The year was 1848 and Brisbane had been a free settlement for less than a decade. Robert Cox had scored a large fortune but he didn’t have long to enjoy it after popping into The Bush inn for a celebratory drink. His remains were found scattered around Kangaroo Point the following day.
William Fyfe, a cook at the inn, was charged with Cox’s murder and executed, despite pleading his innocence. Meanwhile, Patrick Mayne, a butcher from Ireland who was also present on that fateful night, went from rags to riches and became one of the city’s richest men.
Mayne and his offspring splashed a lot of money around the Queensland capital in subsequent years. Among projects they funded were the renovation of St Stephen’s Cathedral, the purchase of land for the University of Queensland, the construction of Wesley Hospital, and the beautiful Brisbane Arcade that still exists today.
The crime that built Brisbane
Was it a guilty conscience? Who knows? But Cox’s murder is widely thought of as ‘the crime that built Brisbane’ and it’s the final story told in a gripping 3-hour Brisbane Bloodshed Walking Tour offered by Fit City Tours.
The company has offered walking, running, and hiking tour tours in Melbourne for some time and has since expanded to Sydney and Brisbane. Its immersive tours aim to highlight the best each city has to offer, focusing on history, culture, and hidden gems.
Our guide, Caelen, has a huge amount of knowledge for his tender years. It helps that he is a university student who is nuts about history, his obsession putting him on the same page as us. As we’re the only ones on the tour, we have his undivided attention and the three hours whizzes by in a frenzy of facts, figures, stories and shared enthusiasm.
I knew about the murder already, having read Rosamond Siemon’s fascinating and controversial book, The Mayne Inheritance, first published in 1997 by the University of Queensland Press. But I’d forgotten some of the finer details and Caelen had interesting snippets to add, like the fact that Mayne’s butcher shop is thought to have been where The Body Shop is now, right near Brisbane Arcade.
A shocked public
But does Brisbane really have a dark underbelly? Does sleepy, laidback Brisbane have gangland killings like you’d expect in Melbourne or Sydney? We were on a mission to find out.
We met Caelen in King George Square, where ex-politician Albert Whitford was shot and killed in 1924, fortunately one of the rare instances in this country where a member of parliament or ex-politician has come to grief like this.
The public was understandably shocked, although it would seem the murderer, James William Laydon, was upset about a perceived infidelity relating to matters of the heart rather than any political motivation.
It’s while standing in the square, metres from where the shooting took place, that Caelen explains how Brisbane has long had a dark side. “This was the worst prison settlement in the Commonwealth – so bad that there were suicide pacts,” he says of the early colonial years.
As we walk uphill towards Wickham Park, he shares some of the sad stories from the early days of contact between indigenous and non-indigenous people.
Looking at Brisbane’s oldest standing structure — The Old Windmill built in 1828 – we hear how a treadmill was installed after it was discovered that the mill got very little wind. The back-breaking task of working the treadmill was naturally assigned to convicts. “Whippings in Queen Street Mall decreased after that,” Caelen says wryly.
Indigenous men hanged
In 1841, two indigenous men, Mullan and Ningavil, were hanged here for the murder of two non-indigenous men who had entered Aboriginal land without permission. It was a statement of colonial authority to say the least – the land around the windmill was one of the biggest indigenous congregation areas.
As we walk down Wickham Terrace, Caelen tells of a shocking event that took place on 1 December 1955 when a German migrant, Karl Kast, went on a murderous rampage in Brisbane’s ‘street of doctors’. Carrying a bag packed with homemade bombs and a handgun, Kast shot two medical professionals dead and injured a third before killing himself.
Turning down Creek Street and past the intersection where one of the biggest riots in Brisbane’s history took place, Caelen recalls the wartime killing of an Australian serviceman at the hands of an American officer. In 2011, then U.S. President Barack Obama issued an apology for the killing.
Passing Customs House, we see the spot where an American soldier was murdered in 1945. An Australian man wearing a grey suit was identified as the suspect and eventually arrested and sent to Goodna Mental Asylum. “Grey suits went out of fashion for about 10 years after that,” says Caelen.
We’re intrigued by a couple of things here, not only that the murderer was wearing a grey suit but that he was a delivery man. Imagine, a delivery man wearing a suit!
Spine-chilling tales
There are other spine-chilling tales as we walk on towards Centenary Park, past the intersection where Aboriginal resistance leader, Dundalli, was arrested. His execution in 1855 was so botched that there were no more public executions after this.
An interesting aside is that the last execution in Queensland was in 1913 at Boggo Road Jail, nine years before capital punishment was outlawed in the State. Queensland was the first jurisdiction in the Commonwealth to abolish the death penalty, and as a born and bred Queenslander, that gives me a measure of comfort as Caelen tells the story of Dundalli’s gruesome execution.
It’s a long walk to Fortitude Valley – it’s not called Fit City Tours for nothing – and we pause to catch our breath near the steps of what was formerly the China Sea Restaurant. Here, Caelen tells the story of the arrest of Jack Karlson which took place on these very steps in 1991.
Karlson spurred the phrase, “succulent Chinese meal”, that has gone into the Australian lexicon. Curiously, television reporters were there to capture the moment of Karlson’s arrest, and his protestations of innocence — “What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?” — have been watched millions of times online and sparked viral memes.
There’s a discussion around the anti-Chinese riots in 1888 that put a stain on Brisbane’s multi-cultural history, and a brush with the underworld as we learn of a shooting at the Osbourne Hotel on Valentine’s Day 1974. Underworld figure Charles “Chicka” Reeves survived the shooting but his luck ran out in Wollongong five years later.
And then there it is. The site of the terrible Whisky Au Go Go night club fire in 1973 which claimed the lives of 15 people – guests, musicians and employees, the youngest a 17-year-old waitress.
Completely rebuilt, the building is now home to a radiology business and the plaque on the footpath marking the event is so small we would have missed it if our guide hadn’t pointed it out. Not a record you want to crow about, but this was the worst mass murder in Queensland’s modern history and the worst in Australia till the Port Arthur massacre in 1976.
While there are plenty of entertaining moments during the Bloodshed tour, we’re acutely aware that these are real stories with real victims. Caelen is an engaging guide yet respectful at all times. The company website notes that the “tour is intended for mature audiences”.
Time for a drink
It’s now time for a drink, which brings us to Howard Smith Wharves where we pull up a chair at the appropriately named Felons brewery. It’s here, looking across the Brisbane River towards Kangaroo Point, that Caelen tells the story of the unfortunate Robert Cox and the man who was hanged, possibly wrongly, for the crime.
In writing this story about the Bloodshed tour, I delved into Trove to read the newspaper account of William Fyfe’s execution. It’s enough to send shivers down my spine. The stories of his and Dundalli’s executions has left me wondering how anyone could support capital punishment.
As much as this fascinating tour has entertained us, it has also left me rattled. And isn’t that what a good walking tour is all about – informing people about the past, showing people an edgier side to a place, helping them see a city through a different lens?
More information about Fit City Tours here.
With thanks to Fit City Tours for hosting Christine and Maurie on the fascinating Brisbane Bloodshed Walking Tour. Other Brisbane tours include the Donuts & Discovery Walking Tour and the Brisbane Uncovered Walking Tour.
