2011: A Year of Doing History to Death

It can be tricky writing about a place that's going to be closed until 2013, so looking back at the first full year of the Boggo Blog I wasn't too surprised at the variety of topics covered in the articles here. What I was surprised about was the bloody morbidity of the subject matter - cemeteries, capital punishment, sharks, plagues, ghosts, plagues of ghosts... Still, the Boggo Blog was never going to be about crocheting doilies for scrapbooks about kittens.

The Boggo year got off to a boggy start with devastating floods hitting Queensland and stories of sharks swimming the streets of Ipswich. The old prison itself is on high ground and is perfectly safe from flood damage, barring any biblical-scale deluges, but parts of our other stomping ground at the South Brisbane Cemetery went under, prompting two huge community cleaning efforts in there. these were the 'Sister Suburbs' event in January (below, right) and 'Clean Up Australia Day' in March. Cyclone Yasi hit the north of the state a few weeks later, indirectly affecting the gaol by adding to Queensland's financial woes.   

This was also the year when the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society managed to get access to the prison for the first time since 2006, first to assist with a couple of film shoots, then to 'inspect' the place in the company of Public Works, and then we began our monthly cleaning bees (above, left). By the time the weekly Boggo Road Markets started up in October I was going into the old gaol every week, at one point four days in a row for different things. 

We also had movement with the whole Boggo Road reopening saga, with developers appointed to come up with a management plan for the place. Watch this space!

A rolling issue through the year, and by the looks of it next year too, was honesty and/or accuracy in the tour industry. One article that had legs was about the claim by Brisbane's 'Ghost Tours' company that National Geographic had voted Brisbane the 'world's second most haunted city'. This alleged poll has proved to be very, very elusive - even National Geographic deny it exists - and eight months later Ghost Tours' owner Jack Sim has still failed to provide evidence to back up his claim, instead finding it easier to delete simple questions about it from his Facebook page and insult commenters. With the matter now referred to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission and other people demanding answers, expect interest in this matter to be maintained until questions about the poll are answered one way or another.

It's what we do

Further questions about the credibility of Ghost Tours emerged later in the year when a doctored photo and email appeared on their Facebook page. The pic was allegedly of a ghost from a cemetery night tour the previous weekend, but it turned out to have been taken in broad daylight in Tasmania back in 2006! Whoops. My article exposing this 'mistake' drew fire from Ghost Tours, as shown in the 'Sticks and Stones' article. As it was, the most-commented-upon article of 2011 was about the strange little threats and insults we as a historical society have to put up with. Controversy sells! 

The trifecta of dodginess was completed when the dubious evolution of a cemetery ghost story was explained in another article. Similar articles on the excellent 'Haunts of Brisbane' blog, such as one about an imaginary morgue at the cemetery, highlighted the need for a thorough stocktake and correcting of the historical misinformation floating around about South Brisbane Cemetery, which will take the form of this 2012 project. After all, if a tour operator was telling tourists that Brisbane was established in 1987 by Walt Disney you'd expect them to be pulled up on it. Same goes for all blatantly wrong history - people need to be held to account. Customers paying good money for a history tour need to know that they are getting the facts and not fiction.

In fact, cemeteries continued to be a pretty regular source of material here, with other articles this year covering a victory on cemetery laws, Brisbane's lost plague cemetery, plans to reuse city council graves, an Ipswich Cemetery history project, a Boggo Road burial mystery, and Brisbane's oldest municipal cemetery.

Throw in a bunch of other articles on tattoo machines, execution machines, the Houdini of Boggo Road, the late Bill Kearney,  (yet more) ghosts and ghost hunters, the meaning of the name 'Boggo', the relationship between officers and inmates, a new play about the only woman hanged at Boggo Road, heritage gaol prices, and weird Spiritualist arguments against the death penalty, and you have quite a varied menu right there.

With a monthly readership now well into four figures, the 'Boggo Blog' ends the year with plenty of reason to celebrate. A big, big thanks to all of you who have visited this blog, and especially those who left comments. All feedback is welcome (yes, even you 'silver strychnine'). 

Resolutions for 2012? To keep the mixed bunch of articles coming, to keep everyone updated on the redevelopment plans, to celebrate Good History and to hold Bad History to account, and to hopefully hear more from the readers of this here Boggo Blog. 

Here's to a great 2012 for us all...