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The End of the Line

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The End of the Line

The End of the Line

The torrid north of Queensland is the natural home of every squalid scamp driven out of the more settled districts of this and neighbouring States. It is a common saying down south that if you want to find anybody who has mysteriously disappeared, search North Queensland.

Brisbane Truth

Percy Le Vaux wrote those lines in 1903.

The Cairns correspondent of the Brisbane Truth remained anonymous at the time. No wonder. Probably to escape lynching. He held the town and its elite in utter contempt. However, the above quote contained an element of truth. Since time immemorial, people wanting or needing a blank slate, fled to the frontiers of the known world.

Over a century later, Cairns locals still shook their heads at the annual influx of southern migrants and remarked, “We’re at the end of the line.”

When the rail line from Brisbane eventually extended to the far north, it ended in Cairns, the end of the line, the final destination for those escaping southern population centres.

However, back in early 1902, Australia’s biggest news story was in Central Queensland, not the Far North. A police constable, station manager, and Aboriginal tracker had set out to arrest two bushranging brothers, Paddy and Jimmy Kenniff. The posse surprised the Kenniffs in their bush camp and managed to apprehend Jimmy but not Paddy. The Aboriginal tracker left to collect their packhorses so they could pursue Paddy. But on his way back, he heard gunfire. Then, the Kenniffs appeared out of the bush, seemingly intent on killing him. He left to find backup, and by the time he returned, no one remained at the campsite — no Kenniffs, no constable, no station manager.

When other police arrived, they found evidence of a gunfight and the burned remains of the police constable and station manager. And so began one of the most extensive manhunts in Australian history. Parties of horsemen scoured central Queensland. Reports of sightings came from around Queensland and even New South Wales.

Police feared Paddy and Jimmy’s family would help them to avoid capture. So, the cops arrested Paddy and Jimmy’s 67-year-old father and their 16 and 19-year-old brothers for horse stealing. Probably a trumped-up charge. The cops locked the trio in Rockhampton Gaol and contrived one excuse after another to continually adjourn their trial until the search for Paddy and Jimmy succeeded.

Then, news broke that a heavily armed Jimmy Kenniff had arrived in Rockhampton intent on breaking his dad and brothers out of jail.

Amazingly, after a few late night drinks, the bushranger divulged his plans to A W Chisholm, sub-editor of the Rockhampton Daily Record. So much for the element of surprise!

Chissy reported that a friend told him customers of a nearby pub had recognised the bushranger in their midst. The journalist raced to the scene and lured Jimmy outside for an interview. Despite his scoop, the journalist then went home to bed, returning to the office the following morning to write his copy for the afternoon paper before finally alerting the police at 9 am. Perhaps he forgot the £1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the Kenniffs.

But within a few days, police arrested a sword swallower for causing alarm by impersonating notorious criminal Jimmy Kenniff. Chisholm was called as a police witness at James Leroy’s trial. The journalist testified that the man he knew as Jimmy Kenniff said he would steal horses from a nearby hotel, then go the gaol and ‘get the old man and two boys out’.

“I told him if he attempted anything of that sort, he would get shot. He said, ‘I can do some shooting myself if it comes to that’. He said he had three revolvers but would not show them to me. I felt his hip pocket and felt something bulging like a revolver. It was not a clear night, and I could not see very well.”

James Leroy’s lawyer was amused. He suggested alternatives. “It might have been a pipe case you felt in his hip pocket?”

“It might have been. He would only let me feel the shape of it from the outside, and I put my hand on it.”

Unsurprisingly, the courtroom continually erupted into laughter. A W Chisholm was exposed as liar, willing to invent fake news to benefit himself. He escaped without a legal penalty but fled to North Queensland to evade the notoriety.

I moved to Cairns myself in 1987. Previously, I ran the drag shows at The Terminus, a gay bar in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley. Why did I move?

Who knows?

I’d been entertaining once, possessed of a wicked tongue and no inhibitions about what I said. Venom dripped from my microphone, and none could doubt the cleverness of my poison barbs. But I outstayed my welcome. I became not so witty as smug. Once clever jibes were replaced with nasty jabs.

I moved to Cairns. No work for drunken drag queens up north, so I pretended to be a straight man for five minutes – long enough to get a job as a crocodile showman. Fuck knows – some people didn’t last much longer in the job.

The murder of Peter Lumberg

The deceased was thought not to have an enemy in the district, while apparently, the crime was not committed for the sake of petty robbery.

Cairns Morning Post

A few weeks ago, accepting that cancer would soon finish him; Peter Lumberg prepared to die. But then, a doctor diagnosed his ailment as indigestion. “You have a few more years in you yet.” At 67, the tombstone could wait, though he’d still like it inscribed, ‘An Old Pioneer’ at that later date. However, Peter Lumberg was denied those few final years. He lies today in an unmarked grave, forgotten – his murder – unpunished.

The assailant raised a knife and plunged it deep into Peter’s throat. The blade skewered downward almost to the heart. Blood sprayed over the murderer and onto nearby bushes. A life-threatening wound but insufficient to quell the attacker’s rage. The knife struck again, punching deep into the flesh. So deep it hit bone. Stab. Stab. And stab again. Three times more, the blade punctured into the neck — all the way — up to the hilt — before slashing randomly at the face. When Peter slumped to the ground, his killer swapped out the knife for a tomahawk and chopped at his victim’s head and neck. The small axe cleaved through the jawbone and severed the tongue. Fourteen vicious wounds in quick succession. An angry, brutal, and efficient homicide.

Blood seeped into the sand. The killer slunk away. The only evidence of the crime: a butchered body, blood splatter on the perpetrator’s face and clothes, and a trail of shoe prints crossing the sandy clearing toward town.

Peter’s body lay undisturbed thoughout Monday night. Then, 10:30 am Tuesday morning Thomas Seaton strode into the clearing, resplendent in his white uniform and helmet. Not a misplaced relic of the British Raj but the Inspector of Nuisances for the Municipality of Cairns. Charged with keeping the town clean, sanitary, and safe, Seaton enjoyed a broad remit. Basically, take care of anything that might cause complaints to the councillors.

The southern outskirts caused the Inspector constant annoyance. Illegal campsites constantly sprung up in the area bordering a vast swamp. Two days before, he led police to a native camp half a mile from where Peter now lay dead, and the constables burned it to the ground. Today, Tuesday, September 5, 1905, Seaton revisited the scene of a previous nuisance. He first visited this clearing a fortnight before in response to a letter in the Cairns Argus newspaper complaining of a putrid odour, a smell so pungent it spooked horses.

“A dead goat, evidently poisoned, has been alongside the road, near the Royal Hotel since Friday, and not only smells high but causes horses to become fractious. This morning, there was nearly a tragedy. Would the Inspector of Nuisances give his immediate attention to it?”

Indeed, the Inspector of Nuisances would. Seaton located the dead billy and hauled its bloated corpse into the nearby swamp. But when people identify an out-of-the-way spot to dump rubbish, they usually return with more. So Seaton came back to check. However, today, he discovered something of far greater consequence.

“I saw a tent and, about 15 or 20 yards distant, what looked like a bundle. I walked over to it and found it was the dead body of a man. The first thing I noticed was a wound on the back of the head, bloodstains on the neckcloth, and blood on the ground. The only sign of a struggle appeared to be a stunted bush knocked down alongside the body. There were slight signs of struggling about the feet.” Not a carcass the Inspector could dispose of in the mud.

Thomas Seaton later equivocated over whether he recognised Peter Lumberg, a man he saw often, a familiar figure around the north and, for a while, one of the more notable town drunks. Peter usually camped out in backyard sheds or under houses. He cut a distinctive figure. A visiting entomologist once mocked him in print as the hypothetical evolutionary stepping stone between humans and apes.

“All skin and bone, his matted beard and hair forming one tangled mass; the last 12 months of dirt accumulated on his hard weather-beaten old face. The very personification of a good old missing link.”

The Inspector never touched the body. People died often enough in this town. He knew the law. So he left for help, crossing the road and heading for Mrs Dunwoodie’s Royal Hotel.

George Dunwoodie saw the Inspector emerge from the bush clearing and stride towards his mother’s pub. Even from 150 yards, he recognised the council official. The Inspector of Nuisances was a bloody nuisance, ranking higher even than police on the scale of pains in a publican’s arse. What would he check today? The kitchen? The pub lavatories?

“Put your hat on and come with me,” Seaton demanded, no ‘hello’ or ‘how’s your mother?’ “I think there’s a man dead.”

The young horse-drawn cab driver did as told. Hat on, he followed the Inspector back from where he came. “That’s old Peter’s camp,” said George. No response.

Peter Lumberg had called at the pub Sunday night. Although strangers, he and Mary Dunwoodie soon discovered they had many old friends in common. People they both knew twenty to thirty years before. Back in the pioneer days. They sat and reminisced for hours. George overheard Peter mention setting up camp over the road near the mango tree, a local landmark. Now, as Seaton led him into the clearing, he saw a tent. Beyond the tent, a cloud of flies swarmed over a body face down in the sand.

“Don’t touch the body, and don’t let anyone near it till I bring the police,” said Seaton.

George recognised the clothes. “That’s old Peter.”

Seaton marched off without a word.

George looked around and noticed footprints. Of the few forensic tools available to police, footprints often proved the most valuable. Convictions sometimes rested on matching a suspect’s footwear to plaster casts taken at the scene of a crime. George noticed two distinct sets of tracks. One matched Peter Lumberg’s hob-nailed boots. The other looked to be left by a dress shoe. About a size six with a pointed toe and small heel. George thought the tracks yielded an important clue. “I noticed a peculiarity as if the sole had worn on the outside of the right boot. You could see the impression in the sand as if the upper of the boot touched the ground.”

That should make solving the crime a breeze. Only toffs wore dress shoes in Cairns. So, identify which of the local knobs had an axe to grind with Peter Lumberg, check out their shoes, and then connect them to the murder weapon.

Good in theory…

Meanwhile, Acting Sergeant McGuire patrolled the streets of Cairns, officer in charge of the district, if only for a day. Both senior officers were absent, the Inspector for weeks and the Sub-Inspector 40 miles away in Mareeba.

At 9 am that morning, Acting Sergeant McGuire received word of a murder. But not Peter Lumberg. A young white woman had shot dead a black immigrant named Charlie Jamaica at Aloomba, 20 miles south. The local constable requested the Government Medical Officer attend for a post-mortem. But Dr Webster’s horse bolted a few days before, overturning and wrecking the new sulky he imported at great expense from the south. A very grumpy Webster refused to perform the post-mortem unless the police provided transport. McGuire booked a cab for the return trip.

Then, as the Acting Sergeant strode through Cairns, news of a second murder. James O’Shea’s horse-drawn cab stopped alongside him. That was bizarre. O’Shea usually turned tail when he saw cops. He was a notorious drunk. Multiple local pubs once refused him service one after the other because of drunkenness. A remarkable achievement in the hard-drinking town. But the pissed and pissed-off O’Shea then attempted to drive his cab home along the tram line in the middle of the night. His horses lost their footing on a rail bridge and plunged over the side, dragging the cab and cab man into Alligator Creek, so named for the large resident crocodiles. James O’Shea clung desperately to a pylon until help arrived.

O’Shea enjoyed wandering off the beaten track. Or at least, off the roadways thoughtfully provided by municipal authorities for equestrian traffic. The Inspector of Nuisances once charged him with driving his cab past the Crown Hotel and through town on the footpaths. But here he was, on a legal thoroughfare and with a passenger: Thomas Seaton, that same Inspector of Nuisances. Seaton reported a dead body in a clearing outside town. McGuire clambered into the cab, and they headed for Sandy Gallop, stopping to conscript Constable Murray from a footpath.

The township of Cairns occupied the coastal strip from the shore of Trinity Inlet to the railway line, a ten-minute walk inland. Beyond the train tracks, Sandy Gallop, an area of sand ridges and swamps with scattered houses, Chinese market gardens, and Dunwoodie’s Royal Hotel. As the cab dashed along Hop Wah Road, Mrs Dunwoodie’s establishment loomed into view, the last licensed premises on the journey south. According to declarations in the newspaper advertising columns, Mrs Dunwoodie dispensed ‘Beer on Tap and all the Leading Brands of Wines and Spirits.’

A tempting offer to be sure, and one which enticed many a passer-by to abandon their scheduled travel. Of course, the policemen and Seaton had only another hundred and fifty yards to journey. Also, they bore far heavier responsibility than most who traversed this road. Upon their shoulders, the burden of defending Cairns from homicide and nuisance. Ahead of them lay the scene of an appalling crime. Nonetheless, it was a warm day, the fifth day of Spring. They stopped for a drink.

Sandy Gallop

Sometimes, I have a bad memory… I prefer to say nothing about police action on that day.

Thomas Lennox Seaton, Inspector of Nuisances.

While he awaited the forces of law and order, George Dunwoodie neither interfered with evidence nor brooked interference. Passing women and children stopped to see what was going on. A local alderman riding into town from his farm stopped to ask the identity of the deceased. But George kept everyone out of the clearing, steadfast in his refusal to allow contamination of the crime scene.

Down the road, McGuire, Murray, Seaton, and O’Shea returned to the cab, fortified by Mrs Dunwoodie’s refreshing beverages. A homicide awaited investigation, so the intrepid crimefighters resumed their journey. This day would afford ample opportunity for boozing. Indeed, the party was just getting started.

Noticing a crowd ahead, Cabman O’Shea discovered a sudden sense of urgency. He urged his horses toward the clearing at speed. Assembled onlookers scattered as the cab veered off the road and dashed towards George before wheeling around and lurching to a halt just short of the body. At sixpence a glass, Mrs Dunwoodie’s whisky was not only refreshing but invigorating. The police sprung out of the chariot and strode to the body, Seaton and O’Shea hot on their heels. George Dunwoodie attempted to draw McGuire’s attention to the tracks they were trampling underfoot. But the Acting Sergeant was a busy man. Officer in charge of the district and a homicide investigator, no less. Like Seaton earlier, he ignored George Dunwoodie.

A horde of flies hummed over the lifeless body. The smell of rotting flesh hung in the air. There was a gruesome wound on the back of the head, blood in the matted hair, on the ragged clothing, and pooled on the surrounding sand. Constable Murray pronounced the bloody obvious, “This man has been murdered.” What a sleuth! A genius of modern policing.

The constable ordered watching women and children to leave. They moved back a little. For a while. George Dunwoodie looked on in horror. “Soon after the police arrived, people walked over the tracks and spoiled them. They walked all around in the vicinity of the body and started pulling bushes apart and searching, so there was no chance of preserving the tracks.”

McGuire rolled the body over and declared it was Peter Lumberg and that life was extinct. He recorded a list of wounds in his notebook. Despite the multiple injuries, McGuire noted only slight evidence of a struggle in the sandy soil and a single uprooted bush lying under the body. Based on the smell and the decomposition, he estimated the time of death as twelve hours earlier, a little before midnight.

Out on Hop Wah Road, Percy Le Vaux strode toward the scene. As the young solicitor passed Dunwoodie’s, he saw the crowd up ahead. Mrs Dunwoodie watched from the pub veranda.

“What’s the matter?” Le Vaux called out.

“Peter’s killed,” she replied.

A cab stopped beside him, and Detective Constable Seymour leaned out, “Is this true about Peter?”

“I just heard that he was killed,” said Le Vaux before Seymour offered him a lift.

Observing the approaching detective and the dapper lawyer, the crowd parted. Although Seymour wore civvies, after six years in Cairns, everyone knew him. Many also recognised Le Vaux even if today he wore his second-best suit instead of the familiar pinstriped favourite. Most local men wore beards; their hair seldom saw a barber, and their clothing inclined to the rustic. Percy’s delicate, unweathered features, carefully-scissored hair, feather-light wisp of a moustache, and urbane suits excited an occasional arched eyebrow. By this time, the throng included men and was within fifteen yards of the body. Seymour pronounced loudly to no one in particular, “No one should have been allowed near here.”

Again, some retreated. Just a little. But most remained. Seymour and Le Vaux scrutinised the body.

“This is terrible,” said Le Vaux, “It’s Peter, alright. Kanakas did this. He had a £5 note on him.” By Kanakas, he meant indentured Pacific Island labourers, brought to Australia, sometimes by force, to work in the cane fields.

Detective Seymour embarked on a search of the camp while Murray checked Peter’s pockets. In the right-hand trouser pocket, he found an empty wallet — no £5 note — and in the left, a pocketknife. Murray also uncovered a broken chunk of false teeth in the blood-soaked sand.

Another cab arrived. This one delivered Le Vaux’s friend Chissy, editor of the Cairns Argus.

“Poor old Peter,” Le Vaux said to Chisholm, “I should never have allowed him to come out here. This is terrible. We were only here on Sunday and I came back last night with Marston Mayers.”

Near the tent, Seymour discovered a tomahawk with blood on both the blade and the handle.

“That is my tomahawk,” said Le Vaux, “I lent it to Peter on Sunday as he told me his own was broken.”

“Was it in that condition when you gave it to him?” asked Seymour.

“No, it was not,” replied Le Vaux, walking away but then immediately returning, “I think Mrs Le Vaux killed some fowls with that tomahawk on Saturday.”

Joining the search, Murray stumbled across the head of a second tomahawk. Another policeman, Constable Twiss, reported for duty.

“When did you last see Peter alive, Mr Le Vaux?” Seymour inquired.

“About three o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Chisholm and I were down here in the forenoon, and I took Peter home to dinner with me. He left my place about three o’clock in the afternoon.”

Chisholm obtained a description of the injuries from McGuire and jotted down his impressions of the campsite. Eager to prepare his article for the afternoon Argus and telegraph news of the atrocity to newspapers around the country, the newspaperman returned to Le Vaux. “Unless you’re wanted here, you might as well come into town with me.” Tom Seaton hitched a ride with them. In the cab, Chisholm remarked, “This must be a violent man’s work, probably a South Sea Islander.”

But after initially suspecting kanakas, Le Vaux had changed his mind. While at the camp, he overheard someone mention a nearby Malay camp, “It might be Malays.”

Acting-Sergeant McGuire left soon after, returning to town to convince young Dr O’Brien to conduct a post-mortem in the absence of Dr Webster.

A labourer named John Treahy called out and asked for a closer look at the body. He was a friend of Murray’s. The constable shook his head but asked his mate to do him a favour. “I suppose it’s near dinner time. I wish you would go and get us some refreshments – I feel hungry.” Out of earshot of the crowd, Murray asked Treahy to go to the pub for grog. When he returned, Treahy sat with Constables Murray and Twiss on a crate ten yards from the body and guzzled Colonial Beer.

Somehow, somewhere, Murray rustled up a sandwich. No rational explanation was ever forthcoming for his snack. Everyone agreed Treahy never bought it at the pub. It simply appeared; one minute, nothing – the next, sandwich. Magic! Murray either left home that morning with a sandwich in his pocket or raided the dead man’s outdoor pantry. Scattered about the camp: tins of peas and sardines, condensed milk, rolled oats, sweet potatoes, and cooked salt beef. A loaf of French bread rested in the fork of the mango tree.

One by one, McGuire, Tom Seaton and Percy Le Vaux returned to Sandy Gallop. McGuire reported Dr O’Brien’s response. The post-mortem would wait until the doctor finished his lunch. It seems all the local doctors were a bit cranky. Meanwhile, Percy Le Vaux took James O’Shea aside and offered to shout a bottle of whisky. It was a hot day, he observed, and the body stank. Perhaps whisky would help? The cabman readily accepted. He was not averse to a drink or three. Even the local crocodiles knew that.

Dr O’Brien arrived at 1.20 pm and made an early diagnosis — at least two of the police, McGuire and Murray — were drunk. However, Percy Le Vaux, despite paying for a bottle of whisky, did not drink himself. He waited for O’Shea to return from the Royal with his change, and then left. O’Shea stashed the bottle in his cab, occasionally offering a swig to some of his new police chums. He’d invented something never before seen in the northern town: the mobile bottle-o. Hot and thirsty and too lazy to walk over to the pub? Let Cabman O’Shea bring the liquid cheer to your murder investigation!

McGuire, however, needed food. He left Murray to assist the doctor in the post-mortem and headed to the pub for lunch. Whether he also enjoyed a liquid refreshment, he never mentioned. Of course, neither George nor his mother said anything. Publicans relied on positive reports from the police and the Inspector of Nuisances to retain their liquor licences. Widowed in 1887, Mary Dunwoodie raised six children while managing a succession of premises, each grander than the last. At times, she suffered setbacks. In Townsville, a business burned to the ground, but Mary persevered. When a daughter died, Mary applied for guardianship of her four grandchildren and reared them. Ever the pragmatist, Mary Dunwoodie knew not to incur the displeasure of the police.

Dr O’Brien probed the wounds, noting their length, breadth, and depth. He concluded the murderer used two weapons, a 2½ inch knife and a tomahawk. From the injuries and blood spray, he assumed the killer fled the site with his hands and clothes covered in blood. Detective Constable Seymour also showed O’Brien the bloodied tomahawk found at the scene and asked if the blood came from a chook. The doctor agreed it did.

Another constable arrived, so on McGuire’s return from lunch, he sent Constable Twiss into town to secure a burial order. As Twiss strolled through town, Percy Le Vaux fell in beside him. Intending yet another return to Sandy Gallop and grumbling about the heat, Percy hailed a cab and offered Twiss a ride. After Twiss acquired the necessary documentation, they visited Henry Svendsen, cabinetmaker and undertaker.

“I suppose you heard about Peter,” said Le Vaux.

“Yes,” said Svendsen, who first met Lumberg decades before in Cooktown.

“I want you to give Peter a first-class funeral,” said Le Vaux, “I also want to get him cleaned and washed. I will send Miles if you have no objection.” George Miles, a drinking mate of Le Vaux’s, was a sign writer and odd-job man. Svendsen agreed to take a coffin to Sandy Gallop later in the afternoon and collect the body.

On the trip back to the camp, Le Vaux said to Twiss, “I am awfully sorry for poor old Peter. He was one of my best friends. It must be blacks that did this as I have lately heard that he was in the habit of following after their g***.”

Le Vaux could easily have just said ‘women’. But denigration of non-whites was socially acceptable, even expected. Racial slurs were stock-standard everyday expressions, sanctioned everywhere from courts of law to the federal houses of parliament.

At the camp, Dr O’Brien requested the police move the body under shade for an autopsy. There in the sand, they stripped Peter naked for dissection. An audience of cops and their mates watched ringside with less favoured onlookers relegated to the cheap seats roadside. O’Brien sliced the body open, and Murray prised the chest wall apart so the doctor could examine the heart and stomach.

Arriving to clean and dress the body, George Miles came bearing a gift — a lemonade bottle full of whisky. “Spare no expense,” Le Vaux said when hiring him, without detailing what expense cleaning the body might entail. The only place to spend money in the vicinity was Mrs Dunwoodie’s increasingly popular hotel.

Constable Murray controlled his nausea during the post-mortem but vomited afterwards. “This will settle your stomach,” promised Miles, offering a dose of medicinal ‘lemonade.’

Murray took a swig of the whisky and threw up again. But Acting Sergeant McGuire was made of sterner stuff. He also partook, though without vomiting.

Faced with the unpleasant task of cleaning the putrid body, Miles offered Seaton payment to assist. The council paid the Inspector a generous wage — £3 a week — but he didn’t mind the odd lucrative side hustle, a cause of some resentment among ratepayers. Tom Seaton had loitered at the scene for hours, aside from his quick trip home for lunch and dashes across the road for nips of whisky. Let the rubbish pile high, and the dunnies overflow. The Inspector was pissed and couldn’t give a shit. On the promise of extra cash, he nipped off for more whisky, which, as Miles later described, the pair of them ‘whacked.’

During a typical working day, Seaton discharged a range of duties designed to allay nuisance. Dirty outhouses, careless horse riders, feral goats, stray dogs, mangy cats, ramshackle brothels: all this and more fell within his remit. At first, the council employed him out of admiration for his youthful service in the British Navy. Later, they continued his contract, impressed by his willingness to do whatever it took. Once, after complaints about the state of the municipal gardens, gunshots rang out across the town from Norman Park. Panicked locals discovered Seaton shooting kids for eating the flowers. Baby goats, that is. Not children. Children usually fled into the upper branches of trees when they saw the Inspector coming. Fortunately, none were harmed by stray bullets despite the military veteran being a notoriously poor shot.

No public official ever cared more about lavatories than Thomas Lennox Seaton, far northern overlord of backyard dunnies. The man was positively anal about shit. He carried a ruler and fined dirty bums for overfull toilet pans. Three inches from the top as per regulation. Not a turd more. He designed a ‘perfect’ toilet pedestal and lobbied to make it compulsory. Yep. He was eccentric. But who wasn’t in Far North Queensland? Even those who arrived sane went a little troppo in the northern heat. Mango Madness, they would call it in the years to come.

Also of Seaton’s design, his uniform, worn to evoke his wartime service. On significant occasions, he adorned it with his service medals, all four. He bragged of his role in the Battle of Ulundi, telling how 25,000 Zulus charged at the bayonets of 8,000 British soldiers and sailors during that legendary engagement, only to die in their thousands, butchered on the British blades. Tom Seaton yarned about joining the navy as a boy and fighting as a 15-year-old in that epic seven-hour hand-to-hand struggle. But today, Tom Seaton seemed less gallant war hero and more drunken sailor.

Besides, not the best time to boast of expertise with bayonets. A mutilated body lay nearby. No suspect yet. However, Seaton and one other person in the vicinity were acknowledged masters of bladed weapons. Tom Seaton and Percy Le Vaux, formerly a captain in the pre-federation Queensland Militia, both previously drilled the Church Lad’s Brigade in the cut and thrust of close combat fighting with cutlass and bayonet.

“Able Seaman Seaton is constantly in attendance and takes evident delight in drilling the youthful brigade,” reported the Morning Post on October 28, 1897.

Then, on February 1, 1899, “Captain Le Vaux has been kind enough to consent to act as an instructor, and every Monday evening, the members of the Church Lads Brigade will be thoroughly drilled for a reasonable length of time.”

Speaking of the lawyer, a hush fell over the sandy clearing when Fanny McDaniel called from the watching crowd, “Mr Le Vaux must have done this.”

A lone voice rebuked her, “My good woman, you shouldn’t say such things.”

After the doctor left, the police searched a little, chatted a little, and drank a lot. Leaving McGuire and Murray at the scene, the other police departed for town duty. When Henry Svendsen arrived with the coffin, the undertaker saw Miles and Seaton were drunk. They offered him ‘lemonade’, which he declined, so they left him with the body and staggered over to the Royal to continue drinking. A right royal piss-up. Meanwhile, McGuire and Murray packed items of evidence into O’Shea’s cab. Then, they abandoned the crime scene to the inquisitive explorations of local sightseers.

Stopping at Dunwoodie’s, McGuire and Murray poured Seaton and Miles into the cab for the short trip to town. The day wasn’t all bad. Mrs Dunwoodie enjoyed an excellent trade. Later, neither Seaton nor Miles could recall how they returned to town. You know it was a bloody good party when you can’t remember how you got home.

The Essence of the Dear Departed

The motive for the terrible deed and the identity of the murderer is shrouded in mystery, but it is to be sincerely hoped that whoever he may be, he will be brought to book and made to suffer for the dastardly crime of murdering an old and inoffensive man.

Morning Post

News buzzed along the footpaths of Cairns faster than James O’Shea’s cab. Chinese whispers leapt from one rumourmonger to the next. Gossips tossed tittle-tattle over back fences, shop assistants dispensed dirty laundry along with change, and drunks argued hearsay in public bars.

On Tuesday morning, as he rode into town, Arthur Keeble noticed George Dunwoodie guarding a dead body. Stopping only long enough to ask the deceased’s identity, he galloped off to the police station. As the alderman tied his horse to the station fence in Abbott Street, former mayor A J Draper strolled by, and Keeble alerted him to the murder. By the time the alderman reported what he’d seen to Detective Constable Seymour, Draper had told someone, who told someone else, who told someone else again. The news took wing.

Minutes later, Percy Le Vaux ambled from his Abbott Street office to a nearby pub for a morning heart starter. But he never had that drink. Tom Strutton waved him down with news. Keeble told Draper who told Strutton who now told Le Vaux, that there was an elderly man dead at Sandy Gallop. “It might be Peter.”

“I hardly think so,” said Le Vaux, “He was in good health on Sunday.”

But Strutton lived near Mrs Dunwoodie’s Royal Hotel, and Draper mentioned a clearing with a mango tree. That sounded like Peter’s campsite. Le Vaux hoofed it for Sandy Gallop.

Then, as Alfred Chisholm strolled along the same street in search of stories for the afternoon paper, Bill Furmedge called out. “Where is Le Vaux? Keeble brought in the news that Peter Lumberg is murdered.”

Chisholm looked for a cab to take him to Peter’s camp. Detective Constable Seymour was already on the way.

Blanche Le Vaux heard from her back neighbour. Young shop assistant Lydia Male hurried home at lunchtime to tell her mum the shocking news. “Peter Lumberg is murdered.”

“I wonder if Mrs Le Vaux knows,” her mother responded. Jane Male went to the fence and called over to Blanche Le Vaux, “Did you hear anything?”

“No.”

“Lydia just told me Peter is murdered.”

“Oh, my God!”

Jane Male later remarked on Blanche Le Vaux’s lack of emotion. “I was crying, but Mrs Le Vaux did not appear much upset. Previous to his death, she often told me that she did not like Peter.”

Indeed, Blanche Le Vaux made no secret of disliking Peter Lumberg.

“I have known Lumberg since I was a child. About 3 years ago, I renewed his acquaintance in Cairns. He came to my house with Mr Le Vaux for meals. I expressed the hope he would not always be at the house on account of his dirty habits. I often asked Mr Le Vaux to tell Peter Lumberg to go, but he told me to do so myself.”

Despite Blanche’s objection, Peter lived in a shed in her backyard from January 1905 until a few days before his death.

Born Niels Peter Lundberg, the Swede abandoned his homeland in his late teens. He told Jane Male his family treated him unkindly. Peter joined the shiploads of young men lured to Australia by gold. They chased the precious metal from one rush to the next. A lucky few struck it rich. Most barely scraped by. But gold fever is a contagion beyond remedy. Young prospectors lived rough. They grew old in one makeshift bushcamp after another, forever sustained by the dream of sudden instant wealth.

Peter followed the gold from New South Wales to Gympie in South East Queensland and finally north to the Palmer River rush of 1873. Almost a hundred years since the British arrived uninvited in Botany Bay, Cape York remained largely untouched by colonisation. Although the northern wilderness teemed with resources, it was too hot, too distant, and too fraught with danger.

But men will travel to the gates of hell for gold. After a promising discovery in a remote northern river that was promptly named for Premier Arthur Palmer, hundreds of men travelled overland to the new Eldorado. En route, they traversed 70 miles of rocky ground, which later proved impassable for bullock drays laden with supplies. The prospectors faced starvation. And things were about to get worse. The rivers would rise during the upcoming wet season and completely shut off access.

Nevertheless, hundreds of men refused to abandon the field. Premier Palmer feared he’d wear the blame for mass casualties. The government hired a steamship to convey men and equipment to the Endeavour River, where they would establish a base and attempt to forge a track inland.

Scores of prospectors joined the voyage, Peter Lumberg among them. They arrived at the Endeavour River on October 25, 1873, and disembarked at the spot where James Cook and his crew lived for seven weeks in 1770 while they repaired their damaged ship. The newcomers paid tribute to the fabled explorer in the name of the canvas township hastily erected on the riverbank, Cook’s Town.

A few days later, a large company of mounted police and miners struck out in the direction of the Palmer River.

“The command left the Endeavour some 108 strong, about 90 of these on foot with swags from 70-pounds to 90-pounds weight — the supposed distance being about 85 miles, we thought we should not overload ourselves.

“After the first day out, we found we had overloaded ourselves, and many a poor fellow had to throw away his clothing in order to keep his flour. In fact, the road was soon lined with clothing, blankets, tents, and flour.

“The road, instead of 85 or 90 miles, turned out to be 160, and most say it is fully 180. Anyhow, it is a hard road to travel.

“We had three brushes with the blacks. Twice they attacked us, and once, the black troopers [native police] had a skirmish with them; but wherever the troopers came across them, they made short work of them. They are a good-looking race of blacks — fine, tall and well-made, many over six feet in height, and a pure copper colour. Miners going this route should not go in less than parties of eight and then well armed with guns or rifles. Revolvers are no use, as the blacks can kill with their spears from 80 yards. They always attack at the break of day, but a good watch must be kept all night. Their war-whoop is the cry of the black cockatoo.”

Charles Jackson made the journey a couple of months later. He wrote to a friend in Sydney that he only lasted three weeks on the field due to the lack of food.

“The day we started to come down, we had to swim the Palmer River. One of my mates drowned trying to do so. But we either swam the river or died of starvation. I undressed and made a swag of my clothes, money, and everything else I owned. About halfway, the current compelled me to let my swag go, and I was carried about one hundred yards before I could land on the other side. I and my mate were left with nothing. I walked 150 miles naked as I was born.”

A former night watchman from New South Wales named Richards wrote home to his family in Gulgong.

“Everyone can get a bit of gold, but not enough to pay the cost of living. Many are starved. I walked back from the Palmer in five days. For the last three, I had nothing to eat and no boots to protect my feet. My clothing consisted of a shirt and hat. My skin was tanned to a chestnut colour. I saw many others naked on the road with only hats to protect their heads.”

Peter Lumberg soon gave up on full-time prospecting and partnered with another former miner carting supplies between the coast and the goldfields. He became friends with shopkeeper Louis Severin, Blanche Le Vaux’s father, one-time mayor of Cooktown and later three-time Mayor of Cairns.

But Cooktown, as it was soon known, enjoyed only a brief heyday and then a slow decline as more convenient routes opened to the hinterland. Louis Severin packed up his business and family and moved to Cairns, the new boom town. Blanche Severin did not see Peter Lumberg again until after her 1902 wedding to Percy Le Vaux. She never understood her husband’s devotion to the old bushie. Following Peter’s murder, others also questioned the relationship. Some had voiced suspicion earlier. In 1904, the Morning Post censured Le Vaux for associating with his social inferiors.

“He takes the wharfie to his bosom, and is not above a filial alliance with some old, drunken reprobate.”

Ouch! Carefully constructed sexual innuendo. A denunciation of rough trade and a touch of ‘Who’s ya daddy?’ (Peter Lumberg was a renowned drunk at the time.) Of course, in years to come, foolish people would deny people of the era ever discussed such things. ‘Oh no. It was a more innocent time, and they meant something totally innocuous.’ Bullshit! Consider a 1903 Morning Post report on council discussions about the difficulty in proving the occupations of women working in suspected brothels. “The occupiers of these places all describe themselves as dressmakers,” said Mayor Severin.

“Trouser hands, I suppose,” interjected Alderman Brown.

Alderman Bulcok proposed a solution. “Alderman McLachlan is a single man, and I move that he sacrifice himself on the altar for the sake of his country.” Yep. Take one for the team. Humour never changed so much after all.

Sub-Inspector Patrick Bowen heard about the murder at Cairns railway station when he arrived back from Mareeba at 6 pm Tuesday night. As he headed for Sandy Gallop, Acting Sergeant McGuire and Constable Murray pulled up in James O’Shea’s cab and reported on the day’s events. Bowen went and checked out the crime scene himself. Wednesday morning, he sent all available officers and black trackers to search the campsites around Sandy Gallop for weapons and bloodied clothing. He said he went to ‘a great deal of trouble’ to investigate the theory that a black man killed Peter Lumberg. Not because of evidence but because of the papers. The Morning Post wasn’t too bad, although the paper’s reporter arrived late at the crime scene and compiled his report from second-hand accounts and conjecture.

“From the appearance of the sandy soil where the body lay, it was apparent that old Peter Lumberg had not succumbed to the assassin without a struggle. The ground was torn up and bushes broken down as if the deceased fought inch by inch for his life before being stabbed to the heart.”

Wrong! Wrong! And wrong again! Those who examined the crime scene observed few signs of struggle, and only a solitary bush suffered damage. Dr O’Brien detected just one tiny cut on the third finger of Peter’s right hand, indicating he offered little resistance.

But although incorrect, the Morning Post article would not cause the police trouble. That would arise from the Cairns Argus article in which Chisholm — who knew better — repeated the ‘desperate struggle’ nonsense.

“From the appearance of the ground, it is evident that a desperate struggle took place before he was killed.”

But worse still, the Argus and papers across Australia repeated as gospel the misinformation provided to them by Alfred Chisholm.

“It is believed the crime was committed by Kanakas.”

Believed by who? One person — Alfred Chisholm. Even Le Vaux moved on to blaming Aboriginals after briefly attributing the murder to Kanakas and then Malays. But in 1905, as White Australia prepared for mass deportations of South Sea Islanders, politicians, unionists and anti-black-labour newspapers relentlessly demonised Kanakas as murderous thugs. Once the narrative of a Kanaka killer took hold, the public was unlikely to accept the arrest of anyone else. Bowen would need to prove that someone else committed the crime and also that a Kanaka did not. So, before beginning an investigation into who killed Peter Lumberg, he set out to prove who did not.

At 11 am, the Sub-Inspector joined Peter Lumberg’s funeral procession from Cairns Hospital to the local cemetery. Town elders chose the McLeod Street site after the tide exposed coffins buried in the original graveyard on the beach. However, they did not select the new location for its suitability as a burial ground. As businessmen with an eye to future profits, they chose it because it was unsuitable for future residential or commercial use. It was on the edge of the swamp. The underground water table rose to within a few feet of the surface. Funeral parties sometimes waited for gravediggers to excavate a fresh plot after mourners watched water fill the original during the ceremony. Undertakers learned to weigh coffins down to stop them from re-emerging from the sand.

After an official report into the health hazard posed by decaying cadavers, aldermen advised nearby residents not to drink water from their underground wells. Otherwise, they risked sipping the essence of the dear departed in their morning cuppa.

The Sub-Inspector made discreet inquiries among the mourners. But all anyone wanted to discuss was the victim’s relationship with his lawyer. On Tuesday afternoon, some town ladies felt an uncustomary urge to visit friends in the neighbourhood of Peter’s camp. Sandy Gallop was the other side of the tracks — the wrong side of the tracks. People hoping to host the upper crust for afternoon tea did not build houses there.

“The salubrity of the locality is evidently not conducive to harmony in neighbourly relationships,” intoned the Morning Post.

The paper probably had in mind incidents like when Tom Strutton’s wife punched a neighbour, pulled her hair and attempted to choke her. In Biddy Strutton’s defence, Betty Johnson did call her a ‘dirty Irish bitch’, a ‘damned slut’ and other disgraceful epithets the Morning Post considered unfit for publication.

But a murder. That changed everything. Jane Male and other townsfolk flocked to visit Biddy Strutton, the widow Collinson, and other residents of the area. At the funeral the following day, they shared the story of Fanny McDaniel’s scandalous denunciation of Le Vaux as the murderer.

Otto Linderman divulged another intriguing anecdote. Busy working on Tuesday afternoon, he never heard about the murder of his friend of 27 years. But that night, he encountered a wasted Marston Mayers at the Federal Hotel. According to Percy Le Vaux, he and Mayers dropped by Peter’s camp late Monday night, making them the last known visitors to the crime scene before the discovery of the body. Otto learned about his old mate’s death when Mayers suddenly blurted, “We are supposed to have killed Peter Lumberg.”

Sub-Inspector Bowen learned much about the murder victim from businessmen who had dealings with him in the months before his death. Looks, they say, can be deceiving. That was certainly true of Peter Lumberg. The grubby old prospector, ‘the missing link’, he of the stained, ragged clothes and matted hair, and according to Blanche Le Vaux, dirty habits, was a wealthy man. Yes, he lived in sheds or bush camps, but the old prospector owned five houses in town, including the one rented by Percy Le Vaux. According to rumour, Le Vaux recently drew up a will for Peter, with himself as executor and Mrs Blanche Le Vaux as beneficiary.

Bowen’s search parties failed to turn up any new evidence during the morning. No weapons. No bloodied clothing. Or leads. Additionally, people who lived near Peter’s camp unanimously agreed they’d seen no ‘coloured people’ hanging about. Crucially, Bowen noted there were no barefoot tracks at the crime scene. That was important. Kanakas and Aboriginals rarely wore footwear. George Dunwoodie insisted he saw no barefoot tracks at the crime scene. Also, Bowen had expressly checked for barefoot tracks himself on Tuesday afternoon.

He later said that despite going to ‘a great deal of trouble’, he found no evidence to indicate a black killer. “I had a Kanaka, up to ten police and four Aboriginal trackers making inquiries and searching the camps. I could find no clue that the murder had been committed by a coloured man.” Bowen pulled Detective Constable Seymour off the search and instructed him to find out what he could about Percy Le Vaux, ‘an intimate friend of the deceased, and continually in his company’.

Thursday was Show Day. Employers gifted their workers a half day off, and most of the town headed for the Show Grounds at the Four-mile on Mulgrave Road near William Cannon’s farm. Percy Le Vaux hired a cab for the occasion. Before leaving for the Four-mile with Chissy, he popped into the police station to check on the investigation’s progress. After he left, Bowen decided to search his home and office. He called out to Detective Constable Seymour. “Le Vaux has just driven away to the Show Grounds; get your horse and bring him back, and I will get a search warrant.”

Seymour caught up with the cab just over the railway lines, and Le Vaux reluctantly agreed to return.

“As Lumberg has been staying at your house,” Bowen told him, “I would like to search your premises for anything in connection with the murder.

“It will cause suspicion,” responded Le Vaux.

“We will do it as quietly as we can. It is a holiday, and there are few people about.”

The lawyer tried one last dodge. “It will spoil my half-holiday.”

At Le Vaux’s house, the police found another bloodied tomahawk and, at his office, an undated will.

Percy

At the time of Percy’s birth, his father worked as headmaster of a small school on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. But when Percy was five, George Victor Le Vaux uprooted his young family and moved them to Australia. He never explained why.

For good reason.

It’s unlikely he would have found work teaching in Australia if authorities knew the Canadians dismissed him from his previous position for an unmentioned but obviously serious transgression.

Le Vaux taught in Sydney for a short while before successfully applying for the job of headmaster at Roma in country Queensland. In later years, he claimed he moved to Queensland at the invitation of Premier Sir Thomas McIlwraith. Notably, he only mentioned that once McIlwraith was dead and unable to disagree. But if the Premier knew Le Vaux and thought so highly of his teaching, why bring him to Queensland only to dump him in the outback?

In fact, newspaper articles indicate a vacancy arose for a principal at Roma. Le Vaux applied, and the local school board selected him for the job as per standard practice.

The new Roma headmaster was a fantasist who dreamed as a child of greatness. He believed “a grand name would advance him in the world.” So young George Vaugh became Mr George Victor Le Vaux. The ambitious lad abandoned England in his late teens. In a family tree he drew up in his later years, Le Vaux claimed that, at 18, he “served in the 5th Cazadons Garabaldine 1860. Present at LaScala, Palermo, Volturno Oct. 3rd 1860.” A condensed version of the same biography claiming service with Garibaldi in the Italian Wars of Unification is inscribed on his tombstone in a Toowoomba cemetery.

A curiously inaccurate curriculum vitae for a man of learning.

During the Wars of Unification, Garibaldi created 5 regiments of mainly Sicilian volunteers, known as the Cacciatori delle Alpi (Hunters of the Alps). Le Vaux’s ‘cazodons’ is probably a garbled version of cazadors, the Spanish word for hunters.

Garibaldi fought no battles at La Scala. It was an opera house, not a battlefield. And the battle of Volturno was well and truly over on October 3rd 1860, having taken place on the 1st. The fat lady had already sung.

Who knows if 18-year-old George Victor Le Vaux ever visited Italy? His biography seems the result of someone unfamiliar with the country, language, and war attempting to cobble together a story from bits and pieces they’d picked up here and there.

Military imposters are not uncommon. Military service can improve a person’s social standing and enhance employment prospects. Thomas Seaton — at the time of our story, Inspector of Nuisances for the Municipality of Cairns — possessed no ID or documented qualifications but scored the job partly because of the impression created by his claimed teenage military service. He went on to lifelong employment with the local council.

After a decade in Roma, Le Vaux senior achieved a promotion. He was appointed the foundation principal of Indooroopilly State School in Brisbane, with young Percy as the new school’s first registered pupil. Le Vaux instituted a Cadet Corps in both schools, similar to the Church Lad’s Brigade in Cairns. Teenage boys underwent basic military training, practising shooting at a rifle range and drilling with short muzzle-loading firearms fitted with bayonet blades.

Percy was his father’s star recruit.

After leaving school, Percy Le Vaux initially worked as a clerk in Brisbane but then articled for his solicitor brother George in Cairns for two years. After a further three years with a Brisbane law firm, he was admitted as a solicitor in 1902. He returned to Cairns to open his first legal practice. His brother had by then moved south.

A few months later, Percy took vows of Holy Matrimony.

“Buggies and cabs crowded round the gate of St John’s Church. The first flutter of excitement caused by the arrival of a principal in the important event shortly to happen — the marriage of Miss Blanche Severin, third daughter of our esteemed townsman, Mr Louis Severin, to Mr Percy Le Vaux, solicitor, and a recent arrival in our town.”

A marriage of convenience for both.

Percy was almost 30. Louis Severin was a successful businessman and politician — and much-liked. His daughters were celebrated local beauties and leading lights of the Cairns social scene. Marrying Blanche was a no-brainer for a man who craved business and political success in the town.

And Blanche had few other options. Beautiful, yes. Also intelligent, an elegant dresser, and an in-demand guest at the better social occasions. But little education and no work experience. The Severin girls were raised to make desirable wives for men of means — and little else. At 26, if Blanche did not take this opportunity, another might not come along.

Besides, she wanted out of her father’s house. Both Louis Severin’s wives died young, probably worn out by frequent childbirth. Blanche’s older sister took on the maternal role in the family and the pair did not get on. Blanche might barely know Percy Le Vaux, but she wanted a home of her own. She had no reason to suspect her new husband might be a serial killer or the like – an axe murderer or a poisoner. She’d take her chances.

After the church ceremony, guests adjourned to the Severin residence for the wedding breakfast. Brabazon Stafford, the local Police Magistrate, gave a speech congratulating the couple and wishing them a life of conjugal bliss. After the wedding feast, guests accompanied the newlyweds down the street to the railway station, where they caught the train to nearby Kuranda for their honeymoon.

But the honeymoon did not last. At least, not the honeymoon between Percy Le Vaux and Police Magistrate Brabazon Stafford. Stafford was a former Sub-Inspector of the Native Police, the near-autonomous Queensland militia charged with policing Aboriginals.

Officially, the force ‘dispersed’ First Nations people suspected of murder, killing stock, thieving or posing any perceived threat to those who now occupied their traditional lands. But ‘dispersed’ was a euphemism. Even newspapers of the day printed the word inside quotation marks. As a correspondent to the Cooktown Courier noted, the orthodox method of dispersal occurred via ‘swift, leaden messengers’ — bullets. Likewise, the Morning Post advised, “the word ‘dispersed’ as applied in some quarters to the blacks, does not convey altogether the same meaning as gathered from Webster’s dictionary.”

The murderous militia conducted widespread, indiscriminate, extrajudicial killings of First Nations people. Crimes, which even Queensland parliamentarians admitted would see other perpetrators hanged. Tens of thousands of First Nations people died during Queensland’s frontier wars.

Stafford and other officers of the Native Police found employment as Police Magistrates upon their retirement. With no legal training and a work history littered with extra-judicial killings, they became heads of the local judiciary in towns across Queensland.

Percy Le Vaux had arrived in Cairns with great expectations. His older brother had moved to the town, become a respected lawyer with a thriving practice and been elected to the Cairns Municipal Council.

However, Percy did not feel the same love. The citizens of Cairns failed to recognise how lucky they were that he deigned to live among them. The young lawyer came to the northern frontier expecting wealth and position to shower down upon him. Instead, he struggled to afford drinking money. And Percy liked a drink!

He blamed a clique of locals for keeping all the prized positions to themselves. He was not entirely wrong. His own father-in-law spent years on council and served three terms as mayor. A J Draper scored 5 terms as mayor of Cairns, was secretary of the neighbouring Barron Divisional Board, on the Stock Exchange, the hospital board and much more. Lawyer A J P MacDonnell had all the best clients tied up.

Frustrated by his lack of early advancement in the northern town, Percy Le Vaux began to identify the powers-that-be who he believed held him back. Among them, Brabazon Stafford, who frequently found against Percy’s clients. Of course, most of Percy’s clients were no-hopers, crims and drunks, but what did that matter?

Peter Lumberg was one of them—for a time, a notorious drunk and no stranger to the lock-up. On one occasion, Percy represented Peter in an action against Constable Baulch, whom Peter accused of stealing his gold watch and chain while Peter was in the cells. They lost the case. However, soon after Baulch was convicted of corrupt activity and dismissed from the force.

That was the problem with Cairns. Nothing was black and white. Well, other than the colour of your skin.

By September 1902, Percy Le Vaux realised he was unlikely to achieve his ambitions in Cairns by playing nice.

He began his campaign against the ruling clique in the police court, sparring with Brabazon Stafford, a pompous and thin-skinned man, unable to let any perceived slight pass him by.

Le Vaux accused Stafford of favouring the local establishment in his rulings.

The bickering between the pair found its way into the letters column of the Brisbane Truth where a correspondent shared Percy’s disdain for the old Sub-Inspector.

“Brabazon Stafford sits on our judicial bench administering justice in a way that would make your blood turn cold. He is very friendly with a local legal practitioner. During the course of a case, this legal light can do no wrong, and he wins most of his cases.

“Lately, however, the beak has had two or three set backs. Le Vaux, a rising young solicitor, has been taking him by the wool.

“It is high time the Queensland Government sacked some of these old fossils who now sit as judges of law. Magistrate Stafford has been here too long. He wants shifting.”

The Brisbane Truth itself then mounted a campaign against Stafford, eventually exposing the indiscretion that dislodged Brabazon Stafford from his prized sinecure in Cairns.

“He is living apart from his family as a bachelor, occupying rooms in the courthouse — one as a sitting room and another as a bedroom. It is extraordinary that a courthouse should be used for such a purpose. The public, having any business with the court, is greatly inconvenienced by Stafford occupying these rooms, and witnesses have to wait in the yard under the boiling sun or tropical rains without any protection whatsoever.

“There is no doubt that there are some queer people in Cairns, and some of them have most dreadful pedigrees.”

Stafford found himself compelled to apply for a transfer. No one cared much that the Police Magistrate made improper use of the government building. What public official didn’t have their snout in the government trough?

But Stafford had lost control of his home to the extent that when his marriage broke down, he moved out of the house, not his wife. Who could trust the magisterial decisions of a man who didn’t even wear the pants in his own home?

The local correspondent for the Brisbane Truth threw his voice behind Le Vaux.

“The clique will endeavour, we suppose, to get rid of young Le Vaux, a lawyer who gives them a terrible lot of annoyance, but we are afraid Le Vaux is too clever for them.

“He is a young man with plenty of ambition, knowledge, and perseverance, which makes it hard for the audacious clique to down him.”

In 1904, Percy Le Vaux raised the stakes. He stood in the state election as the Labor candidate for Cook, the electorate north of Cairns.

Cook always voted Labor, and Percy had the support of Peter Lumberg, a revered pioneer of the mining district. The ever-faithful Brisbane Truth also backed Le Vaux for the seat.

Not that anyone thought he needed help. The Labor candidate was a shoo-in. Cook electors would vote for no other candidate.

Except…

…they did!

Trying to foist a stranger from down south onto the electorate proved a fatal error for Labor. Percy lost the election by two votes.

Only two votes came between Percy Le Vaux and a seat in the Queensland Parliament!

But perhaps a few voters began to wonder what they should believe about the candidate.

Including what they read in the paper.

Because in 1904, the Morning Post exposed why the Brisbane Truth unfailingly supported Percy Le Vaux and automatically echoed his thoughts.

The Cairns correspondent of the Brisbane Truth, the writer who praised Percy Le Vaux for his “ambition, knowledge and perseverance” and championed the lawyer at every turn, was…

drum roll, please…

Percy Le Vaux!

As 1905 rolled around, Percy le Vaux needed to try something new. He hit the local pubs most nights with his drinking mates, including his ‘most intimate friend’, Peter Lumberg.

They made an odd couple, the unkempt old prospector and the urbane young lawyer.

But 1905 was not a good year to be a friend or relative of Percy Le Vaux.

The year began with the unexpected death of his wife, Blanche’s 54-year-old father. Dr O’Brien attributed the death to bronchopneumonia and heart failure.

Louis Severin left no will. His oldest daughter, Pauline, acted as executor of his estate and, after sufficient pestering from Percy, gave Blanche £300. Percy banked the money for Blanche, who then fell seriously ill with an undiagnosed complaint.

“In March, my husband drew up a will for me by which I left everything to him. I was very ill at the time. My father had put some property in my name.”

Blanche went to Townsville for treatment by Dr. Bacot, North Queensland’s most respected doctor. After Townsville, she travelled to Mareeba and spent a fortnight in hospital under Dr. Savage, whom she’d known as a child in Cooktown.

Peter was struck down with a mysterious ailment around the same time. He was living in a shed in the yard of one of his houses. He got better for a while but then fell ill again.

He diagnosed his own complaint. Terminal cancer. He paid Nurse Stephens to call regularly and Dr O’Brien also made occasional shed calls.

Neither disputed the old man’s self-diagnosis. Everyone waited for the illness to run its course. Dr O’Brien and Nurse Stephens suggested he move to the hospital. However, Peter thought if he went into hospital, he might never come out.

But wanting a greater degree of comfort, he moved into the Le Vaux house. That pissed off Blanche Le Vaux.

“Lumberg came to stay in a room on the ground floor of my house. The nurse told me Peter was downstairs, and he was pretty bad. I said to her, ‘We can never get rid of old Peter. I won’t have him dying in my house’.”

Blanche asked Nurse Stephens to tell Peter to leave.

The old man did as he was told. Though first, at Percy’s encouragement, he made a will. And what a will! He left everything to the woman who just evicted him from his own house.

Despite Blanche and Peter both being ill, Percy Le Vaux then went tripping around the electorate of Cook, smooth-talking the old miners in plenty of time for the next election.

Peter began to feel better. In fact, a pattern emerged. No one noticed at the time—particularly the one man who should have—Dr O’Brien. Peter and Blanche both suffered downturns in their health when Le Vaux was home but then recovered during his absences.

Peter eventually gave up on Dr O’Brien. He headed for Townsville and sought a second opinion from Dr Bacot. No cancer, said Bacot, just indigestion. And just like that, the dying man recovered.

With his health recovered, Peter moved back to a downstairs room at the Le Vaux house.

Meanwhile, Percy Le Vaux’s life was a constant whirl of travel, drink and argument. Undeterred by his loss in the 1904 election, he travelled to towns around the north, publicising his likely candidacy in future polls. He drank seven days a week, often with Peter Lumberg, Alfred Chisholm and Marston Mayers. Peter usually stuck to shandies these days, but he still enjoyed the conviviality of the local pubs.

Percy argued with anyone and everyone, sometimes obviously drunk in court. Then came the murder of his best friend.

The Courts of Law

On Friday, September 8, 1905, a magisterial inquiry opened into the death of Peter Lumberg.

Acting Sergeant McGuire testified first. He listed the wounds observed on the body and estimated the time of death as about 12 hours before he first saw the body, around midnight the night before.

However, the next witness begged to differ. Dr O’Brien gave the time of death as at least 24 hours before his examination, sometime before 1 pm Monday.

O’Brien’s estimated time of death conflicted not only with Acting Sergeant McGuire’s estimate but with evidence Dr Webster later gave regarding the death of Charlie Jamaica at Aloomba on the same date. Charlie was 36, almost half Peter Lumberg’s age. Dr Webster noted that he enjoyed good health. Charlie’s body was less exposed to the elements than Peter’s, lying not in a swamp but under a shop veranda. Webster noted rigor mortis and estimated the time of death as 12 hours before, which corresponded with witness testimony of the time of the shooting.

Rigor mortis can occur as soon as four hours after death and begins to pass within hours. It occurs more quickly in hotter temperatures, in older people and after violent deaths. Doctors knew this in 1905. Well, most did. It seems Dr O’Brien never read Post Mortem Examinations with Especial Reference to Medico-Legal Practice by Professor Rudolph Virchow, the father of modern pathology. A shame. There was at least one copy in Cairns. Louis Severin, whose death certificate O’Brien signed in January, owned a copy.

Richard Alfred O’Brien graduated from Melbourne University in 1902 and arrived in Cairns in 1904 as the youthful protégé of Queensland’s first Commissioner for Public Health, the highly regarded Dr Ham. After that first visit, O’Brien resigned his government position and returned to Cairns in 1905 to take up private practice.

At 27, he was young. The Morning Post called him ‘a very young man indeed’, and the paper did not intend that as a compliment. In his time in Cairns, Dr O’Brien, who would go on to become an internationally renowned bacteriologist, proved a self-assured young man who did not take kindly to criticism or disagreement. The good doctor went for the throat of anyone who questioned his judgment, whether a patient, the local Ambulance Brigade or even the Cairns Municipal Council.

He also misled the inquiry on the subject of the blood on Le Vaux’s tomahawk found at the crime scene. When Detective Constable Seymour asked O’Brien if the blood came from a chook, he agreed it did. But he can’t have known. It takes more than a glance to differentiate between human and poultry blood. An examination with a microscope will offer some certainty. O’Brien boasted of owning the first microscope in Cairns, but he didn’t take it to the swamp that day. Nor did he use it to examine the suspected murder weapons in subsequent weeks, convinced of the accuracy of his original judgments.

Percy Le Vaux took the stand aware that he was a suspect.

All good.

He had an alibi.

But the wrong alibi, as it would turn out.

Percy based his defence on Acting Sergeant McGuire’s estimated time of death – around midnight on Monday.

Although he usually slept in a separate room, he told the inquiry that on Monday night, he slept with his wife.

However, McGuire’s estimated time of death had been superseded by O’Brien’s, and it was now accepted the murder occurred before 1 pm Monday.

However, Percy remembered very little of Monday before going to bed with his wife that night.

The magistrate and Sub-Inspector Bowen pressed him to account for his whereabouts during the day.

Then, it was lunchtime. Percy returned to his office He spoke to his clerk and examined his paperwork, and when he focused, remembered his movements on the day in detail.

He left home at 8.30 am Monday morning and saw a client in his office until 10 am when he popped down to the Strand Hotel to quench his thirst with a whisky. Still a little parched, he stopped at the Mining Exchange Hotel on his way back to the office.

After squeezing in an hour’s work, he revisited the Mining Exchange before popping into the Federal and then the Court House Hotels for yet more refreshing beverages. He headed home for lunch from 1.30 pm till 2.30 pm.

On his return, he slaved diligently over book-work for an exhausting hour and a half, before accompanying a friend for another invigorating brew at the Mining Exchange, and thence home for dinner at 6 pm.

After dinner, he tottered off to the Club House Hotel, before heading with a different friend to the Crown, from whence they decided to visit Lumberg at his camp. Not finding him there, they stopped off at Mrs Dunwoodies nearby Royal Hotel. Admirably, after leaving there, they walked straight by the Queen’s Hotel without stopping, but their willpower deserted them when they reached the Crown. Their thirst still unsated after a couple of drinks there, they moved on to the Club House for their final nightcap.

Percy obviously understood the need to remain hydrated in the topics.

Days went by slowly in the tropical courthouse.

Sub-Inspector Bowen ignored that Percy had alibis the the presumed time of death and focused on a giant search for the presumed murder weapons. His men searched shops, camps, domestic kitchens and workplaces to tomahawks and knives. Kitchen knives, tobacco knives, pocket knives and fishing knives: the police attempted to account for every bladed weapon in Cairns.

Sub-Inspector Bowen asked about Percy’s black tweed suit with white stripes. It was the lawyer’s best suit and most commonly worn, until the days after the murder.

Percy explained that on the Thursday before the murder, he came to blows in the street with Lionel Draper, the husband of Blanche’s unloved sister Pauline. He suffered a nosebleed, and Blanche, who usually paid to have her laundry done, washed and pressed the suit herself to remove the blood.

Le Vaux was walking with Peter Lumberg at the time of the fight. A neighbour testified that later that night, the pair argued, apparently over Le Vaux’s temper. Le Vaux denied the neighbour’s testimony that he screamed abuse at his elderly landlord, including, “You God Damned old scoundrel, I’ll screw your neck.”

Nevertheless, the next morning, Peter moved many of his possessions from under Le Vaux’s house to the bush camp across the road from Mrs Dunwoodie’s Royal Hotel.

On Monday night, while drinking at the Crown Hotel, Le Vaux and Marston Mayers saw an article in the Charters Towers Telegraph about Le Vaux’s recent visit to the town. The article mentioned Peter and the pair decided to take the paper to the camp of the barely literate miner.

Not finding him in the tent, they left the paper on Peter’s bed in the tent and went over the road for a drink at the Royal.

Percy took advantage of his time in the dock to sing the praises of his dead friend and assure onlookers of their steadfast friendship.

“Deceased was the most intimate friend I had in Cairns, and he was a man who thought a good deal of me. He had a great liking for me and there was hardly a day when he was in Cairns passed that he did not call on me or inquire after me. He always looked upon my place as a home.

“When he was up the country, and heard of my standing for the Cook Electorate, he came down at his own expense and went with me to the Cook in order to influence the old miners in my favour.

“He always consulted me before he did any business. He had also a great regard for Mrs Le Vaux and had known her since she was a baby. When I spoke to him about the arrears of rent deceased said he would not charge rent. The house is Mrs Le Vaux’s, and as he made it his home, he did not see why he should charge any rent. He did not want to charge me at all. I have no knowledge of Lumberg ever having an enemy. He was an inoffensive old man. He was very stubborn when once he took an idea into his head. I never heard him say he was afraid of anyone. He was fond of roving about.”

The inquiry continued for a few days with witnesses testifying that Peter spoke discreetly of wanting to cut his lawyer and ‘most intimate friend’ from his life.

“I am full up of it. Le Vaux is no good. I wish I had nothing to do with him,” he told a night watchman a few weeks before his death. On the Friday before his death: “I am being humbugged by Le Vaux. I wish I had nothing to do with the bloody thing.”

Then, as Le Vaux left the inquiry one afternoon, First-class Constable Seymour stepped in front of him.

“From instructions received from Sub-Inspector Bowen, I arrest you for the wilful murder of Peter Lumberg.”

“Good gracious!” said Le Vaux, trembling and tears welling in his eyes.

“This is the cruellest thing that has ever happened to me. I am as innocent as anyone can be. It is awful. Good gracious!

Percy Le Vaux was the only person with motive to kill Peter Lumberg. The lawyer was broke, but the old man’s will made him his executor and his wife Blanche the beneficiary.

Witnesses testified to frequent arguments between Percy and Peter of late, the last one the night before Peter moved away from Le Vaux’s and allegedly after Percy was heard making threats to the old man.

Add to that, Percy’s blood-covered tomahawk found at the murder scene, and Percy’s suit having recently had blood on it.

But there was one great big giant piece of evidence Sub-Inspector Bowen could not overcome.

Dr O’Brien insisted the murder happened before 1 pm Monday afternoon, and Percy had numerous alibis for that morning.

A more experienced prosecutor might have argued O’Brien’s evidence. Even a police magistrate might be expected to note the inconsistencies with other violent deaths in the area.

Percy’s lawyer, previously his deadly enemy AJP MacDonnell, might have said something, but as MacDonnell would make clear down the track, he’d been hired to clear Le Vaux, and that was the job he would do.

And young Dr O’Brien previously made it clear he would brook no disagreement.

One strong-headed person can wield immense influence in a small community.

And so, the trial of Percy Le Vaux for the murder of Peter Lumberg meandered through the Cairns Swamp until it finally bogged down in the muck, and locals started to feel some sympathy for the alleged murderer.

Of course, Percy’s drinking buddy, Alfred Chisholm, at the Cairns Argus, supplied copy to papers all around Australia. Alfred proclaimed Percy’s innocence loudly from one end of the country to the other.

2015

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should be aware that this website may contain records and online resources of images, voices or names of deceased persons in photographs, film, audio recordings or print materials.

Some material may contain terms that reflect author’s views, or those of the period in which the item was written or recorded, but may not be considered appropriate today and cause offence.

These views are not necessarily the views of QNews. While the information may not reflect current understanding, it is provided in a historical context.

I still lived in Cairns in 2015 but long since gave up wildlife shows to manage nightclubs and work as a trans whore.

Advances in technology allowed me to indulge my obsessive interests in colonial history and true crime. The digitisation of old newspapers revealed previously hidden information. I took a particular interest in a 1905 murder.

A good-looking young lawyer was charged with the murder of his ‘most intimate friend’, a grubby old miner. Newspaper articles and police reports made no mention of a sexual relationship, but I’d become a cynical old bitch.

I particularly could not understand why the local police inspector had gone out of his way to get the case against the lawyer dismissed. He’d enjoyed long renown for his prosecutorial abilities.

Hubert Durham had been away when the murder occurred but took over the prosecution the moment he returned. After managing to have charges against Percy overturned, he announced the arrest of the ‘the real killer’.

But why would the distinguished policeman frame Tommy for the murder?

I could only think of blackmail. Durham needed to get the charges against Le Vaux dismissed and that meant Le Vaux must have someone on him.

Research revealed that as a young officer in a British regiment, Durham suddenly resigned and moved to Queensland, cutting off contact with his parents.

Tall, athletic and good-looking, Hubert Durham became a legendary Queensland sportsman. He was a leading player on the Queensland rugby team that first won an inter-colonial match against NSW in 1886. A decade later, as Treasurer of Queensland Rugby, he was instrumental in introducing maroon as the team colour.

He joined the Queensland Police. At first, he lived in a hotel in Brisbane’s George St. However, after another British cop at the same hotel died, leaving everything to Hubert, he moved to the new Hotel Excalibur (Orient Hotel). He ended up marrying the publican’s daughter, Mary Morse. He also enjoyed a close relationship with her brother ‘pretty Willie Morse with his golden curls’.

Tommie Tomahawk

A lot of evidence pointed at Tommie Tomahawk as Peter Lumberg’s killer.

Well, he has black anyway. That was a start. His name suggested savagery. Indeed, it even echoed the name of the main murder weapon. Tommy had a reputation for killing. When the papers first suggested him as ‘the real killer’, he was rumoured to have murdered a local woman. Within weeks, gossip linked him to six killings. Locals recalled his involvement in the murder of Hobson at Kuranda in 1890. It seems no one remembered that the three men who killed Hobson were prosecuted and imprisoned for the crime. Or stopped to think that Tommy was only 10 or 11 in 1890.

It was all bullshit. As Protector of Aborigines in North Queensland, Inspector Durham could detain Tommy without reason. He did that. He sent Constable Portley to the Barron River where he found Tommy sitting naked outside his hut as the sun came up. Portley told the court Tommy was a notorious Cairns criminal yet the cop himself needed to hire a 14-year-old neighbourhood lad to identify Tommy for him.

Durham kept Tommy in the lockup for weeks until he placed him before the court, claiming he’d confessed to the murder.

But then rumour spread of the police verballing the killer.

2022

In 2022, I was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. I felt this story was important to tell, but it’s complicated and hard to distil into a nice, simple read.

I’ve worked on summarising the most complicated bits and explaining what Hubert Durham did to out himself as gay.

But first, Constable Fitzpatrick.

Constable Fitzpatrick’s Report

Sir,

I beg to report that on 6th September last, I proceeded to Cairns to assist in investigating the murder of Niels Peter Lumberg.

I arrived at Cairns on 7th September at 2.30 pm and reported myself to Sub-Inspector Bowen, who instructed me to remain in the Inspector’s Office, out of sight, as he might require me for shadowing purposes on that night.

Under instructions from Sub-Inspector Bowen, I shadowed Le Vaux that night and followed him to his house but was unable to hear any conversation that passed between Le Vaux and others.

At 10 am on 8th September, an inquiry was opened at the police court in connection with the death of Peter Lumberg. I visited the scene of the murder at 9 am on that date and saw a quantity of clothes and cooking utensils near Lumberg’s campfire. I took possession of a table knife which I found between the campfire and where the body was found, and I handed that knife to Sub-Inspector Bowen.

I interviewed a young man named George Dunwoodie (son of the licensee of the Royal Hotel) which is situated about 150 yards from the scene of the murder, and he informed me that a man named Seaton discovered the body about 11 am on 5th September and Seaton asked him to remain near the body while he went to town to inform the police. Dunwoodie then looked about carefully for tracks, and noticed a boot track, about size six, with a sharp toe and a small heel, leading from the body, and he says he followed this track passing between the tent and a large packing case, and along a beaten track into the brushwood.

He also saw tracks of a hob-nailed boot near the camp, and no doubt those impressions were made by the hob nailed boots worn by Lumberg.

Dunwoodie protected the tracks and did not allow anyone to go near the scene until Acting-Sergeant McGuire, Constable Murray, and Seaton arrived in a cab driven by a man named O’Shea and he says the cabman drove his horses close to the body and wheeled around within a few feet from the body. Acting-Sergeant McGuire and Constable Murray then turned the body over and searched it. Dunwoodie says there were no signs of a struggle about where the body was lying, and he did not see any signs of barefoot tracks but he pointed out the boot tracks to Acting-Sergeant McGuire.

A man named Trehy then brought two bottles of beer and some of the police then drank the beer. A number of people congregated and walked over the ground and obliterated the tracks. Constable Seymour then arrived in a cab with Le Vaux.

Sometime later, O’Shea the cabman went at the instigation of Le Vaux to the Royal Hotel and procured a bottle of whisky and Dunwoodie informed me that the police in uniform were literally intoxicated before the doctor arrived to hold a post mortem examination. No precautions were taken to protect the ground or the tracks.

I saw an empty whisky bottle and several empty beer bottles about eight yards distant from where the body was found, and no doubt those were the bottles brought there by Trehy and O’Shea.

I informed Inspector Durham of what I had heard about the actions of the police at the scene of the murder, and also about the liquor being brought there, and by whom.

On 19th September Sub-Inspector Bowen instructed Constable Seymour to arrest Percy William Le Vaux, and charge him with the wilful murder of Peter Lumberg, and the arrest was made a 12.30 pm that day.

I then went with Sub-Inspector Bowen, Constable Seymour and prisoner Le Vaux to his office and there searched and found a pencil copy and an ink copy (of the undated will signed by Lumberg.)

Constable Seymour took possession of these documents and other articles.

On 20th September, Le Vaux appeared before the court and Sub-Inspector Bowen conducted the prosecution. The court was then adjourned until the following day, when Inspector Durham arrived and took over charge of the case.

On 22nd September, I went to Le Vaux’s house with Constable Seymour, Constable Chilton and two Aboriginals and made a proper search of the whole premises. I found in a small box in Le Vaux’s house a codicil of Lumberg’s former will, not signed. Constable Seymour took possession of this document and handed it to inspector Durham.

That codicil (or copy of a codicil) was not produced in the case Rex vs Le Vaux, although I think it was material in corroborating the evidence of Mr Lannoy, and would go to show that Le Vaux was untruthful when he said on oath that he never knew of a former will.

Inspector Durham informed me about this time that he had taken statements from Acting-Sergeant McGuire and Constable Murray in reference to the searching of the body and the knife found in the trousers pocket, and that their statements were contradictory and untruthful, and he advised me to keep a diary of my work each day for my own protection and I did so.

On 27th September when Le Vaux appeared before the court, his depositions at the inquiry were tendered but not admitted, and Inspector Durham then closed the case, and Le Vaux was discharged.

On 30th September, I went with Constable Seymour and he took possession of a bottle of Fellows Syrup which was found amongst Lumberg’s effects in an outhouse at Mr Lyon’s residence, and handed it over to Inspector Durham and suggested that the bottle and contents be sent to Brisbane with Acting-Sergeant McGuire who was leaving that day with other exhibits for examination, but the bottle was not sent to Brisbane.

I then informed the Inspector that I had heard Mrs Le Vaux was suffering from the effects of poison when she was at Mareeba Hospital and asked him to have inquiries made. On 14th October, Inspector Durham informed me that he had received a memo to the effect that Dr Savage had informed him that Mrs Le Vaux was suffering from arsenical poisoning when he attended her at the Mareeba Hospital.

On 3rd October, Inspector Durham informed me that he had an Aboriginal named Tommy Tomahawk in custody, but he did not think there was any evidence against him, as the gins statements were conflicting and unreliable, but he had made arrangements to detain Tommy and have him sent to Fraser’s island.

At 2 pm on 4th October, I was present with Constable Seymour at the police office when Inspector Durham questioned Tommy and he denied all knowledge of the murder, and stated that he had not been at Cairns for two months prior to the murder.

After questioning the Aboriginal, Inspector Durham then said to him, “Now Tommy suppose you kill old man Peter, how you kill him! You hit him long a head with tomahawk and then stab him long a neck with a knife.”

At the same time, the Inspector illustrated how the wounds were inflicted on Lumberg, but Tommy made no reply to the Inspector.

On 5th October, I was present when Inspector Durham questioned two blackfellows who had been locked in the cell with Tommy and they stated that Tommy told them nothing about the murder and that Tommy said he was not in Cairns when the murder was committed.

On 13th October, Inspector Durham said to me, “This boy Tommy has confessed in a sort of way. He says he and another boy killed the old man, and I have the tomahawk that he says he killed him with.”

The Inspector then said he could not tell me anything further but he would let me know in a day or two. On October 14th, I left Cairns under instructions from Inspector Durham and proceeded to Townsville with Lumberg’s will which I handed to the Registrar at the Supreme Court. I also took with me the bottle containing Fellows Syrup which I showed to Dr Bacot, and he informed me that there was some foreign matter in the Syrup, and that it would be necessary to have it analysed.

I returned to Cairns on 19th October and handed the bottle back to Inspector Durham with a report of the result of my inquiries at Townsville.

Inspector Durham then informed me that he had another aboriginal locked up, and that the men were out after another one and if he got him, he might get something worthwhile. I was informed by Constable Portley that he and Constable Fitzgibbon took Tommy out of the gaol into the bush on the night of 11th October and that he confessed while out in the bush. I was also informed by Inspector Durham that the confession was obtained out in the bush at night time.

On 21st October, I was informed by Constable Portley that he had another blackfellow chained up out in the bush, and that this blackfellow denied all knowledge of the murder and said he was not with Tommy and knew nothing about Peter Lumberg. I asked Constable Portley if he had found any knife or other weapon, and he said he had not.

On 23rd October, Inspector Durham informed me that he had the other blackfellow in the lockup, and that Tommy had identified him as the boy who was with him, but the second blackfellow denied all knowledge of the murder.

The Inspector also informed me that he had had Tommy out to the scene of the murder several times to describe how the deed was done.

I said to the Inspector, “How do you account for the fact that there were no signs of a struggle, and no barefoot tracks to be seen!” and he replied, “The bungle at the start and the ground being trampled would account for that.”

On 25th October, I returned to Townsville under instruction from Inspector Durham.

The extraordinary circumstance in connection with the actions and movements of Percy William Le Vaux prior to the murder will be seen in the statements taken from reliable witnesses in Cairns.

In connection with the confession of Tommy Tomahawk the proceedings taken were not done in my presence, and I was not acquainted of the fact until two days after the alleged confession was obtained.

The circumstances are so very strange that I feel it is my duty to report to you.

Dr Savage states that Mrs Le Vaux was suffering from arsenic poison, but that he could not give any further information, unless there was a criminal charge against some person.

He states that when he heard of the murder, he formed his own conclusions about Mrs Le Vaux but was not prepared to disclose anything further at the present stage.

He also says that Lumberg approached him some time after Mrs Le Vaux was in the hospital, and was anxious to know what was the matter with her, and he told Lumberg to ask Mrs Le Vaux about the matter.

Hubert Durham

So Percy Le Le Vaux murdered Peter Lumberg after first trying to poison Peter and Blanche.

And Inspector Durham knew.

Other police divulged that Blanche Le Vaux sometimes fled to Durhah’s house in the middle of the night to escape domestic violence. Mrs Durham would comfort her while Hubert went over to Le Vaux’s house and calmed him down.

The Commissioner held a sham inquiry, carefully designed to expose nothing.

At the end of it, Durham and a few other cops were demoted and transferred. Tommy was again forcibly relocated without criminal charge. However, of all the people in this story, only he had a future in the Police. Proud of my First Nations Neice and Nephew and of my cousins, I regret not having time to tell his story better, but Tommy Tomahawk ended up a policeman on a black mission in Central Queensland.

West of the Great Divide

HUGHENDEN: Great heat has been experienced. Rain has fallen but not heavy enough to do much good. Herbage has perished. Sheep have fallen off in condition, but cattle are holding their own. Tick fever has broken out. There are no crops.

Darling Downs Gazette

Thursday, November 22, 1906.

Some claimed God never crossed west of the Great Dividing Range, but God had a choice, not so Hubert Durham, cast out to flyblown Hughenden.

The Sub-Inspector and Mrs Durham arrived at a barren landscape dusted in thirsty hues of brown; the parched dirt cracked for want of rain. Occasional gum trees offered only meagre shade, so sheep and cattle slumped amid tufts of dead grass. Dogs panted, and the native wildlife remained hidden from both sun and view. Overhead, crows drifted in lazy circles. The approach of thunderstorms first raised hope, then dashed it. Lightning ignited the bush, vegetation burned, animals and people perished, but no rain fell. The indifferent clouds drifted off in search of greener pastures.

Always, there was dust. At times, the powdered earth formed into storms and tremendous choking clouds filled the air. A constable who served in Hughenden recollected dust, dust, and more dust.

“The dust would rise under the horse and envelope the rider… The dust and perspiration became mud… You met another traveller, and all you saw were his eyes blinking through the mud. I returned off patrol… I laid on the floor of the barracks with my head covered by a sheet as protection… We had no meals that day.”

Every living thing clung to life and waited for rain, nightfall, or death. Except the flies. Those lords of the plains lived their short, fast lives in furious pursuit of blood, sweat and dung. For millennia bush flies survived on native faeces, but no fly ever grew fat on the sparse droppings of bandicoots. Cattle, by comparison, produce mountains of crap, so the introduction of livestock brought days of plenty. Ecstatic flies feasted on great sloppy plops of cow shit.

The flies commanded the outback. They swarmed and swirled and buzzed and bit. Bushies donned shrouds of mosquito net as veils or dangled corks from their hats. But flies are relentless. In a futile effort to distract the vermin from meals, mothers flung sugar onto dining tables away from the plates. In the pub, old-timers told yarns of greedy insects knocking them from bar stools to get at their beers.

Everyone waited for rain, day after stinking hot day. Little happened to distinguish one day from another, so gossip elevated trifling excitements.

John Hodges and Alicia Lister created a sensation when John drove 180 cattle into town, sold them and met Alicia. Within 24 hours the two married. “Love at First Sight,” said the newspapers, the unspoken question, ‘Will it last?’

It lasted — no flies on John and Alicia Hodges.

The newlyweds boarded the first train east. There they splurged the proceeds of the cattle sale on a coastal honeymoon and surrendered to the caress of a cool sea breeze, a sensory indulgence only dreamed of in Hughenden.

After the vicarious thrill of the honeymoon, Hughenden lapsed into ennui until a nameless duck roused the townsfolk from their lethargy. When she hatched a clutch of twenty-one eggs, the fertile fowl became the talk of the town. Newspapers chronicled her brood, and no one spoke of anything save that awesome duck. Then, a storm killed seven of the twenty-one, and no one cared anymore. The bereaved mother’s notoriety died with her ducklings.

Conversation returned to the weather.

No circus came to town that year. Not one clown disrupted the tedium. However, the Member for Kennedy visited. Now, here was a man who could teach that duck a thing or two about celebrity. The federal member took to fame like a fly to a cowpat.

The yapping pollie never shut up. The more furious the discourse, the more numerous the headlines, so the Member for Kennedy chose to forgo lofty oratory in favour of incessant carping. He and his constituents remained notorious even if his parliamentary career achieved little else. ‘Persistent as a summer fly,’ his detractors said of Charlie McDonald.

McDonald championed White Australia. He prophesied a glorious future for the new nation if it only denied employment to all but “real” Australians — white Australians, preferably of Anglo-Saxon extraction.

And, if possible, one other thing. Intercourse between the races — especially sexual intercourse — should cease immediately.

Quoting with glee from a newspaper column, McDonald complained that “The union of white men and Aboriginal women produces half-castes who then breed with Chinese, Malays and Manilamen. Half-castes cross with Quadroons or Octoroons, and so the mixing of the hybrids continues until the place should be called Mongrelia.”

The gospel according to Charles McDonald demanded whites share neither their tools of trade nor procreation with other races.

Although the electors of Kennedy voted for McDonald, they preferred to avoid his campaign speeches. Better to sit in a paddock and watch grass die. So, on the campaign trail, he hired spruikers to ring a bell and coax passers-by in to hear him speak. In Hughenden, for reasons unknown, he employed a black man to gather an audience for a lecture on the evil of employing… black men.

Ding, ding, ding!

“Hear the Honourable Charlie McDonald preach on White Australia,” urged the bemused Aboriginal.

Ding, ding, ding!

Hughenden had little experience of lawlessness. It was too bloody hot, and everyone knew each other. But even by local standards, crime took a holiday during 1906. The most notable prosecution was of Tom Penny. The Stock Inspector condemned eight sheep in Tom’s yard as unfit for human consumption. Bugger it, thought the butcher. If the locals can survive the heat, the flies, the dust and Charlie McDonald, a bit of putrid mutton won’t kill them. Slaughtering those eight sheep for sale cost Mr Penny pounds, fifteen of them, a hefty fine in a bad season.

Like most towns, Hughenden had more pubs than seemed strictly necessary, but they didn’t only sell beer. They also rented rooms. Advertisements promised lodging of varying standards from merely ‘good’ to ‘the best for man and horse’. Hubert and Mary Durham took a suite of rooms at the most respectable establishment, the Central Hotel on the corner of Brodie and Grey Streets.

From the hotel verandah, they could look across the corner to the Post Office and beyond it, the Police Station and Court House, a three-minute walk away. They could watch roly-poly tumbleweeds race through town. Or the willy-willies that swept in from the countryside, swirling columns of dust that corkscrewed drunkenly across the haphazard orderliness of outback civilisation.

Before their move west, Mary dressed most evenings to take her place on Hubert’s arm for an after-dinner stroll along the scenic Cairns Esplanade. For now, however, they would forgo such pleasures.

No one promenaded the streets of Hughenden. Indeed, those thoroughfares saw little traffic that September. The shearing season kicked off in sheds on surrounding stations at the beginning of the month, taking many of the able-bodied men out of town. In public bars, storekeepers and small businessmen formulated strategies for leaving town. They would hold out for rain and increased optimism, they confided, and then sell up when property prices rose. With money in pocket, they would flee to townships less blighted by dust, flies and endless pessimism.

Despite the dearth of criminal enterprise, the Sub-Inspector attended his office in the Court House seven days a week. He worked from a room midway along the building with the courtroom on one side and a barracks for unmarried constables on the other. An office behind Durham’s housed his clerk, Constable Lynch, who worked Monday to Friday and a half-day on Saturday.

The police station, sergeant’s quarters, and cells occupied a neighbouring building. From there, Sergeant Murphy conducted the day-to-day policing of the district.

Scattered rain fell around Hughenden during October and settled the dust. Then, at the beginning of November, poinciana trees burst into bloom, their blazing red blossoms lending vibrancy to the dusty townscape. The shearing season finished, and men returned to town with money in their pockets. Storekeepers regained their optimism and shelved plans for departure.

Tom Penny cheered up also. His son Tom Jr and two mates drew Poseidon in a Melbourne Cup Sweepstake and won £6,000 between them. £6,000! Let the Stock Inspector keep his £15 fine!

Nevertheless, good times, like falls of rain, pass quickly out west of the Great Divide. Soon, newspaper readers would see Hughenden in the headlines, but not for the soaring temperature or a clutch of ducklings.

Hughenden, intended to punish Durham, lived up to its promise.

A Good Many Things Explained.

Cairns Morning Post

Saturday, December 1, 1906.

Charles Cocks moved to Brisbane from outback Queensland in April 1905 intent on joining the police. Young, fit, and intelligent, Charlie arrived with glowing references. However, city life offered pleasures hitherto little explored by the lad from Muckadilla. He liked to drink, and his carousing affected his work. Often drunk on duty, he sometimes struggled to stand upright on parade.

Throughout his brief career, he earned an array of reprimands.

“This man appears to be quite useless as a policeman,” one Inspector concluded.

Slovenliness, dereliction of duty, drinking on duty, insubordination — Charlie ran the gamut.

“Kiss my arse,” he told a scolding Sergeant.

Rather than kiss his arse, his superiors banished it to a town even hotter than Muckadilla. Beset by scandal enough, Commissioner Cahill preferred that Cocks quietly resign on completion of his contract. Resignations attracted less adverse commentary than dismissals.

To that end, Cahill planned to make Charlie’s time in the outback as unpleasant as possible. Instead of issuing the young recruit with the cooler khakis approved for country police, he sent Charlie north to swelter in a hot woollen Brisbane uniform.

Constable Cocks arrived at his new posting on Thursday night 8th November 1906, determined to tough out the remainder of his contract. The Queensland Police swore in recruits for twelve months and forbade resignations until that time elapsed. To forestall misconduct aimed at securing a dismissal, the department forfeited all entitlements of those it discharged, including wages owed. If Charlie Cocks survived until April, he would leave with his entitlements. Otherwise, he departed with nothing.

Sergeant Murphy assigned Cocks a bunk in the barracks, already home to Constable Patrick O’Hara who would transfer out on Monday, and Constable George Christie who would remain. Christie knew the Sub-Inspector from the time of the Gatton murders. He told Charlie he would like Durham.

“I have found him a good man, and I think you will find him the same.”

Constable Cocks worked Friday and Saturday and had Sunday off. Resting on his bunk, he heard Durham call out to him, so he went along the verandah and into the Sub-Inspector’s office.

Durham instructed him to take a daily bath.

“I expect you to keep clean and tidy.”

He handed the Constable a copy of the Police Manual.

“You can read this, and you will find some valuable information.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

The Constable returned to his bunk, though not for long.

“Cocks!”

What this time?

‘Take a bath… keep tidy… read the manual!’ What motherly advice would the Sub-Inspector wish to offer now? ‘Eat your vegetables… say your prayers… wash behind your ears.’

“Cocks!”

Charlie went back along the verandah.

“Come in Cocks,” said Durham, and with Charlie in the room, closed the door and locked it. Cocks noticed that the doors leading to the clerk’s office and the courtroom were also now bolted.

“I have just been looking over my old uniforms,” Durham told him, “If they are big enough, I will give them to you.”

There are joys to be had at Hughenden, even despite the heat and dust and flies. One small delight is to contemplate the local crow. It glides across the sky with apparent disdain for earthbound creatures. But the breezy indifference masks a ferocious focus on potential prey. Even when it spies a victim, the crow affects no excitement. Feigning tremendous disinterest, the shrewd carnivore drifts to earth distant from its quarry, seemingly enthralled by a pebble or twig. The wily predator fixates on anything but its actual target. Then, when the prey relaxes, the crow hops sideways in a carefree jig and seizes the unsuspecting prize.

Durham pointed out khaki trousers and a tunic on his desk.

“How big are you around the chest and waist?”

“I have no idea.”

Durham knew.

Charlie’s file showed his chest measured 37½ inches, and his waist 32. He was 5’8” tall, weighed 12 stone, had a tan, dark brown hair, blue eyes and recently turned 24. He could swim and ride a horse, but not a bicycle.

“Try the suit on.”

“Alright.”

Cocks picked up the uniform to leave.

“Try them on here,” said Durham, “I want to see if they fit.”

Cocks slipped off his trousers. Durham seized the moment. Circling his desk, he lifted the Constable’s shirt and exposed his nakedness. Charlie wore no underwear.

“What fine muscular thighs you have,” he crowed.

He stroked Charlie’s leg and rubbed his stomach. Then the wily predator fixed on his actual target.

“You’re not very large about the fork.”

Durham grasped his unsuspecting prize. He waggled Charlie’s penis like the tail of a dog but still affected no outward excitement.

“You have not got much here.”

He slid the foreskin back and forth. A notation on the Constable’s file mentioned a previous venereal infection.

“You go with women?”

“Sometimes.”

Charlie shoved his superior away.

“None of your funny business with me. I didn’t join the force for this sort of thing!”

Durham understood that men were often queerer creatures than they appeared.

“Would you like me to jerk you off?”

“No!”

Durham persisted.

“Let me have a look at your cock.”

The older man wrapped an arm around the Constable and pinned him. Then, he bent over and took Cocks in his mouth. Charlie stood there — hot, exhausted, and bewildered. He just stood there while his superior officer sexually assaulted him, forcibly sucking his cock.

When he finished, Durham relaxed his grip, and Charlie pushed him away.

“Now Cocks, you won’t say anything about this, will you”

“It will be right.”

Charlie pulled on the khaki trousers. Durham slid his hand down the back of the pants and caressed the young man’s buttocks.

“Can I do it to you?”

“Do what?”

“Put my penis in your arse.”

“Not likely!”

“Some other time then.”

Cocks unlocked the door and left.

A few minutes later, Durham went onto the verandah and called out to Sergeant Murphy.

Murphy came out of his office.

“Sergeant, I have given Constable Cocks a suit of my old uniform. There are no buttons on the tunic. Have you any spare buttons?”

“Yes. I have plenty.”

“I don’t like to see him wearing that dark uniform. It is very warm.”

Later that same afternoon, Durham strolled along the verandah and found Charlie alone in the barracks.

“Do you feel it very hot, Cocks?”

“Yes. It is very hot today, Sir.”

“How do the trousers fit you?”

“They are a bit big, Sir.”

“Where?”

“Around the waist.”

Durham reached for the trousers, but for the inside leg, not the waist. Cocks brushed the hand away, and Durham desisted.

Although the Sub-Inspector had not yet put his penis in Charlie’s arse, Constable Cocks was already fucked. ‘Some other time then,’ Durham had said. His penis in Charlie’s arse was as inevitable as dust in the Constable’s eyes and flies in his beer.

Later that day, Constable O’Hara finished his last shift in Hughenden and returned to barracks. Charlie confided that Durham attempted to sodomise him, a confidence that O’Hara betrayed to Constable Christie before he left town. Alone in the barracks with Charlie, George Christie asked, “Is it true the Sub-Inspector try to Oscar Wilde you?”

“By Christ, yes. It is a fact,” said Cocks, “O’Hara got it out of me but no one else will.”

Hughenden suffered no undue excitement over the next fortnight. Then, at 6 pm on Tuesday 20th November, Sub-Inspector Durham observed Constable Cocks drinking at the bar of the Central Hotel while on duty and in uniform… the hot black woollen uniform.

The Queensland Police employed a standard procedure for dealing with and recording infractions of the Police Code. The accusing officer wrote out the charge at the top of a sheet of paper. The accused then added a note denying or admitting the allegation and signed it. Below that, the senior officer noted the action taken.

Durham wrote out the complaint the following day.

“You are charged that on the 20th, while on duty and in uniform, you were found drinking in the Central Hotel Hughenden.

“Do you deny or admit any part of the above charge?”

Constable Cocks signed the reprimand but declined to answer the complaint. Despite that, the words ‘I admit the charge’ appear above his signature.

But Charlie never wrote those words. The handwriting is not the surprisingly elegant script of the lad from Muckadilla. The writing is Durham’s more ordinary scrawl.

He added, “Constable Cocks is severely reprimanded and cautioned.”

Plenty of police partook of furtive drinks while on duty. Four out of the five cops investigating Peter Lumberg’s murder drank alcohol at the scene of the crime.

However, junior officers usually attempted to conceal their rule-breaking from their superiors.

But, let others break the rules. Charlie thought differently. He simply threw out the rule book.

Durham enjoyed command by virtue of his high rank. However, Charlie now saw just a man, not a Sub-Inspector — but a man who, like him, broke the rules. And with that, Durham’s authority turned to dust.

Despite Durham understanding that his own actions prompted the Constable’s rebellious attitude, he could not comprehend why Cocks continued to wear wool in the heat of the Hughenden summer.

Accustomed to deference, the uncertainties in this situation took a toll on Durham.

As a married man, Constable Lynch lived in a house across the street from the station.

He noticed a change in Durham.

“He seemed to be pausing in his work a good deal. He would lean his head on his hand and say, “What?” when I had not spoken to him.

“He also tore up a great number of private letters. He tore up two wastepaper baskets full.

“On Saturday, the 24th he asked me to take those baskets of letters and see that they were destroyed. I burned those letters while he stood and watched.”

Saturday evening, that day’s Brisbane Courier arrived on the train from Townsville.

The Brisbane Courier of Saturday 24th November 1906 does not stand as a significant moment in the annals of newspaper publishing history. Sixteen pages crammed with ads and only intermittent content. One article dwelt on the dangers of socialism, and another prattled on with inane royal gossip. There was however exciting news for the “Poultry Fraternity” with the paper offering to answer reader’s correspondence on their backyard fowl. It even offered anonymity to closeted chook-keepers. ‘Use a nom de plume, if necessary.’

Scouring the paper, Durham read the Shipping Departures. The Courier published lists of passengers on ships arriving and departing the local port. He saw that on Friday the Bingera left Brisbane bound for Townsville. The manifest listed 27 passengers. The 24th name was that of Chief Inspector Urquhart.

Durham panicked. The Chief Inspector did not leave Brisbane unannounced except to attend a crisis. To reach Hughenden, he needed first to take ship to Townsville. Was the Chief Inspector on his way to Hughenden? Although unnerved, Durham said nothing to his wife.

From his front yard, Constable Lynch saw Durham exit a side door of the Central Hotel, run to the front and then back to the side, all the while looking frantically up and down the street. Then he crossed to the Post Office and strode up to the police station.

Regaining his composure, Durham stopped in the yard to chat with Sergeant Murphy about the police horses before going to his office.

Sergeant Murphy also read the Courier that morning, and he also saw Urquhart’s name on the Bingera’s manifest. But he expected to find it there. Urquhart’s arrival would be the culmination of two week’s correspondence between Sergeant Murphy and Commissioner Cahill.

Murphy knew about Durham’s assault on Cocks minutes after it happened.

On that day two Sundays before, when Durham called out to ask Murphy about buttons, Murphy had already seen the tunic.

Charlie Cocks was in his office.

When Durham released Charlie, the Constable pulled up his trousers, picked up his black woollen trousers, unlocked the door and returned to the barracks. He stayed there only long enough to drop the black pants on his bunk and then headed straight for Murphy’s office.

When the Sub-Inspector called out to Murphy, Cocks was already in the Sergeant’s office — pale, trembling, sweating profusely, dressed in khaki trousers, and carrying a similar tunic. Murphy saw the tunic was that of a Sub-Inspector, a rank Durham only held for the past two months. Although he described it as his “old” uniform, it was almost brand new.

Murphy instructed Cocks to write a full and accurate report of the incident.

“I will break every bloody bone in his body,” said Charlie.

Murphy told him to calm down while they worked out what to do. Whatever else, he insisted, they must work in secret.

On Tuesday, the Sergeant sent a confidential telegram to Commissioner Cahill in Brisbane.

“Serious abominable charge by Constable Cocks against Sub-Inspector Durham occurred Sunday last. Report posted today confidential. Please instruct me procedure. Sub-Inspector unaware I know.”

Charlie Cocks wrote his statement. He still struggled to comprehend what happened and why.

“I am 24 years of age. I have never during my life had a similar experience to this occurrence.

“I never encouraged Sub-Inspector Durham by word or action. I resisted and protested in words.’

Charlie’s statement arrived in Brisbane, along with a covering letter from Murphy. Commissioner Cahill replied.

“Let Cocks lay sworn information under Section 211, Criminal Code. Wire me urgent when this is done but proceed no further till instruction.”

The Commissioner apparently entertained no doubts over the accusation of Charlie Cocks, despite the troublesome recruit’s history of insubordination and misconduct.

Probably because Cahill had read the confidential letter from Constable FitzPatrick that prompted the Mowbray Inquiry.

He ordered Chief Inspector Urquhart to Hughenden.

“Relieve Sub-Inspector Durham and take charge of his district. Report fully to me before taking action.”

In Hughenden, Murphy collected the khaki uniform from Cocks as evidence and locked it in his safe. Then he arranged for the Police Magistrate to take a statement from Charlie in secret.

Constable Cocks told his story again, this time under oath. It was after he left the Police Magistrate that Durham caught him drinking in the Central. In addition to his inability to control Cocks, Durham also noticed that the Police Magistrate began to avoid him.

At 11.20 am on Sunday 25th, Durham came out into the yard again and called out to Murphy.

“Sergeant, has anything taken place? The Police Magistrate has shunned me for days, and I see that the Chief Inspector is a passenger by the Bingera.”

“I am a truthful man, Sir,” said Murphy, “I will not tell a lie. Therefore, I cannot answer your questions.”

“Have you reported me, Sergeant?”

“I decline to answer the question.”

“What is the charge against me, Sergeant?”

“You know more about that, Sir than I do.”

“I know nothing,” said Durham and returned to his office.

On his desk were letters he wrote earlier in the day to friends and colleagues around the state.

“You may have heard, and if you have not you soon will, vile charges made against me. Charges which I scorn even to mention because they would degrade my tongue and pen. Of course, you know that vile wretches started atrocious rumours about me when I was in Charters Towers. I never was able to locate the beginning of that calumny. But the herd loves to sniff prurience of that sort, and therefore I have never professed to be perturbed by the damnable slanders…

“I can assure you; my life has been made very miserable by it all; and not once or twice, or thrice, but hundreds of times, I have thought of quitting forever. And now, finis, finis in every way. Yours in the grip of death, Hubert Roland Paisley Durham.”

Mrs Durham fainted when Sergeant Murphy advised her that Hubert had shot himself dead.

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