north of Tangalooma Point on Moreton Island. This location had several advantages, being close to the whales’ migratory route; not far from the city and ports of Brisbane; the island was undeveloped; it was relatively protected from the south-easterly winds, and a cheap lease was available from the Queensland State Government.

Looking towards the new whaling station at Tangalooma from the water, 1952. (Qld State Library)

The company employed an experienced Norwegian whaler, Captain Alf Melsom, to manage the construction of Tangalooma Whaling Station. They also brought three whale chaser ships from Norway, and employed several Norwegians as senior crew and gunners. With payments of £250 per kill, gunning was a lucrative job.

The company's original five-year licence allowed the killing (their preferred term was 'harvesting') of 500 whales each year, with whaling seasons running for six months from May to October, depending on the migratory movements of the whales. The first season commenced at Tangalooma on 6 June 1952, with the first two Humpbacks being harpooned near Cape Moreton during that month. The annual quota had been killed and processed by October after a season of just 124 days. The harvests were so abundant that two years later the quota was increased to 700 whales.

All this meant big money, as just about every part of the whale could be turned into a saleable product. In 1954 the average whale cost about £625 to kill and process, and sold for £900. Each whale could yield more than 8 tons of oil, a valuable resource that was used to make - among other things - margarine, glycerine, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

The meat was used for pet food or human consumption overseas. The offal and low-grade meat were sent to the mainland and mixed with other proteins to produce A-grade meal for livestock or fertiliser, which sold at about £80 per ton. The bones were processed to make a lower grade of stock meal. An average whale would produce about 2.75 tons of meal.

Baleen (bristle-like strands in the whale's mouth used to strain food, was shipped to France and made into corsetry, street brooms, combs and buttons.

At the station

There were a few restrictions placed on the whalers. They were not allowed to kill a whale under 11.5 metres, or one that had a calf. If they did, the gunner and captain would lose their 'kill bonus'. They also had to radio the whaling station before any kill to make sure the machinery there was all in working order, to avoid any harmful delays in processing.

The whales were harpooned from one of the three chaser ships, using harpoons with a 75kg exploding head. An 11kg grenade inside the harpoon would explode four seconds after impact. The intent was to kill the whale quickly, which was usually the case if the harpoon was lodged near the backbone, but sometimes multiple spears were required to finish the job.

The whale carcass was inflated with compressed air to keep it afloat until it was ready to tow. It was then fastened to the side of the chaser by its flukes and towed back for flensing and processing.

A Tangalooma gunner hits the target. (sylviaadam.wordpress.com)

Tangalooma Whaling Station, 1950s. (Queensland State Library)

The carcasses would be slowly winched onto the flensing deck with steel cables placed around the tail.

'The winch started up again and the whale toppled over on to its side, exposing its black, white and pale pink corrugated belly. The humpback's characteristic bumps and ridges were visible along its spine and head. Its enormous tongue of perished black rubber had sprawled out of its mouth from behind the screen of fibrous baleen plates, or whale "bones, which act as a sieve to catch food. The only signs of life on the whale's body were the tentatively waving feelers of the many barnacles which had grown along the belly and jaws.' 

There is no smell of decay on the flensing deck unless, as rarely happens, a mechanical failure causes delay in cooking. All that remains after treatment is water, or graks. Yet the smell of the whales is far from pleasant. It is a memorable odour, rather like that of a wet. very dirty dog's fur. 

Despite the great quantities of blood and offal left on the deck before ' being consigned to the cookers, there are no flies on the flensing deck. Hygiene squads have all but eliminated flies from Tangalooma.' (Sydney Morning Herald, 22 June 1954)

A CSIRO officer would inspect each whale upon arrival and record its sex, length, and any other required details. The location of each kill was also pinpointed on a map for future reference. 

The men on the wooden flensing deck then set to work, wearing 1-inch spikes in the heels of their boots to prevent them from slipping in the resulting mess. Firstly the whale was cut up with large, extremely sharp flensing knives - long-handled cutters shaped like hockey sticks. The cutters were assisted by chain men, who winched away the cut strips of blubber. Stripping the blubber usually took about one hour, beginning with ventral blubber, then the back, lower, the jaw and baleen. The carcass would then be turned over and the remaining blubber removed, the ribs separated, and the backbone removed.

The blubber was then dropped through holes in the deck and into huge (Norwegian) Kvaerner cookers beneath the deck, where it was cooked for four hours. The oil was extracted and cleaned of impurities before being placed into a separator. The end product had a honey-like colour. This whale oil was shipped in bulk to the mainland, pumped into tanks at Hemmant, and eventually pumped into ships bound for Europe.

Anything left over after the extraction of oil was fed into a Huse plant and processed into high-protein stock meal. The backbone of the whale was broken up with a large steam-driven saw, and put into huge pressure cookers through a hole in the deck along with other parts to make more stock meal. 

Whale carcass after being pulled ashore, Tangalooma Whaling Station, ca. 1957. (Qld State Library)

Workers at Queensland's Tangalooma whaling station. (Dave Schmidt,  The Australian)

Two whale carcasses being dragged ashore at Tangalooma Whaling Station, ca. 1957. (Qld State Library)

Workers at the whaling station, Tangalooma, ca. 1957. (Qld State Library)

Workers with part of a whale carcass at Tangalooma Whaling Station, ca. 1957. (Qld State Library)

At the height of production, the station provided employment for about 120 men, with a maintenance staff of about 20 employed during the off-season.

After such a successful start, the industry was heading for trouble by the late 1950s, when the introduction of vegetable oils triggered a big fall in global whale oil prices. Much more serious than that was the decline in whale numbers. In 1961 the quota was not met for the first time, with 'only' 591 being killed that year. In 1961 light planes were being used to spot the increasingly-scarce whales from the air, and on 5 August 1962 the whaling station closed after only 68 whales had been caught that season. In the end, it was a simple matter of economics. The industry had exploited a natural resource at unsustainable levels until the resource and the profits dried up.

Over the course of one decade, the whalers had killed 6,277 Humpbacks (and one blue whale). What had earlier been an estimated local migration population of 25,000 Humpbacks had been reduced to about 500. In 1963 the whaling of Humpbacks in Australian waters was banned, and two years later they were placed on the Protected Species list. It is also thought that illegal Russian whaling in the seas south of Australia and New Zealand during 1961 and 1962 probably took nearly 24,000 Humpbacks.

The Tangalooma Whaling Station was quickly sold to Gold Coast businessmen in June 1963, and the site was converted into a leisure resort, with the the factory and flensing decks being converted into a bar and lounge area. This wasn't the first time that Tangalooma had visitors, because groups of children from schools or Scout groups used to go there during the whaling years to watch and learn about the process of whale butchering, in the company of a guide from the whaling company.

Today, the only educational whale experience that children might have near Moreton Bay is whale watching, which is booming along with the population of Humpbacks. In 2015, researchers counted about 25,000 of the whales migrating up the coast, which means they have now returned to pre-hunting population levels. 

A Whale Hunt Off Moreton Island

July 29, 2016, 12:21 am

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In 1954 two Humpback Whales - a male and female - paired up as they headed along the eastern coast of Australia to the warm breeding grounds of the South Pacific. They, along with thousands of other whales of their kind, had just left the frigid waters of the Antarctic after spending months there feeding up on krill. They meandered up the coast, zig-zagging and frolicking on a journey made by countless generations before them.

Male and female Humpbacks (whaletrust.org)

Unfortunately, there was a new danger in their way that year. The Australian whaling industry had recently began operations off this coastline and were targeting the migrating herds of Humpbacks. This couple had been heading north to procreate and create new life, but they were about to face a very different destiny.

A reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald was on board to witness the slaughter:

"One beautiful morning last week two humpbacks, a male of 39 feet and a female of 38 feet, were swimming north about a mile off-shore from the green hills and yellow beaches of Moreton Island, Queensland.

At 8.50 a.m., while they were breaking water to breathe, their spouts were seen by a Norwegian seaman in the lookout barrel of a whale-chaser, Kos II. "Two blows!" shouted the seaman, pointing to starboard. The gunner-captain of the chaser, Captain Bredo Rimstad, changed course immediately and ordered full speed.

Kos II, one of the two chasers supplying whales to the Whale Industries Ltd. station at Tangalooma, on the west side of Moreton Island about 25 miles from Brisbane, is a small, very powerful vessel of 243 tons. Her engine, which is capable of driving a 4,000-ton vessel, develops 12 knots when necessary.

The chaser is a little larger than an ocean-going tug, very low amidships (so low, in fact, that her decks are awash in moderate seas) and very high at the bow. The high bow, with its harpoon gun always aimed downwards, gives the chaser an eager, straining appearance.

The whaler Kos II, which was eventually scuttled off Tangalooma in 1974.

Captain Rimstad, because he is also a gunner, is even more important than the usual ship's master. The whaling company values his services so highly that it pays his passage to and from Norway each year and pays him about £3,500 for his work during the three month whaling season. About £3,260 of this is paid in the form of whale bonuses.

Bonuses paid to the officers of Kos II are calculated partly on production at Tangalooma and partly on the number of whales harpooned by their gunner. Consequently, at the climax of the chase every member of the crew, even the cook, does his utmost to help Captain Rimstad shoot the whale.

Captain Rimstad, a very short and slightly built man of about 45 years, has had 21 seasons of whaling in the Antarctic, one season off Carnarvon in West Australia, and two seasons off Tangalooma. He stands on the bridge during the search for the whale, wearing strangely genteel chocolate corduroy trousers, a brown and white fairisle jumper and a tan corduroy golf cap. When the chaser comes within harpoon range; usually less than 60 feet, he has run down a catwalk from the bridge and is standing alert on the gun platform.

Kos II, together with Kos VII, had rounded Cape Moreton at 7 a.m. and by 8.30 a.m. Captain Rimstad had killed his first whale of the day - a 41ft 8in male. This whale, inflated with compressed air, was floating alongside Kos II when Captain Rimstad began to chase the two humpbacks.

By the time Kos II, travelling at full speed, had reached the spot where the humpbacks had last appeared, Captain Rimstad was on the gun platform, swivelling the harpoon-gun and scanning the ocean ahead.

"Half speed!" he shouted in Norwegian. "Half speed!" the Norwegian helmsman called to the Australians in the engine room. Kos II slowed down and the search continued.

"Dead slow!""Slow as possible!" Captain Rimstad looked back at the bridge inquiringly, the helmsman glanced up at the lookout barrel. But the only sign of the whales was a large smooth area, like an oil slick, on the surface of the sea.

"That's from their tails moving below water," explained the helmsman. "Sometimes we can follow them a long way like that, but this time they have gone deep."

A moment later, about 10 minutes after the whales had sounded, the lookout shouted and pointed to port. About a quarter of a mile away the humpbacks were breaking surface and blowing. Captain Rimstad ran back up the catwalk, the engine-room made full speed and the chase began again.

While Kos II bore down on the two whales, Captain Rimstad looked at Kos VII through field glasses. "Kos VII has a fish on the line," he said. "One on the line and one following," he added. "If you get a female first, the male will follow her right alongside. The female rarely follows the male, though."

Once again the humpbacks sounded before Kos II came within harpoon range. They surfaced 10 minutes later, this time about 300 yards to starboard.

"If they keep doing that, they'll run themselves into shallow water where we can see them," remarked the helmsman. For a quarter of a mile out from the pale sandhills of Moreton Island, the sea was a light, almost transparent blue. The whales, although they had sounded, were probably still in the deeper and darker blue water, although, if the helmsman's guess" were right, they might soon appear in the band of light blue.

Kos II chased them for an hour and a half, during which time they surfaced six times, breaking water about three times on each occasion. At one time, the chaser reached the whales as they were breaking water for the second time.

Captain Rimstad was close enough to see the morning sun making small rainbows in their spouts; but by the time he had aimed his harpoon-gun the whales were half-submerged. The white undersides of their tails rose up in the air and then cut down through the water as they sounded.

If the whales had broken water again, Captain Rimstad would have been in position to fire a 160-pound steel harpoon at one of them. The harpoon, five and a half feet long, four inches in diameter, and carrying a two-inch rope, would have buried itself in the broad rubbery side beneath the dorsal fin of one whale. Three seconds later, a time-fuse grenade on the harpoon barbs would have exploded, killing or mortally wounding the whale. But the humpbacks remained submerged. By this time, however, they were near the shallow water.

"We'll try to get him now," said Captain Rimstad when he returned to the bridge. "Steady steaming!"

"Right ahead now!" called the lookout. Captain Rimstad ran down the catwalk, took hold of the gun handle, and called: "Dead slow!"

Kos II stood by. Everyone aboard was watching Captain Rimstad. He motioned to port with his left hand, and the helmsman responded. The harpoon-gun fired with a detonation out of all proportion to its size; the harpoon and its rope struck the whale's side, releasing a spurt of blood; a muffled explosion, forcing smoke from the wound, blowhole, and mouth, sounded inside the whale's body. The whale reared out of the water and began swimming in a circle, dragging the taut harpoon rope through the waves like a moving radius.

"Following fish!" shouted the helmsman. He left the wheel and ran down to the lower deck to help bring the whale alongside. The ship's cook took his place on the bridge. Two seamen were quickly loading another harpoon. The harpooned whale broke water again, roared as it sucked in its last gulps of air, and died.

He had survived the grenade explosion for less than a minute. "Fast fish!" called the lookout. At this signal that the whale was now secure, a winch began noisily hauling in the harpoon line.

A Tangalooma gunner hits the target. (sylviaadam.wordpress.com)

The second whale, obviously a male, broke surface besides its dead mate and followed the body in towards the bow of Kos II, where Captain Rimstad crouched beside his gun.

"He's coming on starboard!" shouted the Captain. "He's coming on starboard!" The gun barrel sloped lower as the live whale swam closer. Another harpoon: explosion, rope, blood, muffled noise, and smoke. This time the whale was killed instantly.

"Fast fish!" called the seamen who were leaning over the railing. Two seamen had already brought the female under the bow and had punctured her hide with a long spear to which was fixed a compressed air hose. After pumping in air for four minutes, they secured her on the starboard side. A winch chain dragged the whale's tail up to deck level and a seaman cut three or four feet off each fluke with a long flensing knife. Unless clipped in this way, the lower fluke may act as a rudder and steer the chaser off course.

The winch had brought the male alongside; two seamen were casting a weighted heaving rope around its tail. A chain soon replaced the rope, and the same procedure of pumping and clipping began. While the two whales were being brought alongside, sharks had been inspecting the whale caught earlier in the morning and chained to the port side. The whale was still bleeding and 12 sharks - bronze whalers and white pointers, each between 12 and 15 feet long-were circling cautiously. At last a bronze whaler made a quick pass at the white and black corrugated belly, and scooped out a piece of blubber. Others snapped at the belly, lips and flippers, leaving round, white wounds on the whale's black hide.

Captain Rimstad, to whom each bite meant a financial loss in oil bonus, ran to the bridge, fetched a .303 rifle and began firing from the deck. His first bullet struck the head of a bronze whaler which had leapt six feet from the water so that it was half in the water, and half on the whale's belly. Another bullet hit the back of a white pointer which had broken surface to snap at the whale's lower jaw. The white pointer threshed the water and began to bleed freely.

After a few more shots, the sharks were ignoring the whales and attacking their wounded fellows. As soon as the third whale had been chained alongside the first whale on the port side, Kos II began the slow journey back to Tangalooma at about six knots. Sharks never attack the whales when the chaser is moving.

Kos II could have taken five whales; but a radio-telephone message from the station had informed Captain Rimstad that the factory could handle only three whales from Kos ll. Half an hour later, Kos II drew level with and passed Kos VII. Two black and white humpbacks were chained, like huge rubber surf toys, to her starboard side. The two chasers raced one another back to the station but Kos II reached the whale slips first. Captain Rimstad's crew had dropped their whales by 3p.m. and were put in the channel again by 3.30 p.m. to fish for schnapper."

A follow-up article detailing the long process of butchering dead whales at Tangalooma ended with these words:

"The second whale quivered to a halt on the flensing deck. Two men unrolled a steel tape and began to measure it. Its mate, with whom it had been swimming towards the tropics eight hours before, was a dark hulk in the water at the foot of the slipway."

Three Men (& a Humpback) in a Boat: The Yeppoon Whale Tragedy of 1928

August 6, 2016, 2:39 am

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The whale-watching tourism industry springs into life off the coast of Queensland each year as Humpbacks migrate north to breeding and birthing grounds. The sight of breaching Humpbacks can be truly spectacular, but getting too close has its obvious dangers.

This was a lesson tragically learned back in 1928 by three men in a boat off Yeppoon, near the central coast city of Rockhampton. The following report appeared in the newspapers that week:

Quoin Island today (ljhooker.com)

'After having been wrecked by a whale, a party comprising N. Barton, owner of the pleasure launch Nellie, Frank Glazebrook, one of the staff of the Commonwealth Bank at Rockhampton, and Jack Horton, an employee of the Railway Department, was landed at Yeppoon early this morning. 

The men left Yeppoon in the Nellie about 9.30 o'clock on Monday night for a pleasure cruise. That night they anchored at Stockyard Point and the next day continued leisurely under sail until about 1.30 o'clock in the afternoon, when a sensational incident occurred. At the time Barton and Glazebrook were in the front of the boat and Horton was about amidships. They were about a mile from Quoin Island, which is 33 miles from Rockhampton. 

A whale, 40 to 50 feet long, rose 30 feet out of the water and crashed across the launch. The craft was smashed to pieces and sank immediately, but a dinghy which was lashed aboard broke away and floated with one oar in it. 

Horton received severe injuries to a foot and Barton had a frightful gash on a shin, cut by a barnacle on the tail of the whale. Glazebrook escaped injury and he kept Horton afloat, while Barton swam for the dinghy. The sea was infested with sharks. 

Breaching Humpback (Wikimedia Commons)

Retrieving the dinghy, Barton, under great difficulties, brought it to Glazebrook and Horton, who were in the water for hours. It was with the greatest difficulty that Horton was got into the small boat, which then had to be bailed from outside to keep it afloat. Eventually the other two got aboard. The dinghy, however, was swamped, and it was only by Barton's seamanship that it was righted again. 

Barton then made a rollock with his belt and started on the five miles journey for Port Clinton. Horton was lying in the bottom of the dinghy, in terrible pain and half-covered with water. While Barton rowed with the one oar, Glazebrook balled out the water. 

Within half a mile of Port Clinton the men caught sight of the launch Viking, with Messrs. Joseph Carpentier and Bert Cambridge aboard, making north. Glazebrook signalled by waving his shirt and Carpentier and Cambridge at once made for the dinghy. The three men were taken aboard the Viking, which made for Yeppoon. 

Horton was admitted to the Yeppoon Hospital, suffering from a compound fracture of the foot, and other injuries. Barton is confined to his bed. 

MAN DIES FROM INJURIES
Tho Commissioner of Police (Mr. W.H. Ryan) has been advised by the Rockhampton police that Jack Horton (a railway employee), who received a compound fracture of the foot and other injuries when a whale fell across and wrecked a motor launch on Tuesday, died in the Yeppoon Hospital on August 2. There were three men in the boat at the time of the sensational incident, and two of them were injured.' (Week, 10 August 1928)

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The Lost Graveyard of Terranora Creek

August 12, 2016, 9:04 pm

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There are of course many little old graveyards dotted around the Queensland landscape today, some in better shape than others, but there are lots more that never made it this far and have been lost to history. I have written about the 'Gibson Island plague cemetery' before, and here I will look at a burial ground that once lay on the banks of Terranora Creek, off the Tweed River near the New South Wales border, and is today gone but not quite forgotten.

Tweed Heads. (Australian Town and Country Journal, August 1886)

This small burial ground was laid out close to the Terranora Creek sometime in the 1840s/50s as part of what was originally known as Tarranora ('little river'), the first non-Indigenous settlement in the area, established from 1844. The cemetery lay in the vicinity of what is now Philp Parade/Dry Dock Road.

Tarranora was built by southern cedar-getters. The logs they cut down in the region were transported south on schooners, some of which were wrecked on the shallow river bar. This was a shipping hazard until retaining walls were built in the 1890s, and among the dead buried in the cemetery were those who died in the nearby wreck of the schooner 'Ebenezer' in July 1859.

'LOSS OF THE EBENEZER. The Fortune, which arrived last night from the Tweed River, brings intelligence of the total wreck of the abovenamed schooner. She sailed from this port for the Tweed, and on the 30th ultimo, on taking the bar, with a heavy sea rolling in, the wind fell light, and she got on the rocks. Every endeavour was made to get her off by running out a kedge, but she broke up suddenly, and we are sorry to add that two ladies, named Mrs. J. and E. Boyd, with their two children, were unfortunately drowned: the rest of the passengers and crew were saved.' (Sydney Morning Herald, 6 August 1859)

Unfortunately their graveyard was a bit too close to the waters, and over time graves were lost as persistent flooding eroded the bank. By the 1920s only three headstones remained, and only one of those was still standing. The oldest stone was said to date back to 1856, but some of the inscriptions were by then indecipherable. A visitor at the time wrote a very useful account of the state of the place. and his words were published in the Border Star newspaper in September 1932:

'At Tarranora is the Tweed's first cemetery and to this sacred spot where "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep", a pilgrimage was made last Sunday by Brisbane tourists, to inspect the neglected graves of the victims of the 'Ebenezer' and 'Mary Jane' disasters. Gnarled old age has its home in this cemetery situated on Government reserved land on the right bank of the stream facing the East with lovely Eucalypts all around where the numerous dead are lying. Rank weeds and bracken surround the crumbling gravestones, which speak of the disappearance or forgetfulness of those whom the dead have left behind, of the slender memories of the present generation for their grand-sires who went through storm and stress when the Tweed was young and Australia battling for its very existence. There is an unmistakable air of melancholy where the dead are lying. But the butcher bird whistles its song in the neighbouring thicket, the subdued sound of the sea can be heard moaning a requiem and except where the shadows are dense the bright sun covers all with a benediction - Requiescat in pace. 

There are only three graves visible and marked by tombstones, in one of which no less than six persons are interred, Old hands state there were ten or twelve well-defined graves there at one time though many more persons were buried there in what was for many years the only cemetery on the river, and two more monuments have disappeared by the erosion of the riverbank.

The lettering on the monuments is weather-worn and some of the dates in the records of a whole chapter of tragic events are now almost undecipherable. Here they are.

'Sacred to the memory of Hannah, the beloved wife of John Boyd, aged 26 years. Also Thomas, son of the above named John Boyd, aged 2 years and 3 months. Also to the memory of Mary Ann, the beloved wife of Edward Boyd, aged 24 years, all of whom perished in the wreck of the ill-fated schooner Ebenezer at the entrance of the Tweed River on 30th July 1859. Also Edward, the only son of the above named Mary Ann and Edward Boyd who also perished in the above named vessel, aged 2 years; Also Richard second son of Thomas and Mary Boyd who died 30th December 1859, aged one year; Also Edward Boyd who died February 5th 1863, from the effects of a gunshot wound inflicted by the hand of an assassin at the Tweed River, aged 34 years.'

(His 'assassination', it is said, was due to an aboriginal. This Mr. Boyd was one of the survivors of the 'Ebenezer' wreck.) 

A few feet to the left of this remarkable record stands a second headstone bearing the inscription:- 'Sacred to the memory of Bridget Gillett who departed this life August 1st, 1856, aged 38 years. May the Lord have mercy on her soul.' 

A third stone was lying flat at the water's edge, having been undermined by the erosion of the bank in many years' lapping of the tide. cluster of oysters has taken possession of the scroll on top. It reads:- 'Sacred to the memory of Margaret Wootten who departed this life August 3rd, 1856, aged 37 years; Also Charles Wootten who was drowned going from the Tweed River to Sydney on board of the ill-fated ''Mary Jane'' on 26th July 1861, aged 45 years. Gone out with the tide. May the Lord have mercy on their souls.' Erected by his beloved wife, Delia Wootten. 

In 1926 the Australian Workers' Union held their convention at Coolangatta. During a river excursion the delegates were landed at this old cemetery. Realising the significance of the tombstones they set to work with rope and pole to raise them into safety on the high bank. Then with bared heads they stood around while Senator Barnes, like a true patriot, gave a brief speech in memory... 'Peace to their souls, for surely in their careers it is shown these departed pioneers fulfilled some Divine decree in the regulating of a great destiny.' For which things the thanks of Australia are due to the A.W.U. and Senator Barnes. 

Dry Dock was not only the first town on the Tweed but several schooners were built there in the early days. Mr. Philp who has lived nearby for nearly 40 years, states that many years ago an old lady inspected the cemetery. She said her father Mr. Henry Gillett built a schooner just beside the cemetery and she was a native of the Tarranora hamlet. 

It is recorded of the great Wolfe that just before the battle of Quebec which decided the fate of the vast North American continent, that he recited to those officers in the launch with him, 'Gray's Elegy', those beautiful lines on an old English churchyard - admitted to be the finest epic poem in the English language - and that when he came to the immortal verse:- 

'The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power
And all that beauty all that wealth e'er gave
Await alike the inevitable hour;
The paths of glory lead but to the grave,'

he turned to his officers and said: "Gentlemen believe me when I say that I would rather have written this poem than take Quebec."

Anyone who looks at the one picture of the lonely cemetery at Tarranora which tells of the last gallant struggles of those who, in their day without clarion-like advertisement in an unostentatious way helped to build the glory of our Empire will understand something of what the famous soldier felt when he uttered his memorable words. In this little spot marked by a few crumbling freestone monuments with the inscriptions of nine persons lie how many hopes and loves and ambitions, brought by the paths of glory to untimely graves?... 

Somewhere within this quiet place Jack Warwick, a former British naval seaman and cedar-getter's cook was drowned there, and an American sailor also sleep their last sleep... 

Of the ill-fated 'Mary Jane' I have never been able to gain any documentary evidence. The records of the Navigation Department go back only to 1870. Old hands say she was one of the many cranky coracles that went out from our port with a human freight and was never again heard of - mysteries that must remain unsolved until that day when the sea shall give up her dead. The late Mr. Tom Lillie who was living at the Dry Dock in the Fifties said the hotelkeeper was lost in this manner whilst going to Sydney. 

Bridget Gillett was the second wife of the late Henry Gillett, shipwright, who died at the Coldstream, Clarence River, 17 3 81 aged 80 years. With his wife and two children, he embarked as a ship's carpenter on the emigrant ship 'Hiberna' which carried 550 souls for Australia. When 60 days out the ship took fire and all efforts to subdue it were ineffectual. The boats were few and unseaworthy and hopelessly inadequate to the demands upon them. Over 500 lives were lost, including his wife and children! The survivors returned to Rio de Janeiro. Eventually he reached Sydney in 1826, where he built the 'Susan'. He was in that vessel when she was the first boat to enter the Clarence in 1830. On that river he built the 'Martha' and 'Elizabeth' and the 'Atlanta'. Then he went to the Bellinger and built the 'Matha Ann'. Moving to the Tweed in the early Fifties, Mr. Gillett built 'The Twin', the first vessel launched on the river in 1854, that being the year in which twins were born to Mr. and Mrs. Gillett, the vessel being named 'The Twins' in consequence. The lady who visited the graves many years ago was one of the twins. After the death of his second wife he returned to the Clarence in 1858.

The object of this article is to plead that love of antiquity alone should urge the preservation of a particular memorial as these old gravestones are, before it is too late. Even now some words in the epitaphs are for ever obliterated. Quaintly worded as they are they are nevertheless a loss to posterity in the eyes of those who love the few surviving records of the old pioneers. The Tweed affords an extraordinary variety of interest and beauty. Part of its attraction is the historical interest - romantic if one will - which age always brings to the scenes and monuments of man's early struggles with primeval nature. It is of course true that we in Australia are just a little shy of admitting this interest and many indeed are still quite indifferent to the past. But to say the least, the indulgence, of such a taste will not hurt us and a proper concern for origins and for the memorials of past history has always characterised self-respecting peoples once they have reached a stage of leisure and self-consciousness. It would be difficult to find a more touching scene of human pathos than these forlorn and neglected tombstones present to us, or one which more strikingly illustrates the typical chances of life and death which belonged to the pioneer story of Australia. If we knew no more than these inscriptions tell us, they are enough to make the preservation of these monuments a matter not merely of piety but of common and national interest. But, set in the framework of the pioneer story of the Tweed country they acquire added pathos and historical value.'

The dry dock (constructed 1898) on the Tweed, 1937. This was located near the old graveyard. (John Oxley Library)

These three stones were later recovered and one went on display at the Tweed Heads Maritime Museum. In the 1960s the Boyd headstone was erected as the 'Taranora Cemetery and Memorial Stone' off Philp Parade, in the locality of the original burial ground. It was moved and refurbished in 2007 and now stands on the north side of the Tweed River, off a car park on Coral Street. While this is some way from the original location of the burial ground, it is nevertheless good to see that something has survived from this historical landmark and that an effort has been made to acknowledge local history.

The headstone on its old location, 2003 (Tweed Heads Historical Society)

The new location off Coral Street.

Chronology of historic Tweed Heads cemeteries

The Terranora cemetery was part of the foundation settlement in the Tweed estuary.
A cemetery was in use at North Tumbulgum from 1873 until 1947. It was later restored and can still be visited.

The Chinderah cemetery was in use by the Lower Tweed during the last few decades of the 19th century. The council still maintain this place but it is closed to burials.

The cemetery at Florence Street (now Charles Street Cemetery), Tweed Heads, opened in the late 19th century. It is still maintained by the local council but is no longer an operational cemetery.

There is also a graveyard at Fingal which was been used by Aboriginal and Islander peoples during 1864-1964.

Boggo Road: It's All Been Done Before...

September 10, 2016, 5:25 pm

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A bull in Boggo Road? Already been done... (C. Dawson)

I was recently having a discussion about the Boggo Road heritage prison, specifically about what kind of events could be held there, and which ones already have. It got me thinking about the decade up to 2005, when the volunteers of the Boggo Road Gaol Museum established guided tours, created exhibitions, and really built the place up as a tourist attraction.

They had started that work back in the early-to-mid-1990s, following the closure of the last male prison at Boggo Road in 1992. The museum was eventually closed to the public in December 2005 when construction work commenced on the neighbouring redevelopments, including the Ecoscience Precinct, although members of the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society continued their maintenance work there until mid-2006.

I was a volunteer (and eventually the curator) there from 2001, and now realise that just about every type of event that could be held there already had been held there under not-for-profit management by 2005. These included:

• Plays: Shakespeare and other productions were held inside the cellblock areas from the 1990s on.
• Art exhibitions: The cellblocks and other original prison rooms were used for various art exhibitions, including Aboriginal material.
• Film screenings: There were fundraising and school production screening nights held in the 'Circle' area in front of the cellblocks.
• Guided Tours: We developed a highly successful school tours programme, sometimes taking up to 7 or 8 groups a day through Boggo Road by 2005.
• Museum exhibitions: The volunteers designed and installed several successful artefact exhibitions in various spaces around the prison.
• Team building workshops: Businesses would hire out the prison for a day or two to run team-building exercises for their staff.
• Writers festival: The prison was sometimes used for Brisbane Writers Festival events, such as discussion panels.
• Parties: On average, the prison was hired for over 100 parties per year - workplaces, birthdays, engagements, etc. 
• TV and movie filming: TV shows such as 'Totally Wild' would use the prison to record or broadcast shows. Larger productions such as 'Inspector Gadget' also took over the prison for filming.
• Markets: The front and inside of the prison was used for Sunday morning markets back in 2001-02.
• Fashion shows: The volunteers occasionally organised fundraising fashion shows inside the prison.
• Music rehearsals: Community bands used rooms inside the prison for weeknight rehearsals. The 'Circle' area in front of the cellblocks was also used for live music performances.
• Youth intervention tours: Former officers would sometimes take groups of 'at-risk' youth through the prison to drive home to them the realities of prison life. By all accounts these were R-rated and highly effective wake-up calls.
• Charity events: Successful charity 'bookfest' weekends and 'breakout' events were held in the cellblocks.
• Open days: The volunteers organised hugely successful 'open days' such as the 2003 Centenary Day for No.2 Division, which was attended by thousands.
• Weddings: Several weddings per year were held inside the prison.
• School Arts festivals: Schools were allowed free use of the premises to host their Arts events.
• Youth sleepovers: Out-of-town schools and Scout groups would use the prison for supervised sleepovers (not in the cellblocks).

There are no doubt some others that I have forgotten here. There really was such a wide range of activity there.

Apart from these volunteer-organised events, there were a few other activities held inside the prison by small businesses, such as the 'cellblock sleepovers' that unfortunately resulted in serious vandalism of the cells, with customers being left to daub graffiti all over the cell walls, and drink, smoke and burn candles in the cells overnight. These were later prohibited by the Queensland Government, as were the highly disrespectful 'ghost hunts' in which people were charged a lot of money to use 'ghostometers' to 'find' the ghosts of people who had died in custody. Of course there were also the standard olde prison ghost tours.

As the prison was run as a not-for-profit operation, the success of the volunteer-run activities enabled the museum managers to donate tens of thousands of dollars to various charities such as Drug Arm.

Of course, all the above really puts Campbell Newman's backroom deal with a small business to freeze the volunteers out of the 2012 interim opening of the prison into shameful context.

While the volunteer achievements at Boggo Road were considerable, it has to be remembered that this was all done on five-day weeks and uncertain tenure. And apart from manager John Banks putting in 50/60 -hour weeks, we never really tried that hard. After all - and I guess that this is the main point here - Boggo Road is a place that sells itself. You don't need much marketing to get people in there, Open it, and they will come, because people are primarily attracted by the buildings and the internal spaces themselves, regardless of what is going on within those walls.

But... that was then. The days of the old not-for-profit Boggo Road Gaol Museum have passed, and it is clear that when the prison is properly reopened in the future - hopefully with a major heritage and arts component - new levels of excellence and professionalism are required to transform the place into a commercially successful creative and hospitality venue.

This is part of the thinking behind the Boggo Arts and Heritage Alliance project - that Boggo Road needs to be opened up to a wider variety of ways of looking at the prison and its history, with more voices telling more stories in more formats. Allowing creative communities to apply quality ideas to using that space.

So while I do have some of my own ideas for all-new interpretive activities inside Boggo Road for the future, there really isn't anything that has been done at Boggo in recent years that hasn't all been done there before. The challenge will be to do it better and finally realise the full creative and commercial potential of the heritage prison.

A Trip to the Gold Diggings #5: Tooloom

September 13, 2016, 7:32 pm

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In 1859 a wave of gold fever hit the newly independent colony of Queensland, and hundreds of men headed southwest to Tooloom, approximately 150 kilometres over the border into New South Wales. This journey of around four or five days on horseback was also taken by J. Robinson, a correspondent of the 'Moreton Bay Courier' in November 1859, and he wrote a detailed account of his travels both there and back (see map below). The result is a fascinating insight into life on the road during the earliest days of colonial Queensland, as well as the rough-and-ready atmosphere of the goldfields. The writings are reproduced in this 'A Trip to the Gold Diggings' series.

Warning: This article contains language that would be considered racially offensive today.

Moreton Bay Courier, 8 December 1859

TOOLOOM

LEAVING behind me the dead bucolic fragrance of which I wrote in my last, and journeying gently up a slight elevation, I came at last in sight of the township of Tooloom, which stands on the side of a gentle slope, the termination being a part of that creek, which has many miles of windings and turnings from the point of grandeur to that near the township.

The Darkies

The vanguard of Tooloom, as it is approached from the Kooreelah Range, is a camp of darkies; and these sable children of the forest, miserable specimens of humanity, do not appear to have been much improved by their mixture with the white diggers. ‘Fire water,’ as the Indians of North America called the rum, appears to be doing the work of annihilation, and so far as the mere consideration of what is best for the nation is concerned, more particularly in softening manners and elevating the mind, the sooner the aboriginals have perished from the diggings the better. If the wild bushman forgets in a measure the civilization of the old land, and descends in his habits and tastes, the aboriginal loves to copy many acts which the whites perform; and taking rum is a favourite failing up the country with the darkies, as they say it makes them feel ‘like white fellow.’ Even as the vulture and other birds of prey hang upon the trail of blood and death, so do the darkies at the diggings hang upon the trail of civilization, that they may gather the excitement and the vices. Enough for the present of these animals. Before I finish my sketch of the diggings I shall have a little to add on their behalf.

Tooloom Described

We are then in Tooloom; a rough and ready city of bark huts, canvass tents, and calico-roofed shanties. A few banners are streaming in the wind, and the residents are lounging and gossiping-the day of my arrival not being sacred lo business or pleasure, but of that class, coming near the shank end of the week, when there was a growing hope that Saturday’s trading might be ‘all alive, oh.’ Board and lodging and accommodation were signified at various places, and here and there as I entered the classic shade of Tooloom, I caught side of John Chinamen who had risen to the dignity of lodging-house keepers, and were impressed to all appearance with the importance of their vocation. That pig-eyed vacunty, and long tails pendant from the top of the nob, are not very national like on a soil fast yielding to British sway; nevertheless, it is not a time to moralize, as nuggets may be in the distance, and the cap of Fortunatus only wants the finding.

As a man travels, he should keep his eyes open; so pardon me for a few moments if I linger to describe Tooloom. In the distance I see the aristocracy of the place. The Gold Commissioner, Mr. Master, is sunning himself in front of his office-parlour and all, and holding a morning confab with the Sergeant of the Gold Police, who as he nods approvingly to what the King of Tooloom says, shakes the veil with which he has garlanded his hat, and beats his long boots with a switch. By the side of the representatives of the law and gospel of Tooloom, stands the oldest storekeeper, Mr. Miller, and the trio are evidently discussing the probabilities of the new arrival at such a strange hour, and in such a questionable shape. I catch sight of familiar faces and forms - feel satisfied I shall be able to make myself at home, and then make up to the select knot of loungers I have mentioned.

At the risk of my neck, which is more valuable to myself than to Queensland, I clamber a steep hill on the other side of the creek, to put my Rosinante away safely, until I shall again want to tempt the fortune of the road. The beast safely hobbled, and I back again in the city of Tooloom, there is nothing left for it but an Englishman’s feed - dinner; and then a leisure survey of the wonders of the place.

Whatever the townships of other diggings may have been when in their infancy, Tooloom reminded me of a village fair. The wares of the storekeepers were exposed to view in tempting forms, and there was an attempt to imitate the shop-keeping, or more properly the stall-keeping, of a gala day in a village. The flies were busy with the remaining stock-in-trade of the butcher, whose shop-block looked as if it was ‘first chop’ for the purpose for which it was intended. The chimney of the baker’s oven, constructed of corrugated iron, roared its head in pride above the calico roofing, and all inside the establishment looked clean and neat as a penny twist. An introduction to the butcher and the baker in a small town, when a man means to settle, is of no mean importance, especially if the party so favoured has a number of mouths beside his own to feed, either from his industry or his wits. Even on the diggings I found that ‘tick’ was fashionable, and that many who are there cannot, or will not, depart from the remembrance of town life, as a gentle reminder from a small bill enables a debtor to remember that his existence on terra firma is of some consequence to those to whom he may owe money.

Quartz crushing machine, Ballarat, S.T. Gill 1855. National Library of Australia nla-pic.an:6055919

Stores and Shanties

I counted a number of stores. First, I must mention the oldest, a courtesy which will occasion no jealousy, as its priority is honorable by reason of its age. I refer to the store of Mr. Miller, from which place a banner was flying on which was written words to guide those who needed information where to purchase goods.- ‘Tooloom stores’ in large letters kept the friends of the storekeeper from going astray. Outside the store of which I am making honourable mention I saw a notice relative to the North Australian, and I candidly confess that I did not feel any of those sensations which are said to emanate from ‘That green-eyed monster that doth mock our bliss.’

It would not be exactly proper to descend to minute particulars, so I shall hurriedly take in the batch of speculators, thus forming an index for Tooloomers, and saving the expense of a directory. Mr. Betts figures as a general storekeeper, and a little way above is Mr. Gordon’s, also a general store, whilst opposite is a large calico building, (about to be supplanted by a slab one), which is said to belong to Mr. Fleming; and Messrs. Black & Co. keep a store near to the creek. The ring of the blacksmith‘s anvil sounds close at hand, and from between the sheets of bark come sparks of fire, not sufficiently powerful to indulge the fancy that Vulcan is forging thunderbolts, but sharp and swift enough to jog your memory that there are diggers who take the edge from their picks in the battle for gold. The abode of the Vulcan of Tooloom belonged to an Ipswich man a few days before my arrival, but he had sold out to Mynheer Something, who was laboring away when I passed with all the ardour of a new tradesman.

A Rose in the Wilderness

And hereabouts, midst shades of bush and mobs of cattle, came forth from a shanty, dignified by the title of a lodging-house, a good-looking woman, who, with her husband, seemed disposed for a yarn; and we all chatted on the life that diggers lead. The lady, thinking I was a new chum, expressed her sorrow that I should have come to share the profits and the losses - the hardships and the queer lodgings, that were fashionable thereabouts. In her gentle expostulations she neglected not to remind me that she had known other comforts than the diggings, and in token thereof she drew off her bonnet and displayed a head of hair that would do honor to Lady Bowen’s first fancy ball. I trust, if this small tribute to female vanity and beauty should be seen by those who will recognize the sketch as applicable, I shall not be considered acting improperly in paying a graceful compliment to beauty at Tooloom.

A Claim Jumped!

Just at this particular time, came by a digger who had made himself a name by discovering that our old friend O’Donnell and his party, consisting of the brothers Aitken, (one of whom was a short time resident in Brisbane), had more ground than they were entitled to by the laws which regulate claims on the gold-fields. The party to whom I have alluded had sent away the greater number of mates to fetch their better halves to share the glory of Tooloom. What the digger laid claim to he obtained - fair measurement had settled the job, and I found that the man’s tact and boldness was generally commended. The claim of O’Donnell and his party had a good name in the township, but the people generally considered that he had blown rather too hard in that letter which appeared in the Brisbane papers. I was told that O’Donnell had denied the authorship; that the letter may not have been intended for publication by the writer, is another matter - Mr. Rosetta, of the Freemason’s Hotel, Brisbane, would be a capital witness to decide if the letter was written by the person whose signature it bore.

Public Houses

Mr. Brooks has rigged a place called ‘The Prospector’s Arms,’ and painting has been called to aid the caligraphic art, for there shines the pick and shovel on the signboard, emblems of the digging trade, under the shade of which the workers may take their grog and discourse on the precious metal, and the chances of finding it. Mr. Black has preserved the aboriginal dialect, his house rejoicing under the appellation of ‘The Tubra Inn.’ This last place formed the head quarters of your correspondent, who, a kind of cosmopolitan in his little way, wished all parties well, - bundles of fun and piles of gold. I must not say how many private grog shops were on the digging’s, but I have no doubt that every accommodation house, with a sheet of bark for a bedstead, and blankets for sheets, counterpanes, and all, could muster their little kegs and drops of various kinds of creature comforts which help to keep up the spirits, and are oftentimes productive of little scenes not fit for modest eyes, or to be heard by ears polite. I may not indulge in rhapsody, or allow my imagination to have free scope. The better part of valour, they say, is discretion, and I close the brief sketch of the hotels by hoping, that all at Tooloom may find it to be other than a land of promise.

Night

The little stars looked peacefully down, as if taking pity on poor wretches having to find their way across gullies, and peeking to escape broken bones by avoiding holes, stumps, and dogs. The lights shine through the roofs - the calico shanties look as if showmen were giving a night performance. There is a sound of merriment, and the Tooloomers appear to have glad hearts. Oppressed with forebodings, I confess to disappointment, for there is the appearance of rough plenty, and sadder souls are in the genteel rooms of showy poverty than are allowed elbow room at the diggings. I heard Mr. Fleming praised for the prompt and liberal supply of flour which he sent. ‘We are nearly starved,’ said a digger to me, ‘I had nearly a month on beef and peas, and if I had been required to have held out much longer it would have cooked my goose.’

So ho! My companion at the hotel is a grazier. He had brought about 1000 sheep, so that the diggers might be supplied with mutton. Evidently he looked on me with distrust, which a political yarn did not lesson. The squatter could not convince me, and I could not convert him, so off we go to bed in the same room, though on different shake downs, he believing in my rascality, and I in his cool impudence - two dear delightful companions to be closeted together for a night. I admired many notions that he entertained, and liked what squatterdom had done for him; it had made him dare to assert his belief. Flocks and herds are powerful incentives to make a man independent in his feelings. A good night to you all, and may my friend understand me better in the morning.

The Diggings

I almost feel like a criminal for having kept you so long waiting for my report of the veritable diggings. It has not been done purposely - pray pardon me. The way was long, and the stories new, but now I am off for JOE’S GULLY. It will be better, however, for me to sketch the journey. A short distance from the ‘Tubra Inn’ brings the traveller to the banks of the creek where John Chinamen amuse themselves. There are a number of Celestials engaged in the interesting process of digging and washing. Patiently they appear to labour and the water they have for their work is scanty in quantity. Still they labour on, proof against the rough witticisms of the diggers from Europe, who, one and all, despise the comers from the land of where the claims land of Confucius, where the emperor claims to be lord of the sun and the moon. Probably the reason why these queer specimens of men take matters in such hum-drum style is, because they do not understand much of the languages in which they are constantly addressed. John Chinaman resorts to a sensible method for carrying the dirt. He who is appointed dirtman for the gang swings two buckets from a yoke, such as the London milkmen use, and all day long, before returning to Hong Kong (the name by which their quarters are known at Tooloom), do they continue to labour and toil, so that they may be a trifle richer before partaking of their curry and rice.

Passing over the creek by a primitive bridge, a fallen tree, the traveller has to clamber for it to the summit of the portion of Tooloom known as the Horse Paddock, in consequence of its being the place where the diggers turn their horse; and, protected as it is by the creek on all sides save one, it is rarely that the horses stray. A hard beaten footpath, looking as if trodden by a regiment of infantry in single file, is the way to another bend of the creek, which has also to be crossed. On the opposite side the traveller has to ascend, and after a fatiguing march of a mile, the way being adorned by tents and shanties, the bed of the creek is seen, and also the entrance to Joe’s Gully. If the traveller is unused to the rough ways of life he will not be able to descend readily; and a party of Melbournites, perceiving the difficulty of the way, were in the act of erecting an accommodation house about half way down the hill, for the convenience of diggers and the public in general, - heaven bless the speculators! If one of their lodgers should partake too freely of grog at Tooloom, and begin to descend and lose his balance, the house of accommodation would not form a house of refuge, for there is nothing but a sheet of unbleached calico between the traveller and the chasm below.

As it was hard to get to Joe’s Gully, and as I have brought the reader in sight, he must have mercy and wait until I got to the bottom. I will, however, for the benefit of inquirers after gold, say that my opinions of the gold-fields at Tooloom have taken a more favorable turn, and in the next part I may talk of all the acts pertaining to searching for the precious metal. For the present I rest in sight of the spot which has hitherto been the talismanic dream and promise. In my next I shall have stories to tell of wonderful nuggets, and dust, not of Ophir and Havillah, but of the diggings where the sympathies of the workers go with Queensland.'

The route described by the author of the ‘A Trip to the Diggings’ reports, Moreton Bay Courier, 1859. (C. Dawson)

The 'Trip to the Gold Diggings' Series

A Trip to the Gold Diggings #1: Gold Fever at Brisbane
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #2: The Fields From Timbarra to Tooloom
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #3: Ipswich to Fassifern
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #4: Fassifern to Koorelah Range
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #5: Tooloom

The Gallows of the Old Windmill Tower

October 23, 2016, 8:10 pm

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Depiction of the 1841 hanging (Telegraph, 10 March 1970)

The 'Old Windmill Tower' on Wickham Terrace is the oldest surviving European structure in Queensland and one of the heritage gems of Brisbane. It has been used for a variety of purposes since its construction by convicts in 1828, being at different times a windmill (originally driven by sails, and then by treadmill) a telegraph signal station, fire brigade observation point, radio research and television broadcasting station, and now a heritage-listed historical site.

All this history was quite interesting in its own way, but there was one incident that was heads-and-shoulders more dramatic than anything else that happened there (including the time a convict slipped to his death on the treadmill). In the winter of 1841, during the dying months of the convict settlement, two Aboriginal men - Mullan and Ningavil - were hanged at the windmill tower for the murder of surveyor Granville Stapylton and his assistant William Tuck near Mt Lindesay.

It was a fascinating case for various reasons: a graphic local example of early Aboriginal-European conflict over law and land; the horrifically grisly murder scene; the unusual decision to return the prisoners to Brisbane after their Sydney trial; and the fact that it appears the wrong men were convicted. All those details are covered in the book The Hanging at the Brisbane Windmill, but this article will focus specifically on the type of gallows used that day, because it is still not clear if the unfortunate men were hanged from the tower, or just near it. The commonly-believed story is that they were hanged from the windmill, but even then there are differing accounts of exactly what the gallows looked like. Was the rope attached to the windmill sails, or a pole sticking out of a window, or did the whole thing take place on a nearby separate gallows constructed from the dismantled sails themselves? Different records tell different stories and there is still uncertainty on this matter.

The windmill had been constructed on a high ridge next to the convict settlement with the intention of using it to grind corn, which was the main ingredient of the convict diet. The sandstone-and-brick tower was 16 metres high and encircled by a small exterior balcony about a third of the way up the side, allowing access for the maintenance of the large wooden sails. The windmill turned out to be mechanically unreliable as it was not well positioned to catch the wind, and it also required a lot of maintenance. A convict-operated treadmill built adjacent to the mill compensated for this problem.

The balcony of the windmill, possibly used as the gallows stage, can be seen in this detail from a sketch of the settlement, circa 1835 (attributed to Henry Boucher Bowerman, John Oxley Library).

Despite these technical issues, the windmill was reported to still be working in 1841, having been maintained by convict mechanics. Tom Dowse, who arrived in Brisbane in July 1842, recalled that, ‘We Journey’d up the hill to inspect that relict of old times - its well appointed Machenery, its revolving arms dressed with a complete suit of Sails, all in proper working order’. Dowse also reported in a March 1845 letter to the Sydney Morning Herald that the mill was still working and being used by private individuals for grinding corn and wheat.

The contemporary observations of Dowse were contradicted by the journalist J.J. Knight, who wrote in 1898 that the windmill had been 'partially dismantled' by the time of the hanging. The question of the working status of the windmill in the early 1840s is important when assessing Knight's further claim that the 'disused arms made convenient timber for a staging which for the purposes of the execution projected from the balcony’. He also wrote that 'a pole was run out from a window above, and to this was fastened the fatal rope'. This is one of the clearest written descriptions of the actual gallows used for the hanging of Mullan and Ningavil, but Knight was writing over half-a-century after the event and using oral history sources, which can sometimes be quite unreliable.

A nine-year-old Tom Petrie was a witness of the hanging, which was described in his reminiscences (published in 1904) as taking place 'at the windmill, which was fixed up for the occasion'. This phrasing suggests that the windmill itself was adapted for the purposes of the execution. Whatever the gallows looked like, we do know that they were constructed by Tom's father Andrew Petrie, who was the Foreman of Works in the settlement. Knight wrote that Alexander Green, the executioner, brought up from Sydney for the occasion, was impressed with the gallows and assured Petrie that they were ‘quite equal to the affair in Sydney’.

Unfortunately, contemporary newspaper reports of the execution provide no description of the gallows, only telling us that the hanging took place 'at' Windmill Hill. The official records are also quiet on the subject.

This was only the second hanging to have taken place at Moreton Bay, the first being in 1830 when two runaway convicts were returned after trial in Sydney and executed in the yard of the convict barracks, reportedly on a scaffold made for the occasion. It is not known what happened to those gallows, but in later decades it was common practice for gallows to be dismantled and stored away after use, then reconstructed when required again. Is it possible that the components of the convict gallows were carried up Windmill Hill in 1841 to be reassembled and reused there? There is no evidence to suggest this actually did happen, but it does remain a possibility.

The next Brisbane hanging came in 1850, when two murderers were hanged on Queen Street. On that occasion, second-hand gallows were transported up from Maitland Gaol, which had recently acquired a new set.

A panoramic landscape by Henry W. Boucher Bowerman, depicting Brisbane circa 1835 (John Oxley Library). The windmill can be seen on the far left. (John Oxley Library)

So while the most descriptive evidence suggests that the windmill tower was adapted for use as gallows, either with the construction of a new attached scaffold or simply using the existing balcony, that evidence was provided decades later and there are no contemporary accounts to back it up.

One thing we can be sure of is that Mullan and Ningavil were hanged - one at a time - using the ‘short drop’ method, in which the body on the end of the rope fell less than one metre. In later years the government switched to the 'long drop', carefully calculated to give a 'quick death' by delivering enough force at the end of the fall through the scaffold to break the prisoner's neck. However, the short drop was still in use in the 1840s and the results were almost always a slow death by strangulation. Young Tom Petrie was taken to look at one of the bodies after the hanging, and his description of the face he saw clearly indicates strangulation:

‘After it was over a prisoner, taking young ‘Tom’ by the hand, drew him along to have a look in the coffin. Stooping, he pulled the white cap from the face of the dead blackfellow, exposing the features. The eyes were staring, and the open mouth had the tongue protruding from it. The horror of the ghastly sight so frightened the child that it set him crying, and he could not get over it nor forget it for long afterwards.' (Constance Campbell Petrie, Reminiscences of Early Queensland, 1904)

So ended the hanging of Mullan and Ningavil. They had been returned from Sydney to Brisbane so that their deaths would serve as a lesson to those who witnessed it, which turned out to be about 100-300 Aboriginal people as well the majority of the European population of the settlement. After the event, the instrument of the prisoner's death was immediately removed. The windmill itself was sold and dismantled for parts in 1849, and converted into a telegraph signal station in 1861. By that time Brisbane had a new prison (at Petrie Terrace) and executions were conducted inside the prison yards, away from the prying eyes of the public. Coincidentally, the first person to be hanged at that new prison was Thomas Woods, who - as one of the few remaining convicts in the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement in July 1841 - had been mustered to watch Mullan and Ningavil hang at the windmill. Clearly, the intended lesson of their execution had not been learned by some.

A Trip to the Gold Diggings #6: Scenes From Tooloom

November 2, 2016, 2:05 pm

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In 1859 a wave of gold fever hit the newly independent colony of Queensland, and hundreds of men headed southwest to Tooloom, approximately 150 kilometres over the border into New South Wales. This journey of around four or five days on horseback was also taken by J. Robinson, a correspondent of the 'Moreton Bay Courier' in November 1859, and he wrote a detailed account of his travels both there and back (see map below). The result is a fascinating insight into life on the road during the earliest days of colonial Queensland, as well as the rough-and-ready atmosphere of the goldfields. The writings are reproduced in this 'A Trip to the Gold Diggings' series.

Warning: This article contains language that would be considered extremely racially offensive today, but is retained here for historical context.

Moreton Bay Courier, 13 December 1859

'THE BED OF THE CREEK

SAFELY down from the height, having rested as previously stated at the half-way-house, the owners of which ought to insure all lodgers at so much per head from the dangers of high winds, Saturday night nobblers, and also from all riotous and disorderly conduct on the part of all inmates, for fear of a roll below, I sent myself on an old stump and look about to see what kind of faces the diggers wear; and having made up my mind as to what party I shall first accost, I make my way to the point and draw myself together to be ready to understand what I may be told. At the same time I give imagination a tug, so that I may not fall into the category of the gullibles...

Cousin Jackies

I love a Cornishman, though not one myself; he generally has such deep scheming under his smiling ‘marning;’ and though he may make you welcome to his ‘apple pastie and cream,’ he has an eye for business. And what has made me open this part in Cornish style, may be inferred from the fact that in the claim I next visited there were three Çousin Jackies busily at work. I knew the twang of the dialect in a moment, and was ‘all there’ to find out what I could; so I sat myself down, and opened the conversation according to the best method of which I was the master. For the benefit of the uninitiated, I may say that if you can get a Cornishman to talk about Tregollis, and the ‘Bear Hunt of St. Ann’s,’ and also about ‘shooting the cherrybeam,’ you will at once gain an entrance to his affections, and may succeed in acquiring his confidence. This short sketch may manage to show how soon I was on good terms with Cousin Jackies, and how I learned the story of

The Wonderful Nugget

I mean, of course, that very identical nugget found by a digger, which weighed over eighty ozs., and which was delivered over to some person in connection with the Ipswich Escort for safety, and in relation to which there was a legal injunction to restrain the digger and finder from taking possession of, until he had been able to justify his alleged ownership in the eyes of the law. My newly found friends pointed out the spot where this large nugget was found, and told me something in relation to it which, if I tell as nearly as possible as I heard it, I may escape the libel court. ‘Ah’ said one, ‘that was a d____ shame. That fellow who laid claim to a share of the nugget had no more to do with it than a stranger. He had sold out of the claim the day before, and the finder went early to give the claim a morning trial and found the great nugget.’ I listened with pleasure. ‘Lord bless ye,’ said one, ‘I never seed a feller in such a way in my life; when he did find it he didn’t know what to do with heself; he turned white and was regularly comed over.’

‘It was his’ said another; ‘and if he’d done as he should he would have kept as dark as a chimney sweep.’ If the party in this claim were jurymen to try the case it would not be difficult to venture a bet of a dozen of champagne on the finale of the trial.'

Moreton Bay Courier, 15 December 1859:

'Nature of the Ground

Up to the present time I have been very silent on the geological character of Tooloom. I don’t profess to know much on this point, and should be sorry to set myself up as a judge in the matter. If Lyell, Sedgwick, or Buckland, had been to Tooloom and published books on the geological formations of the place, I might appropriate a few quotations. Nevertheless, in all humility, I append my own geological opinions.

The country in the neighbourhood of Tooloom is evidently volcanic, traces of the convulsions of nature being more distinable at the points near to the creek than elsewhere. The various layers are easily discernible in ascending or descending the point of the steep hill near Joe’s Gully; but as far as I could judge from actual observation, there seems to be no rule for the discovery of gold from any particular layer. One party finds the precious metal in gravel - another finds it in soil as rich as garden mould - and another is fortunate in clayey looking soil. The last named appears to show the colour of the metal sought better than any other; the gold obtainable from this kind of layer being smaller than that washed from the gravel. The top layer of the land near to the favourite resort of the diggers is very strong, the edges of the projecting stones being in many places sharp - in others, rising in boulders. One fact I state for the consideration of those more versed in peculiarities connected with soil and climate than I am. The grass growing in the naturally formed paddock I have previously mentioned, is remarkably nutritious for horses, and it is rarely that grass appears to thrive so well for feeding purposes as the tufts which sprout from the rocky and stony intersectices of this wild and broken country.

The appearance of the bed of Joe’s Gully has been entirely altered by the diggers. The bed of the gully is not very wide, but stupendous banks protect it on each side near to the bed of the creek, where the busiest operations were being carried on; and if the place has not been formed by volcanic eruptions, and is only one of the rough and stupendous water-courses of this great country, there is food for supposition that ages have rolled by in accomplishing the appearance presented in 1859 to the visitors...

General Character of Tub Diggings

It is time I gave the diggings a character. I must here endeavour to be very particular. I talked with the storekeepers, diggers, and workers who live by other means than searching for gold. I had an opportunity of talking with many returns on the way up; many more than I have mentioned, and I have endeavoured to form an independent judgment. That Tooloom is a gold country no man who has visited it will deny. The gold brought down by the escort is proof that there is gold. The objection urged by many that the gold which is brought by the Ipswich escort is obtained mostly from the Table Land will not hold good. The Grafton people will be sure, on that side of the country, to keep a sharp look-out ; and I may state that there is a trifle of jealousy relative to the gold coming down to Ipswich which ought not to exist; and the sooner it is allayed the better will it be for all concerned. The Table Land is thirty miles from Tooloom, and it is not likely that much of the gold from the Grafton side passes by way of Ipswich. I should be inclined to believe from what I saw that if the matter were stated vice versa, - that some of the Tooloom gold went by way of Grafton, the truth would be nearer told.

Estimation and Calculation

I should estimate the number of persons at Tooloom, ‘Eight-mile Rush’ and ‘Twenty-mile Rush‘ at about eight hundred. I allow three hundred as the population of women, children and those engaged in stores, public houses, trades, et cetera. This gives a bona fide digging population of five hundred.

The Ipswich Escort brought down last trip nearly six hundred ounces - which gives more than an ounce per man for about three weeks. Now when it is considered that many on the fields scarcely obtain their rations, and others not even enough gold to purchase supplies, while others have good claims, it is not difficult to find a solution that Tooloom diggings, like all others, are a lottery. I believe there are plenty of men doing well; but the general prosperity would, at the time when I visited, have been much heightened by a better supply of water. In this particular there was a general scarcity. Joe’s Gulley was rendered almost useless as a gold producing spot. The two rushes were as badly off as Joe’s Gulley. The country has every appearance of proving gold producing in large quantities. At present circumstances have not been favourable to the full development of its capabilities. I have faith that something good will turn up in that quarter yet; but I should be sorry to say anything which would induce men who have employment, to leave a certainty for, what must be, an uncertainty, until water and time shall make us wiser respecting Tooloom. The impetus which has been given to the Tooloom fields by our friends in Ipswich has certainly done good. Under present circumstances the difficulty is to find now claims; and this I found to be the cause for so many returning. Above all things, a digger who goes to Tooloom should be provided with some ‘tin,’ so that he may hold out. I consider I have given the Tooloom goldfields a good character. They are not, at present, the places for very poor men. Those who have means to work on, strong faith, and dogged determination will, in the end, succeed, unless the face of nature lies, and the experience of the past gold indices are in this instance a blank.

I might run on to an undue length by repeating the gist of the inquiries I made, and the answers thereto. I might tell of claims unworked, and claims registered waiting for water; but, I could not add to the general information contained in my short summary, which may be told in a few words. Tooloom is a goldfield only wanting time and favorable circumstances to develop its capabilities.

I had many conversations on Saturday night with the diggers, and what I gleaned then helped me to summarize as above. If the reader will picture his own feeling when, the week’s toil is done and there is a chance for an hour’s enjoyment and patient forgetfulness, he can spare my pen the trouble of a description. Tooloom deserves a good character...

A Fight with the Knives

Those black, ugly, devils are making faces near the doorway of the hotel, and they laugh with a hideousity that makes a sensitive nature wish a score of miles was between their carcases and the fancied abode of the white lords’ security. Some of the backs of these dark gentry are cut with ghastly wounds. A few nights previously they had indulged in an aboriginal fashionable duel, and the sinners who presented themselves for the orgies of Saturday night were of those who had shown their prowess for a lady love by deeds of bloody war. Some of these black scoundrels had been half civilized on stations, and the little English they had learned had not made first class specimens to be produced at a missionary meeting. I did hear, on the Saturday night, that the aboriginals, when they fight with knives, have certain rules and regulations, a departure from which subjects the defaulter to a punishment peculiarly in accordance with the savage race to which they belong. And here I must tell a story. Two of the blacks had gone to the fight - one had departed from the honorable mode of striking, in so far that he had dragged his knife too lowly on his enemy’s body. For the benefit of those who know not the law which governs them in this particular, I may say that where the abdomen joins the upper portion of the body is considered the rubicon which the knife must not cross. When they fight with knives they do not stab deeply, but having forced the blade into the flesh the process is that of dragging; and the longer the wound the more successful is considered the inflictor.

Two blacks had fought and one had drawn his knife across the other’s abdomen, the consequence being that the intestines protruded and for three or four hours the black was in a state indescribable by your humble servant... The black who was thus served in his corporate body found at last a white man who took pity upon his unfortunate condition; and he lighted, by a tallow dip at the camp, and armed with a rusty needle and a bit of thread, commenced the job of sewing the blackfellow up as if he had been a dead marine. On the blackfellow’s wrist there was a wound, which was said to have been enough to kill a white fellow; but of this no notice was taken. The breach bodily was of more consequence than gash armitistically. The blackfellow lived, and appeared to suffer as little inconvenience from the mending he had received from an inexperienced body darner... I will not so far forget myself to hold the tinkerer of the black so publicly forth that he may become known. His act was one of pure charity - he took no fees - nor did he ask who was to pay him before he started to the camp on his mission of needle and thread mercy. I vouch for the accuracy of the tale as told by the performer himself, whose good deed shall now live in memory when his bad fortune as a digger at Tooloom shall have perished from memory.

Gold and the Blacks

The aboriginals seem perfectly to understand where to find the metal which makes wise men fools and gives an antipodean value to that grand army to which a wag once said he had no ambition to belong. The aboriginals, knowing the value of the metal for the purchase of grog and ‘bacca,’ nevertheless will not take the trouble to dig. For a trifle - for a glass of grog, they will do menial offices for the whites, wander a score of miles away, into the mountains with a party of diggers - to spots where the print of whitefellow’s foot has never previously been, and there point out spots favourable for prospecting. If the aboriginals were not so lazy, or if they had a tithe of the cupidity of the whites, they could soon become rich. Wise legislation might do something for them if contamination had not already struck its death roots into the race. Why need I moralise - it appears that they must perish before the advance of white civilisation, and I should like to find the man prepared with a specific definite nostrum to show that there would be any real service rendered to the world by the incorporation of the aboriginals of North Australia with any other existing race. Tastes differ, or else white women would not mate with John Chinamen as we see they do; but, then, woman is a bundle of incongruities, and cannot be reckoned by the rule of three and vulgar fractions. I hold that the thesis for incorporation, whereby and wherefrom a better race than the jibbering savage with animal instincts might rise, is not practicable so far as the Malay, Japanese, or Chinese are concerned. Nature, elevated, abhors descending. The aspirations are upward in nationality, and onward in civilisation, until the world shall be linked by rapid means of transit and great thoughts, aided by science, demonstrating that man was made for other purposes than toil and money-getting.

There were three or four aboriginals on the ground on the Saturday night in question who were above the average in point of intelligence; but, even those seemed to be short of a shingle in making the best of their knowledge as to the likely spots where gold was to be obtained. They would drink grog, beg for sixpences, journey all day long for a trifle, but the value of the metal for which the whites searched so eagerly they knew not. They had never known the possession of yellow money; prechance if they were taught the value of gold to ‘buy ‘em bacca and grog,’ they might touch the first step of civilisation. Wherever I have seen the aboriginals, so far as property is concerned, they are communists, and despise those petty distinctions which first led to the settlement of this colony...

Themes of Discussion

If a traveller spends a night at a station he will find that the fashionable subject of conversation, especially if a neighbour is visiting who is pecuniarily interested, is cattle, sheep, horses, wool, horns, hides, and tallow. Since Separation, local politics come in at the station boards as ‘Worcestershire Sauce;’ and the mixture is at times as strange as Paddy O’Rourke’s dream. Those matters which are nearest the breast pocket I suppose men will talk about, and ladies also. At Tooloom they talked of sinkings, washings, beds of gravel, boulders, beds of pipeclay, and the general opinion seemed that deep sinking would in a few weeks be the order of the diggings at Tooloom. When the news shall reach us that ‘the windows of heaven’ have been kept open for a few days in that locality, there will be such an improvement that we shall be disposed to wonder why we believed not sooner.

Modes for Inducing Sleep

The diggers crowd the bagatelle board, the balls roll with measured sound, and every now and then there is a gusto of exclamations, perfectly original in their construction and novel fin their sounds. I want to sleep and still the whir keeps on; at last I catch the indication of drowsiness, but there is a spell in the original manner of talk... There are many ways to woo Morpheus. Mesmerize yourself by imagining you are converted into a chimney and the smoke is coming from your mouth as from a funnel. Look straight at some object And if all fails make a planetary system by tightly closing the eyes and seeing sun, moon, and stars of all colours and sizes. If all these means fail don’t get into a passion - if you do you may bid farewell to sleep that night. Smoke a bit, read a page or two, think on those matters only which are pleasant, and you may get off even while a score of fellows are interesting themselves in making a noise that would wake all the blessed babies in creation. I say not how I managed, or if I found it expedient to put on a nightcap. I am off, good night. To-morrow,

Give me my horse and a bottle of wine,
And you shall all hear of the Condamine.'

The route described by the author of the ‘A Trip to the Diggings’ reports, Moreton Bay Courier, 1859. (C. Dawson)

The 'Trip to the Gold Diggings' Series

A Trip to the Gold Diggings #1: Gold Fever at Brisbane
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #2: The Fields From Timbarra to Tooloom
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #3: Ipswich to Fassifern
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #4: Fassifern to Koorelah Range
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #5: Tooloom
A Trip to the Gold Diggings #6: Scenes From Tooloom

Did Johnny Cash Play a Concert at Boggo Road?

November 16, 2016, 6:00 am

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Did the great Johnny Cash ever play a concert at Boggo Road? It's a reasonable question to raise, as I have been contacted twice during recent months by media/marketing types wanting a chat about 'that time Johnny Cash played at Boggo Road'. He had of course famously played at Folsom and San Quentin prisons in the United States, so it seemed believable that he might have done something similar here in Brisbane.

Johnny Cash performs for prisoners at the Folsom Prison, 13 January 1968 (Dan Poush/AP)

I was well acquainted with the 'Cash at Boggo' story, having heard it from two men who had worked at the prison and went on to help manage the museum there in the late 1990s. These were my fellow Lancastrians Donny Walters and Bill Eddowes. They recounted Cash playing there in the early 1970s and practically sparking a riot, which resulted in Donny having to unceremoniously escort Mr Cash out of the building.

I was hugely impressed with this very blokey story, but it wasn't until a few months later that I started looking for more information on it. Surely there would be some mention of it in online Johnny Cash pages, or newspapers of the time, or prisoner or staff memoirs? I dug around but found nothing. I asked Donny and Bill again but they seemed a bit evasive about providing further info, so I turned to their good friend and colleague John Banks, the museum manager.

'Hey John, do you remember when Johnny Cash played that concert here?''What?' I explained what the other two had told me and a bit of a smile flashed across John's face. 'Is that what they told you?''Yeah'. John did a little 'humph' laugh. 'I think they might've been having a pull of your leg', he said.

I phoned a couple of other former officers, but neither of them had heard anything about any concert. When I mentioned this to Donny he half-heartedly persisted with the story for a few minutes before realising the gig was up, and he laughed a bit and said 'did I tell you about that time that Frank Sinatra played at Bogga Road?' I took that as a confession. His idea of humour included making up absurd little stories about prison life to trick gullible 'outsiders' like me. He had told me another one about a secret underground office in the prison, since used as a secret-document dump and then filled over with soil and rubble. That was another story that didn't hold up to inspection. Once you got to know Donny and Bill a bit better, it was easier to pick up on their tongue-in-cheek tall tales.

Donny and Bill retired soon afterwards, and sadly have since passed away. I never got to raise the subject with them again, and generally forgot about it. That is, until this year, when I got those phone calls. The men I spoke to seemed convinced the Cash concert had happened, but didn't let on who told them about it. I said I was pretty sure it did not happen, but then did some basic research and asked around anyway. I sent an email out to a couple of hundred former staff and inmates from Boggo Road, asking if anyone knew anything about this alleged concert. Over the next week I received 26 replies from men who had been there during the 1960s and/or 1970s. Every single one of themsaid it never happened. If it had, they would have known about it. These are people who remember just about everything about the place. If the Salvation Army band had played there in 1973, they'd remember it.

So there is nothing in the records about a concert, and people at the prison at the time denied it happened. In the absence of hard evidence - beyond a single story told by known pranksters - it is safe to say that Johnny Cash did not play at Boggo Road. It doesn't take much historical research to reach that simple conclusion.

Since starting this article, I have since seen the recent online source of the concert story, a marketing piece in which it is acknowledged there is no evidence outside what was said by Bill Eddowes (the same story told to me by Donny and Bill and then shown to be a 'joke'):

"The details are scant and hard to verify, as many prison records - such as correspondence from that era - were destroyed long ago... At this time a strict no photography rule applied inside all Queensland prisons; no known pictures exist."

How convenient. Unfortunately it looks like another case of cherry-picking unverifiable sources and ignoring better and contradictory evidence. In other words, don't let facts get in the way of a bit of marketing (see here and here for other examples of this practice). Any decent researcher with contacts in the field would have worked out that it wasn't a true story, and anyone who values credibility would not have shared it. And yet here we are with another bloody Boggo Road myth.

For the record, Cash played in Brisbane seven times, including 1971 and 1973. Venues included: Festival Hall, Milton Tennis Courts, and the Entertainment Centre. Venues not included: Boggo Road prison.

The Life & Death Quiz: Hanging in Queensland

December 4, 2016, 5:45 pm

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Welcome to a new series of quizzes about Queensland history. In this first entry you can test your knowledge of the dark history of hangings in Queensland.

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The Short Life of Marburg Prison Farm

December 6, 2016, 3:47 pm

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During World War 2 the small town of Marburg (about 60km west of Brisbane) had a brief but somewhat confusing role in the Queensland prison system. A new prison farm for women was established there in 1944 to help relieve the overcrowding problem at the female division of Boggo Road in Brisbane, caused by the strict policing of local women's sexual contact with Australian and American servicemen. The female division at the time was a bit of a ramshackle timber-and-tin affair with a capacity of 24, and the rising crime rate among women meant that the facility was often overcrowded. At one point it contained 50 inmates.

One particular problem was the number of women being kept in prison because they kept escaping from the Lock Hospital, a place where women with STD’s were forcibly detained for treatment. This was in the days before Penicillin, a drug that would render such facilities obsolete during the following decade.

The state government announced in April 1944 that a former private hospital in Marburg would be converted into a new prison farm for women, similar to the recently-opened male State Farms at Palen Creek, Numinbah and Whitenbah (a fifth Queensland prison farm opened in late 1944 at Stone River, near Ingham). These were low-security facilities based on the ‘honour system’, whereby the inmates would engage in agricultural work and promise not to escape. The one at Marburg was designed as a poultry farm with four fowl-houses and four laying sheds. 

Palen Creek Prison Farm, 1936 (State Library of Queensland)

Obviously the prisoners had to be sufficiently low-risk to be considered for such a move. Also, for practical purposes, female inmates who were serving short sentences, or were on remand or requiring specialist treatment, were still to be kept at Boggo Road.

The Marburg hospital had been owned by the splendidly-named 90-year-old Dr Euchariste Sirois, who was subsequently appointed as visiting surgeon to the new facility.

The newly-opened hospital at Marburg, c.1912. The larger building was later converted into a prison farm facility (Picture Ipswich, Ipswich City Council).

The Marburg prison farm had only been open a few months when the male prison at Boggo Road was hit by an overcrowding crisis, caused in part by court-martial military prisoners housed there. A number of low-security men were transferred to Marburg from Brisbane in August 1944, while ten women prisoners were returned the other way. This was only intended to be a temporary move, and it remained a male-only prison until November 1945, when it reverted back to being a female prison again. The men had made a success of the vegetable gardens there and tended up to 174 fowls.

Probably the most notable inmate to be held there was Cecil Bates, who was sentenced to two years' prison in 1944 for attempting to kill an American serviceman (yes, it was over a woman). Bates was suffering from advanced and incurable tuberculosis and it was thought that serving his time at Marburg would be better for his health than being confined in Boggo Road.

In October 1946, the government ordered that facility become the ‘Institute for Inebriates, Marburg’, much to the consternation of the local residents. This replaced the recently-closed institute at Dunwich, and remained open until 1965, when it was replaced by a new home at Wacol. The Marburg buildings were demolished in the 1980s.

Due to the short amount of time it was actually open, Marburg prison farm is no more than a footnote in prison history (it doesn't even warrant a mention in the Corrective Services history website). It does show, however, that the Queensland prison system was not a monolithic beast, and as times changed it could be what certain modern politicians might even call 'agile' and 'innovative'. 

The Life & Death Quiz: Boggo Road History

December 9, 2016, 6:25 pm

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Test your knowledge of this notorious Brisbane prison.

The Life & Death Quiz: Brisbane Prison History

December 16, 2016, 2:51 pm

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It's time for another 'Life & Death Quiz', this time with ten multiple-choice questions about the history of various prisons in Brisbane.

Be warned - they're not too easy! You can find some answers in the 'Prisons of Colonial Queensland' website.

(Also check out more 'Life & Death Quizzes' here when you've finished).

A Suffragette Recalls Boggo Road Gaol

December 7, 2015, 1:16 pm

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Silver hunger-strike medal presented to the Suffragette prisoner Lady Constance Lytton, October 1909

The following article about a female prisoner recalling her time inside Boggo Road is adapted from Brisbane's Daily Standard, April 1935.

The subject is Constance Clyde, who was born in Scotland in 1872, moved to New Zealand as a child, and then on to Sydney in 1898. She wrote for the Sydney Bulletin, and penned the novel A Pagan's Love, in which ‘questions of women's dependence were raised, with the heroine considering an extra-marital relationship with a man’. As a reporter, she was imprisoned in England in 1907 as one of the suffragettes who ‘caused a disturbance’ in the House of Commons. A similar protest scene was depicted in the inspiring 2015 movie Suffragette. Clyde wrote of some her experiences as a protester in this 1907 article.

She also provided this excellent account of her time in London's Holloway Prison that year.

In 1935 she was living in Brisbane and was arrested for earning money by fortune-telling with tea-leaves. She characteristically refused to pay the fine and was sent to the Female Division at Boggo Road, which at that time was a small timber dormitory next to the main prison off Annerley Road. Upon her release she told the local Press of her time inside there:

'WOMAN TELLS OF EXPERIENCES IN BOGGO-ROAD.
Little Colony That Is Forgotten

Forgotten women in an isolated colony in the heart of Brisbane is how an elderly woman, and a remarkable personality herself, views the women's section of Boggo-road Gaol, in which she recently spent three weeks. Her offence was fortune-telling with tea-leaves, and she refused to pay the fine.

She is ‘Constance Clyde,’ and is well-known by that name to readers of women's periodicals in Australia. Author of a novel, contributor to high-class English reviews, sometime social editress of a Christchurch (N.Z.) newspaper, and in 1906 one of Emmeline Pankhurst's Suffragettes, she indicts Boggo-road as a bleached version of what a woman's prison should be.

Constance Clyde speaks from experience. In her own words she says that she ‘has experienced several gaols,’ but it ought to be pointed out that since early womanhood she has been something of a stormy petrel in questions affecting feminine reforms. Holloway, one of England's famous gaols, housed her for a couple of weeks, giving her her first taste of prison life.

Although born in Scotland, she was brought to New Zealand at an early age, and returned in 1906 in time to become enthusiastic in the cause of women's suffrage. Mrs. Pankhurst and her famous daughters had espoused action where talk and entreaty had failed and in a still somewhat, conservative age had decided that only by violence could Englishmen be induced to concede Englishwomen their, rightful share in each triennial failure to elect an ideal Commons.

If nowadays the 'average' woman elector votes only under the dutiful pressure of her husband, and the threat of a fine, then it can only be advanced, in extenuation, that times have changed!

Anyway, one of the milder forms of suffragette exhibitionism during 1906 was a proposed gathering of the clan in Parliament Square. The intention of the Suffragettes was to march into Parliament House, and then let Providence be their guide. Miss Clyde was one of them.

On their arrival they found the Square well picketed by policemen, and, recalls Miss Clyde, she was one of about a hundred who were arrested and sentenced to Holloway. They were regarded by their sympathisers as martyrs, and when they came out were given brooches as a memento, the color-scheme being purple and green. This, however, was a mild form of martyrdom compared with those others essayed later by individuals; a peak sensation of the campaign occurred when a suffragette threw herself down, on the race track in the path of the thundering Derby field.

Miss Clyde remembers that as first-class misdemeanants they were given butter in Holloway; they were allowed to retain small personal possessions, such as hairbrushes; they were not denied the spiritual consolation of a minister of religion. None of these advantages, she says, was obtainable In Boggo-road, though the officials were kindness itself.

‘I realise perfectly,’ she said, ‘that a gaol is not intended to be a rest home. But Boggo-road impressed me as being run on a wrong principle. For instance, we were not allowed hairbrushes, but were provided with a big comb each, with which to do our hair 'in a nice, neat bun behind,’ according to framed regulations issued in 1890.’

(Australian Town and Country Journal, 18 November 1903)

There was not even dripping on the bread, and the food supplied was of a needlessly poor quality, declared Miss Clyde.

The tone of the section was neglect and decay. ‘It is as forgotten,’ she added, 'as an Aztec temple in ancient Peru.’

‘There is no regular weekly inspection, and the doctor to most of us was a rumor. He did not see everyone on entry. No members of women’s organisations, or other organisations, come to console or uplift. Sundays were like other days, without the vestige of a service.

‘On the second of my three Sundays our religious food was one bar of music faintly wafted to us from the men's prison, where the Salvationists held a service. No Salvationist came over to call us ‘sister.’

‘On one weekly evening the men were entertained to an uplift movie. It would have been- easy, as in other prisons, to send the women over to some hidden part of the hall, but we were not sent over.

Prison Clothes.
‘There were two sorts of prison clothes - garments crisply new, and others that crept down. The socks were past redemption. I found difficulty in obtaining from a mouldy Government box a pair of the heelless prison slippers that would stay on my feet.

‘I was seriously informed that if I couldn't find a pair, on no account would I be permitted to approach my suitcase for a pair of my own. Rather must I perambulate cell, veranda and yard, which comprised our ‘run’ in stockinged soles.

‘I 'did not mind this so much - being fairly Bohemian! - but the first pair of long, white garterless socks that I received had only a half a sole to each foot.

‘Completely deprived of our personal possessions, and of crochet and sewing, and unable to write or play games, we would gladly have mended these socks for pastime. But there is only one Government needle, and no mending wool! I admit there is a sewing machine, which is used for Government work.

‘We were not there to occupy ourselves. When Government work failed we loafed around the yard or sat on our backless benches. I spent part of the third day trying to show a fellow prisoner a certain crochet stitch with a piece of stick and some string. We did nothing in our leisure except read the few tattered and ancient stories of the Victorian era, and some American publications.

Gangster Yarns.
‘After our final lock-up at half past four I sat up till lights out at eight o'clock, perusing these gangster yarns, 'My Nine Years in Hell,''How I Became a Dope Fiend,' and other stories suitable for our condition.

‘Out of the 24 leaden-footed hours we spent nearly 17 in our cells. The authorities have forgotten to put stools in the cells. The furnishings comprise a bed, hard as a brick, without wire mattress, and a locker in which to keep simple provisions. When we took in our dinner stew, served in a dog tin, we might eat it sitting on the bed, twisting round to get at our meat on the locker, or give up the struggle and sit on the floor.

‘Our breakfast and tea meal consisted of a mug of tea with dry bread. We were allowed sugar, and our supply of milk was so abundant that to this moment, freedom attained, I have given this fluid a complete miss.

‘In New Zealand the women are given dripping, and also, every week, one pot of jam of a good brand. In Holloway in Suffragette times, misdemeanants at least received butter.

‘With mild malignancy, the Queensland Government did not allow us to buy anything for ourselves. This system is a hangover from the period when prisoners were held to be reformed by semi-starvation.

Kindly Officials.
‘The officials were humane - their kindly way of speaking, so important a matter to the incarcerated, perhaps saves many from a breakdown. But they do not understand. I heard of one declaring that the 'women were happy enough in gaol.' This is not true. We were all, educated or uneducated, always miserable.

‘The glory time is when a new prisoner enters. From her comes the news - but it is always underworld news. We were not permitted to hear real world news to counteract this evil. It would corrupt us to hear that Bishop so-and-so has laid a foundation stone, or that someone rescued someone else bravely from drowning at Sandgate. Only the evil of the world is permitted to come in.

‘I learned in this gaol how to make 'pinkie,' the names of a few Brisbane gangsters, and how possibly (if I want it) I might, after some hunting, obtain cocaine.

‘An ideal gaol is one that the world remembers, and in which the prisoner forgets. But this woman's gaol is one that the community has forgotten. Only its inmates will remember it and the lessons learnt within its dilapidated walls.’

Official Reply.
When told of ‘Constance Clyde's’ statements, Mr, J. F. Whitney, Comptroller-General of Prisons, said: ‘I would be the last person in the world to claim that the women's gaol is a 1935 model, but the truth of the matter is that there are so very few female prisoners that an expensive building is not warranted.’ He added that the place was perfectly clean and very comfortable, and all the inmates were satisfied with the treatment. ‘Truth’ was taken through the women's prison, and found conditions to be as the superintendent had stated. At present there are five inmates, and all were happily sewing and chatting together.

The building was scrupulously clean; there were five blankets on each bed, and the uniforms worn by the prisoners were neat and clean. Each prisoner, ‘Truth’ was told, is in her cell from 4.30 p.m. till 6.30 a.m. next morning - 14 hours. Visitors are allowed to see inmates frequently, and ‘Constance Clyde,’ the visitors' book showed, had two visitors in three days. A study of the reading matter allowed, revealed no gangster stories.'

 

Constance Clyde of Dutton Park: Author and Suffragette

December 18, 2015, 7:18 pm

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Constance Clyde, 1903.

In August 1951 a 79-year-old Brisbane woman died and was buried in the Hemmant Cemetery. No headstone marks her grave, no newspaper obituary marked her passing, and her life in Brisbane had been generally unremarkable. Yet Constance Jane McAdam had done much to be remembered for.

I first came across Constance while researching the Brisbane Women’s Prison of the 1930s. She had spent three weeks in Boggo Road in 1935 after being convicted of ‘pretending to tell fortunes for payment’, and subsequently wrote a newspaper article about her experiences there. From that article, the breadcrumb trail of online information revealed a formidably independent woman who had been a writer in New Zealand, Sydney and London, producing a novel and numerous short stories for newspapers and magazines. In London 1907 she spent time in Holloway Prison for her part in a Suffragette protest at the Houses of Parliament. She even managed to get herself ejected from the New Zealand parliament after a one-person protest there. Clearly this was someone who lived a life worth recalling.

That life began in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1872 when she was born as the 11th child of William and Mary Couper. The family emigrated to Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1879. She began her literary career as a young woman writing poetry for the Otago Witness newspaper, and her first paid piece was a short story in the Dunedin Star. She moved to Sydney in 1898, where a major part of her journalistic career was spent writing for the Sydney Bulletin, particularly on the subjects of ‘social, feminist and literary questions’.[1] She wrote under the pen name ‘Constance Clyde’, no doubt a sentimental reference to the river than ran through the city of her birth. She also joined the ‘Yorick Club’, a somewhat bohemian collection of people with ‘a professional interest in literature, visual arts or science’.

Constance moved to London in 1903 to further her career. Her only novel, A Pagan's Love, was published there in 1905. Lawrence Jones provides this analysis of the book:

‘Clyde is explicitly contemptuous of Puritanism, which she dismisses as ‘this coarse, church-belled heathenism’. She sees it as a narrow, barren, blinkered creed suitable for the respectable conformists who live in the Presbyterian Otago community of Waihoa. The attractive alternative offering deliverance from this stultifying religion is paganism. For Clyde, this is a blend of atheism, sexual equality and a new morality. The novel charts the progression of the heroine, Dorothea Wylding, away from Puritanism towards paganism. Growing up in Waihoa, Dorothea is imbued with a strict sense of morality and a belief in respectability. This begins to be undermined when she travels to Sydney, the ‘laughing pagan city’. Here she meets the feminist Ascot Wingfield, an independent career woman and solo mother, who teaches Dorothea of the need for women to have both an intellectual and an emotional life. Dorothea is also reunited with childhood friend Edward Rallingshaw, the pagan of the title. A married man, he tries to persuade Dorothea to live with him in a free love union. Just as he wears the last of her resistance down he dies in a fire. While this at first appears to reinforce the Puritan theological code of transgression and punishment, it eventually results in the defeat of orthodoxy. Returning to Waihoa, Dorothea marries the Rev John Archieson. When she leaves him to return to Sydney he in turn discovers that the Puritan code is limiting. In a final sermon he questions whether ‘there is such a thing as sin’ and declares that ‘it is not the higher but the broader life that we want; we need our minds enlarged rather than our souls purified’. John’s heterodoxy reunites him with Dorothea. The ex-Puritan hero and heroine resolve to work together to free others from the religious and moral bondage they have experienced and to promote ‘a new morality and religion of love rather than law, of fulfillment rather than denial.’[2]

The novel did not find a large audience and I don’t know if Constance ever tried to write another one. Certainly after this time her output was largely confined to short stories for various newspapers, with the occasional piece of journalism, although in 1933 she co-authored a travel/history book titled New Zealand, Country and People.

A young Suffragette is arrested at the March 1907 protest.

Her political beliefs saw her make the news in 1907. Constance was naturally drawn to the cause of the Suffragettes and their long struggle for full voting rights for women. This led to her arrest and imprisonment in March 1907 for taking part of the first Suffragette protest outside the British parliament– which followed the defeat of another suffrage Bill - in which there was reported to be prolonged fighting between the protesters and the 500 police who were defending the House of Commons. 75 women were arrested that day. Constance wrote vivid newspaper accounts of these experiences, which I will reproduce in the next article on this website. I am unsure as to the direct and ongoing extent of her involvement in the Suffragette movement, and it is clear from her articles that she set out to get arrested just so she could report from inside the 'belly of the beast', but her writings show that she was clearly a very strong supporter of the struggle. Her actions also show that she was not afraid to see the inside of a prison cell, and like many Suffragettes she wore imprisonment as a badge of honour.

Her life in Edwardian London seemed to become much quieter after this time, and in 1912 it was reported that she ‘was recently received into the Church by the Jesuit Fathers at Farm street, London.’ On the face of it, this appeared to be a surprising move for a person who had railed against the establishment and conformity for so long, but Constance lost none of her political combativeness.

Her short stories continued to appear various publications in the following years, but any dreams of literary stardom in London must have faded away. She returned to New Zealand - probably during the 1920s - and continued her love/hate relationship with that country. She was admonished in the pages of the Coffs Harbor Advocatein 1925 - with the suggestion that her ankles should be caned - for her article in the Empire Review criticising the people of New Zealand for their general submissiveness. Then, in 1931, Constance was making news again with another parliamentary protest. This time her concern was child abuse, while the New Zealand parliament was considering a Child Welfare Bill.

‘When the Speaker of the House of Representatives was reading prayers this afternoon a woman in the visitors' gallery suddenly and loudly protested against the Child Welfare Act. An attendant persuaded her to remain silent, but when prayers had concluded she recommenced her protest. She tore up a copy of the Act, throwing it to the floor of the House, She was ejected by the police. 

The woman stated subsequently that her name was Constance McAdam, and her pen name Constance Clyde. She said she was a member of the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom, and had not been aware that the House opened with prayer. "At all events, I am the first woman to speak in the New Zealand Parliament," she added.’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 19 March 1931).

Another short insight into her political and social activities was provided by a Brisbane newspaper in 1932:

‘Prominent among New Zealand writers is Constance McAdam Clyde. Articles written by her have appeared in the best English magazines, including the Contemporary and Empire Reviews. Her last publication is a history of New Zealand, in which she collaborated with Alan Mulgan, and which was brought out by Whitcombe and Tombs. Some of her most valuable work has been achieved, however, in assisting to place new writers before the public. Miss Clyde is an ardent advocate of physical culture for both the youthful and middle-aged. She is also, prominent in anti-vivisection matters.’ (Telegraph [Brisbane], 25 June 1932).

It was around this time that she moved to Brisbane and settled in the suburb of Dutton Park. This was the time of the Great Depression, and Constance was by now advertising her services in assisting with the preparation and publication of manuscripts, and she also sought a writing partner. However, in June 1933 she was living at ‘Lavinia’, on Dutton Street, Dutton Park, and subtly advertising her services as a fortune teller.

Constance also became a writer of regular letters-to-the-editor, usually under her birth name and espousing her views on various subjects. In 1933 she wrote about child protection, prison reform, her opposition to the forced sterilisation of ‘mental deficients’ (which she also wrote about in 1934). She also suggested that people should wear ‘a small piece of pale green ribbon’ on Sundays to show their support for ‘a better state of things financial’.

She continued telling fortunes under the name ‘Madame Lavinia’, and in 1935 (while living on Merton Road) she was arrested and charged with ‘having pretended to tell fortunes for a fee’. Constance faced the police and the court with characteristic defiance:

'She told me that she only did it as a sideline,' said Constable Davissen, of the Traffic Office. She said that she was a journalist, writing for 'Women's Weekly, 'Women's Budget,'‘The Women's Mirror’ and several other papers. And before I left she said, 'You can tell the magistrate from me that I will not pay any fine, even if it's only sixpence.’ (The Truth, 7 April 1935)

She told the court that 'I thought that I could do some good in this depression by sympathy, kindness and advice, and especially by telling people that there is nothing wrong with this world except the monetary system.' For Constance, even reading tea leaves could become a political platform.

Constance McAdam, 1935.

True to her word, she refused to pay the fine and so was confined inside the nearby Boggo Road prison for three weeks. She didn’t miss the opportunity to write about this experience, and I have already covered that work in this article.

This proved to be Constance’s last brush with the law. Her newspaper letters now became infrequent and her concerns trivial. In a letter to the Women’s Weekly in 1935 she complained of children getting Christmas presents too early. In 1938 she was unhappy with the etiquette of people listening to household radios, and in 1939 she complained of an accident hotspot on Ipswich Road. In 1940, now aged 68 years, she suggested that the government could save money on pensions by asking rich families to help provide for their elderly relatives. In 1944 a rather insipid poem on the tragedies of love appeared in the Queensland Times. And then, nothing. This must have all felt like a long way from the dreams of the ambitious young writer who travelled by ship from Sydney to London in 1903 with an unpublished novel under her arm.

In the 1949 Queensland Electoral Roll she was listed as a journalist and living at 15 Deighton Road, South Brisbane.

Constance died in Brisbane on 30 August 1951, and was buried in the Hemmant Cemetery. The event passed without mention in the local newspapers. There was no obituary, no funeral notice. It was a quiet end to a life that had petered out in the mundane concerns of suburbia after such an ambitious foray into the bohemian literary circles of turn-of-the-century Sydney and London. Hopefully this article will help make more people aware of the achievements of Constance Jane 'Clyde' McAdam.

Note:
I set out here to put together the most complete online account of Constance McAdam’s life. While that general aim has been achieved, my research has been limited and holes remain. I would appreciate any further biographical information that can be added above.

List of the published writings of Constance McAdam (work in progress).

• Consolation - Song Words, poetry (The Bulletin, 12 December 1896) 
• Hypnotised, short story (The Bulletin, 9 January 1897) 
• Dead, poetry (The Bulletin, 31 July 1897; 11 January 1933) 
• To Save His Soul, short story (The Bulletin, 26 June 1897) 
• A Woman's Promise, short story (The Queenslander, 11 December 1897) 
• Mrs Murgan's Snake Bite Cure, short story (The Sydney Mail, 17 December 1898) 
• Letters from the Grave, short story (The Queenslander, 17 December 1898) 
• Dreams and Shadows, poetry (The Bulletin, 24 December 1898) 
• A Woman's Love, short story (The Bulletin, 7 January 1899) 
• Virgins, Wise and Foolish, poetry (The Bulletin, 28 January 1899) 
• The Widow, poetry (The Bulletin, 11 February 1899) 
• Night's Day, poetry (The Bulletin, 11 February 1899) 
• A Glass of Beer, poetry humour (The Bulletin, 1 July 1899) 
• A Boarding-House Idyl, short story humour (The Bulletin, 29 July 1899) 
• The Test of Love, poetry (The Bulletin, 2 September 1899) 
• Conversely!, short story (The Bulletin, 4 November 1899) 
• The Saddest Song, poetry (The Bulletin, 9 December 1899) 
• The Soul of David King, short story (The Bulletin, 9 December 1899) 
• The Dream Child, poetry (The Bulletin, 23 December 1899) 
• The Elopement of Lydia, poetry humour (The Bulletin, 6 January 1900) 
• In the Night, poetry humour (The Bulletin, 20 January 1900) 
• Love's Climax, poetry (The Bulletin, 24 February 1900) 
• Why They Killed Mrs Saville, short story (The Australasian, 10 March 1900) 
• For Ever, poetry (The Bulletin, 28 April 1900) 
• Mrs Flynn's Sofy, short story humour (The Bulletin, 5 May 1900) 
• Jones, the Genius Hunter, poetry humour (The Bulletin, 26 May 1900) 
• The Cleverness of Douglas Fitzgerald, short story (The Australasian, 2 June 1900) 
• Angela, the Good, short story (The Bulletin, 23 June 1900) 
• Millar's Water, short story (The Australasian, 7 July 1900) 
• The Broken Dove, poetry (The Bulletin, 28 July 1900) 
• Stepmother Bessie, short story (The Australasian, 11 August 1900) 
• The Man that Came Back, short story humour (The Bulletin, 25 August 1900) 
• A Faithful Woman, poetry humour (The Bulletin, 8 September 1900) 
• The Ballad of John Bigley, poetry (The Bulletin, 20 October 1900) 
• Parson King's Happy Day, short story humour (The Bulletin, 3 November 1900) 
• Sympathetic Miss Swanston, short story (The Australasian, 29 December 1900) 
• Pirates, short story (The Bulletin, 29 December 1900) 
• My Best Friend, short story (The Australasian, 29 June 1901) 
• Her Good Father, short story (The Newsletter, 28 December 1901) 
• Pan of the Seashore, poetry (The Australasian, 6 April 1901) 
• Mr. Shannon's Choice, short story (The Australasian, 19 October 1901) 
• The Chief Mourner, short story (The Australasian, 16 November 1901) 
• The Forgiveness of Florence, short story (The Australasian, 14 June 1902) 
• The Game Eileen Played, short story (The Australasian, 5 July 1902). 
• An Appeal, poetry (The Bulletin, 19 July 1902) 
• Mabel's Love Letter, short story (The Australasian, 20 September 1902) 
• Lizzie's Lie, short story (The Australasian, 15 November 1902) 
• The Ballad of John Ibbetson, poetry (The Bulletin, 21 February 1903) 
• A Men's Refuge, short story (The Bulletin, 21 March 1903) 
• The Diplomacy of Caroline, short story (The Bulletin, 16 May 1903) 
• The Question of Beer, poetry (The Bulletin, 23 May 1903) 
• The Enfranchised Woman, prose (The Bulletin, 20 June 1903) 
• The Difference, poetry (The Bulletin, 27 June 1903) 
• An Exemplary Mother, short story (The Australasian, 22 August 1903) 
• The Marrying of Mr. Maxwell, short story (The Australasian, 24 October 1903) 
• The Commonplace Men, poetry (The Australian Town and Country Journal, 9 December 1903) 
• A Pilgrim of Love, short story (Colac Herald, 16 September 1904) 
• His Strange Little Lady, short story (The Australasian, 26 March 1904) 
• The Tragedy of the Spun-Silk Shawl, short story (The Australasian, 28 May 1904) 
• Held Cheap, short story (The Australasian, 9 July 1904) 
• The Ordeal of Mrs Holmes, short story (The Australasian, 26 November 1904) 
• A Pagan's Love, novel (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905) 
• The Career of Jessica, short story (The Australian Town and Country Journal, 26 February 1908) 
• The Plan of Elise Blanc, short story (The Australasian, 13 March 1915) 
• The Pardoning of Jessie, short story (The Australasian, 11 March 1916) 
• Soldier’s Wives, short story (The Australasian, 23 March 1918) 
• The Flippancy of Felicia, short story (The Australasian, 3 September 1921) 
• It's a Young Country Yet, short story (The Australasian, 28 January 1922) 
• When the Dumb Spoke, short story (The Australasian, 11 February 1922) 
• The Eyes of John Denne short story (The Bulletin, 27 January 1927) 
• The Motor-Car Wife, short story (The Australian Woman's Mirror, 27 September 1927) 
• Elimination, short story (The Australian Woman's Mirror, 3 January 1928) 
• 'With Shop Attached', short story (The Australian Woman's Mirror, 14 February 1928) 
• The Magic Dress, short story (The Australian Woman's Mirror, 12 August 1930) 
• Change of Heart, short story (The Queenslander, 21 March 1935) 
• Contrasts, poetry (Queensland Times, 3 March 1944)

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[1]Kirstine Moffat, ‘The Puritan paradox: an annotated bibliography of Puritan and anti-Puritan New Zealand fiction, 1860-1940. Part 2: reactions against Puritanism’, Kotare: New Zealand Notes &Queries, Vol.3, No.2, 2000.

[2]Lawrence Jones, ‘Puritanism’, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, ed. Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie, Melbourne, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, p.130.