I seem to have been posting since February 2019 (more than five years!), and I can’t help but reflect on some of the stories I’ve come across since I first bit the bullet and began to blog. (Links to the posts are in the title headings.)
The following are my personal “top five” in several categories – stories that have remained with me, sometimes for the horror they depict, sometimes because the human spirit can overcome a lot of hardship.
My Top 5 Crime Stories.
This group of five are the murder stories that still trouble me – the deaths of an eccentric, two young police officers, and three women who lived and died in appalling conditions.
The Murder of a French Hermit at Sandgate.
A Frenchman with an interesting and distinguished past life just wanted to live quietly off the grid in his humpy in the bush at Sandgate. He was brutally murdered – but why?
Poor Nancy McCoy
Nancy McCoy would stand at her fence in the moonlight, waiting until it was safe to go into her house. Her husband was drunk and threatened to kill her. He succeeded.
The Death of Bridget Lynch
Bridget was a victim of society as a whole, not just her partner. She was found dying in her former employer’s garden shed.
The Inside Job
Thomas Griffin was a respectable Gold Commissioner. He murdered two constables to cover up a theft, which was committed to pay for gambling debts.
A Disorderly House, a Fire and a Murder
Celia Black was left to scratch out a living by her husband, who was off looking for work. She found a way to make money, but it may have been the death of her.
Hard Lives
A new life in a new country. The opportunity to start over, and make something of yourself. Two these stories involve men who led isolated, hard-scrabble lives, and eventually succumbed to mental illness and committed acts of violence. One was a rather dotty drunk lady whose life had been quite tough. Another was a whole family who fell into poverty and crime.
A Tale of the Hard Life – William Murray and the killing of Daniel Roberts
William Murray lived a subsistence life for decades, struggling from one labouring job to another. His life seemed to improve when he married, but that, sadly, did not last.
A Strange Man in a Strange Land
A man known to Europeans as Kimboo travelled from China to find a living in a strange country. He encountered poverty and discrimination, became mentally ill and a murderer. He lived out his days in prisons and asylums.
Henry Drummond – from pickpocket to pirate.
A teenaged boy steals a handkerchief in Regency London. Thirteen years later, after an uprising at Norfolk Island, Captain Foster Fyans made Henry Drummond dig his own grave.
The Queen of the Artemisia
Anna Maria Powell had a rather depressing life – not much money, a rocky marriage, and she drank too much. At some point, she decided that she was the ‘Queen of the Artemisia,’ and made life very amusing for Court reporters in Brisbane.
Suffering in Sunshine and Fresh Air
The Lenehan family were an example of what can go wrong for immigrants if employment becomes scarce, and there are only so many ways to bring in money for food.
Incredible Lives
In some cases, these people had succeeded in their new land – the Deans and the Milsteads. Others relied on fraud and bigamy – creating new personas with every new phase in their lives.
The Huguenot and the Chinese Interpreter
Temperance Beauchard and her family left their silk-weaving community in the East End for a new life in Queensland. Charles Dean came from Singapore and worked as a Chinese Interpreter in early Queensland Courts. These two people from vastly different backgrounds defied society’s prejudices and made a life together.
The Milsteads of Dalby
An ambitious man and a widow with property join forces to create a landmark in Dalby.
The Marrying Kind
Annie Clark married freely across three colonies. She went from the scandalous belle of the northern goldfields to a respectably married lady in Sydney. But her romantic tendencies meant that none of these marriages would last.
The Rake’s Progress
A man with all the outward appearance of a gentleman married and conned his way through the eastern colonies of Australia.
The Career of ‘Professor’ Russell in Queensland
From hairdresser to the Marquis of Normandy to brothel lord in Sydney to respectable(-ish) chemist/dentist in Goulburn.
Odd stories
Sometimes things are just peculiar.
Mr Higgins and his Menagerie
Tigers on the loose on the streets of Brisbane! Plus murder, celebrity, and public nuisance.
Public Enemy No. 1
For years, there seemed to be no cure for it. No stopping its spread. It caused so many reasonable people so much frustration.
Public Enemy No. 2
They appeared suddenly, and started disrupting church services and singing rude songs.
Flying Piemen
Pedestrianism. It was a thing.
Rowdyism
There was a concentrated outbreak of this in the 1860s in Rockhampton.
Five people I would like to have met.
Old Trafalgar – to ask what it was like to be press-ganged into the service of the Royal Navy, and fight at the Battle of Trafalgar.
William Wilkes – as the author of the uproarious ‘Windmill Correspondence,’ he’d have some fascinating observations on Old Brisbane Town.
Richard Jones – he had a fascinating life in Old Sydney Town in the 1810s and 1820s, came to Brisbane in the 1840s and became our MP.
David Ballow – the medical man in charge of Brisbane from the late colonial period to 1850. He went on the expedition to find Stapylton, ran the Hospital, and (very probably) knew rather a lot about Lieutenant Gorman and his escapades.
Thomas Dowse “Old Tom” – not just for his recollections of early Brisbane, but to meet a man who could look out of a viewing platform in 1842 Brisbane, and see, not just a shabby one-street town, but a vision of beauty:
I recall now that glorious Sabbath morning the 10th of July 1842-when I mounted, for the first time, the stairs or ladders that reached to the topmost chamber of the building. The whole settlement lay at one’s very feet in the calm repose of early morning; the river, placid and bright as an unstained mirror winding around the valley of the Brisbane, silently, yet with an eloquent silence filling the mind with the beautiful and the good.
How the busy, turmoil township seemed to sink into utter insignificance when contrasted with the calm and quietness of the scene then displayed before us and I feel persuaded that many of my fellow colonists have dated many of their best enjoyments from musings on that hill.
There’s nothing quite like a person who’s alive to his surroundings.
Moreton Bay and More 