The Flying Pieman performs at Ipswich, 03 November 1848

Ipswich News:

The Flying Pieman performed here yesterday the feats which he proposed performing at Brisbane, viz.: wheeling a barrow half a mile, running forward half a mile, running backward half a mile, walking one mile, picking up fifty stones one yard apart and placing them in a basket; as a gig could not be procured, he, instead carried a large goat half a mile; and made thirty eight leaps 2 ft. 10 in. high, fifty leaps were the number he intended having made, but as the bars were put four inches higher than he ordered, he was foiled in the remaining twelve. He, however, completed the whole undertaking in 85 minutes, being ten minutes less than his stated time, although the day was very sultry. He now talks of trying the tape feat; that is, to wind, while walking, a piece of tape 100 yards long, around a pitchfork handle, one inch and a half in diameter, and placed perpendicularly in the ground. This will, however, depend upon the encouragement he receives.

Moreton Bay Courier, 04 November 1848

One can only hope that no-one encouraged him.

The Pieman (William Francis King) made his way about Moreton Bay in the late 1840s, before returning to Sydney in 1855. In 1860, the publication of “Sydney and its Suburbs” – the work of ‘Peter Possum’ (Richard Rowe) brought the Pieman to the world, as “a wild-eyed man with an ever-working face, a harmless madman with wonderful pedestrian powers.” Upon being told of Possum’s description, the Pieman responded, “I may be a madman, but I was never mad drunk,” referring to Rowe’s frequent arrests for drunkenness. King passed away in August 1873, and remembered as a genuine, gentle eccentric. 

He was the general favourite of the street urchins who gathered round him, and, singular to say, never tormented the poor fellow, whose disposition was so kind and gentle that he was always hailed with pleasure by them.

Darling Downs Gazette and General Advertiser, 27 August 1873