Sheik Browne
One of the more fascinating Convict runaways of Moreton Bay was a man named Sheik Browne (or Brown or “Black Jack”). Very little is known of his life before and after his spectacular series of escapes from custody, recorded so painstakingly in Prisoner Registers, Official Correspondence and Court files.
In his records, Sheik Browne is depicted as hailing originally from the East Indies, born around 1800-1802. The East Indies, at that time, were considered to include the archipelagos of Indonesia (Dutch) and the Philippines (Spanish). The East Indies is also a blanket term for the lands in South-East Asia.
In her study “The Runaway Convicts of Moreton Bay”, Mamie O’Keefe refers to his heritage as Indian, as does Constance Campbell Petrie in her memoir of her father, “Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences”.
Sheik Browne made his way to England as a servant, but found trouble, and on 07 April 1824, at the Middlesex Gaol Delivery he received a sentence of transportation for life. He arrived at Sydney by the ship Asia on 29 April 1825. He remained out of trouble for 10 months but reoffended in February 1826.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8th, 1826. This day, the following prisoners tried during the last term were brought up and received sentence. Sheik Browne, for stealing in a dwelling house, under the value of forty shillings. —To be transported for 7 years.
Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 – 1842), Saturday 11 February 1826, page 3, Supreme Criminal Court.
Transportation from Sydney in 1826 meant Port Macquarie, Moreton Bay or Norfolk Island.
Sheik Browne arrived at the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement, then in the process of being constructed, on 02 June 1826. The Prisoner Register records him as 22 years old, 5 foot 3 ½ with copper coloured skin, and black hair and eyes. Constance Campbell Petrie’s memoir refers to him as Shake Brown, which gives a guide to how his first name was pronounced.
He evidently did not like what he saw at Moreton Bay, because he absconded for the first of many times, 5 days later. A screenshot of his entry in the Chronological Register of Prisoners at Moreton Bay, page 3, shows the attempts to track and record his activity in red ink, which in places has faded to near-illegibility in the ensuing 193 years.
The first escape was for 8 days, followed by an escape on 06 May 1828, and he remained at large until 19 December 1828.
‘Less probable is the identification, of one Brown, an Indian coolie transported from Mauritius, who was among the blacks up under the Main Range in commandant Gorman’s time (1839-1840), with “Sheik Brown,” whose evasion, on l6th May, 1828, from the boat’s crew at the Bay “rationed to the 10th instant,” is set forth, and is not followed by any record of his ” return from absconding.’
Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld.: 1866 – 1939), Saturday 14 December 1901, page 1135 SKETCHER. CURIOUS OLD RECORD. MORETON BAY PENAL ESTABLISHMENT UNDER CAPTAIN LOGAN. By W. H. TRAILL.
The “Indian Coolie transported from Mauritius” in the above report is another prolific escapee – George Browne (Ocean). This was actually a short stay – out from 05-17 May 1829, but was followed by his longest run to date – 2 years – on 13 June 1830. No wonder the Register could barely keep track of him.
During the time he was at large he spent time with the indigenous people and met up with other convict absconders, who supplied the authorities upon recapture with a trickle of information about his whereabouts.
By August 1832, he was known to be in the region of Port Macquarie, at that time a penal settlement on the mid-northern coast of modern New South Wales. A prisoner dispatched to bring him in reported to the authorities that Browne would turn himself in at the expiration of his sentence – a few weeks hence.
Browne did surrender to Port Macquarie on 29 August 1832, giving officials valuable information about the land and river systems of northern New South Wales. In return, he hoped to be permitted to remain at Port Macquarie, and was taken into service by the Chief Magistrate of Port Macquarie whilst the Governor decided what to do with him. The reason for this is, and I quote, “’in consequence of the Prisoner being an unfortunate Black from Bombay and unaccustomed to mess with Europeans”.
The Governor decided that there might be a visit to Norfolk Island in Browne’s very near future, an alarming prospect which caused him to escape again. Sensibly, perhaps, he travelled south, and was near Port Stephens when he contrived to be ‘rescued’ as a shipwrecked sailor named Jose Koondiana from an Island in the Indian Ocean near Mauritius (the Bourbon Islands).
RETURNING TO TAHLEE August. 27th.– We rose early and were in the boat at 8 for Tahlee, where we arrived at 11. Captain Moffatt had gone to Stroud this morning and we were very happy to learn that Mrs. Moffatt had been delivered safely, though under very dangerous and critical circumstances. I was also informed that the so-called Jose Koondinna is really Sheik Brown, the runaway from Moreton Bay.
Dungog Chronicle : Durham and Gloucester Advertiser (NSW : 1894 – 1954), Tuesday 6 September 1927, page 6 Early Days of Port Stephens FACTS FROM THE STORE HOUSE OF HISTORY. (Compiled by Gordon Bennett). (By Permission of the Mitchell Library). Part 52
‘Jose Koondiana’ certainly talked a good game. His exploring adventures were the topic of an extended letter to the Sydney Herald, and go into great, if fanciful, detail.
“Koondiana, a native of Damaun, near Bombay, was wrecked on the Western Coast of this Island, upwards of two years ago, on a part described by his country-man and companion, as New Holland; and judging by the course he observed in intersecting the country, the same as is sometimes called De Witt’s Land.
His companion Joseph, a sea cunny, died from eating nuts, after about twelve months travel; but before they left the West Coast, and at his death, he impressed upon Koondiana the necessity of keeping the rising sun on his left. By these directions, and the friendship of the Natives (who were uniformly kind to him till he came near the East Coast) who handed him over from tribe to tribe, he arrived at a large river about five months ago, and when four (or five) month’s travel from the sea. He says, when he saw it (the river) his heart was as it had been when on the Ganges; and desirous to know whether it terminated on the South Coast, according to its current at the place he first beheld it, he travelled two days on its banks.”
Sydney Herald (NSW: 1831-1842), Thursday 18 July 1833, page 2.
The cheeky so and so.
The Moreton Bay authorities, less gullible than the correspondents to the Herald, requested an examination by the Courts at Newcastle, on the ground that they suspected Mr Koondiana of being Mr Browne.
He very nearly convinced the Newcastle Bench of his Jose-ness, until he was recognised and identified by a fellow Moreton Bay inmate, now in private employment.
Whether his sentence had expired or not, the Moreton Bay Commandant had his man, and Browne re-entered the Register on 25 May 1834.
No doubt Mr Browne was watched intently from that moment on, and there is only one further example of absconding – being out from 16 January 1837 until 11 April 1837.
With the closure of the penal settlement, including its books on convicts, Sheik Browne disappears from the record until 1847, mentioned once in passing as having died some years before.
This article was written at the time when European farming and settlements expanded rapidly, and this brought settlers into conflict with the indigenous people. It was the published view of the settlers that not enough was being done to protect them from the aborigines. It’s fairly likely that no-one asked the indigenous people what they thought of the situation.
From this information, the best estimate of the time of Browne’s death would be between 1839 and 1845.
.The like negligence was shown in the case of Sheik Brown and a bullock-driver, who were killed by the natives within thirty miles of the settlement, and whose bones are now bleaching near the road to Messrs. Joyner and Mason’s station on the Pine River.
Moreton Bay Courier (Brisbane, Qld: 1846- 1861) Saturday 06 February 1847, p2
Constance Campbell Petrie, writing at the turn of the 20th century, makes his ending a tale of seduction, abduction and revenge. Her book is about her father, who arrived in Moreton Bay as a child in 1837, with his father, town Clerk of Works, Andrew Petrie. It is possible that Tom Petrie had met Browne – he definitely met many of Browne’s associates as the convict settlement was being dismantled.
TOM PETRIE ‘S REMINISCENCES
Another good corrobboree was based on an incident which happened when my father was a boy. This time it had reference to a young gin -Kulkarawa – who belonged to the Brisbane or Turrbal tribe. A prisoner, a coloured man (an Indian), Shake Brown by name, stole a boat, and making off down the bay, took with him this Kulkarawa, without her people’s, immediate knowledge or consent.
The boat was blown out to sea, and eventually the pair were washed ashore at Noosa Head-or as the blacks called it then, ” Wantima,” which meant ” rising up,” or ” climbing up.” They got ashore all right with just a few bruises, though the boat was broken to pieces.
After rambling about for a couple of days, they came across a camp of blacks, and these latter took Kulkarawa from Shake Brown, saying that he must give her up, as she was a relative of theirs; but he might stop with them and they would feed him. So, he stayed with them a long time, and the bon-yi season coming around, he accompanied them to the Blackall Range, joining in the feast there.
Before the bon-yi gathering had broken up, Shake Brown, grown tired of living the life of the blacks, left them to make his way to Brisbane. He got on to the old Northern Road going to Durundur and followed it towards Brisbane. Coming at length to a creek which runs into the North Pine River, there, at the crossing, were a number of Turrbal blacks, who, recognising him, knew that he was the man who had stolen Kulkarawa. They asked what he had done with her, and he replied that the tribe of blacks he had fallen in with had taken her from him, and that she was now at the bon-yi gathering with them. But this, of course, did not satisfy the feeling for revenge that Shake Brown had roused when he took off the young gin from her people, and they turned on him and killed him, throwing his body into the bed of the creek at the crossing.
A day or two later, men with a bullock dray going up to Durundur with rations, passing that way, came across Brown’s body lying there, and they sent word to Brisbane, also christening the creek Brown’s Creek, by which, name it is known to this day.”
The name Brown’s Creek remains in the Moreton Bay suburb of Narangba. Brown’s Creek Road is a major thoroughfare there.
Given his extraordinary history, I do hope that someone had the kindness to bury Sheik Browne. Perhaps, even temporarily, mark his grave.
Sources:
Newspaper articles as quoted in the text.
“The Runaway Convicts of Moreton Bay”, Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, Volune 10, Issue 1, pp 52-71. O’Keefe, Mamie – Brisbane, Queensland, 1976.
“Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of Early Queensland”, Constance Campbell Petrie, Watson, Ferguson & Co, Brisbane Queensland, 1904.
Chronological Register of Prisoners, Moreton Bay, 1824-1839.
Moreton Bay and More 
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