The Boggo Blog

What Would Win in a Fight Between a Tiger and a Bull?

2012-02-02T16:30:00.002+10:00

Sometimes historical research can go off on a tangent when something interesting catches your eye. When I was writing my article 'Tigers, Roller-Coasters and Special Effects: Brisbane's 19th-century Dreamworld', which mentioned the story of a tiger on the loose in Brisbane's George Street, I came across some old newspaper reports of staged fights between bulls and tigers, and quite frankly I was interested in the result.* The result was, however, that people can be very stupid and very cruel, and animals can be reluctant to fight upon demand.

1950 Topps card - 'Terror of the Jungle'

I will cover three reports of tiger/bull fights here, although an earlier and supposedly fictional account had featured in the 1858 novel Jack of all Trades by Charles Reade. I say 'supposedly' because judging by later reports of actual fights, Reade's account was based on reality. After being placed in the arena, the two animals were reluctant to fight, and so Reade's protagonist poked the tiger with a red-hot iron to try and provoke it. As will be seen below, this behaviour was all-too-normal at these events.

The first account of an actual fight to appear in a Queensland newspaper was in 1898, and told of a fight between a Bengal tiger ('Cesar') and an Adalusian fighting bull in front of 1,300 spectators at the Plaza de Madrid. A seventeen-metre-square cage was erected in the middle of the arena, and the bull was the first to be released into the enclosure:

"The brute immediately began to run round and round his prison, bellowing and throwing up sand and gravel with his hoofs. The instant the tiger entered the cage he gave a roar and bounded on the bull, avoiding the horns, and fixed on his flanks and belly with both teeth and claws. The bull remained still for a few seconds, and then seemed to be sinking backwards to the ground. The spectators thought that all was over, but the tiger let go for a second to take another hold, and in the brief interval was kicked over by the wild plunges of the bull. Before the tiger had time to recover the bull was on him, and, staking his horns into the striped hide, it tossed the tiger into the air. This was repeated four or five times, the bull varying his tactics occasionally by banging his adversary against the bars. When the bull stopped the tiger lay limp on the ground, and the crowd, thinking he was dead, cried 'Bravo, toro.' The bull stood stamping for a moment in the middle of the cage, and then, seeing the tiger did not move, approached and smelt him. But Cesar was only shamming death, and seized the bull's muzzle in his powerful jaws so the animal could not move. Eventually, however, he was released, and, after stamping furiously on the tiger, again caught him on his horns. This time the tossing, stamping, and banging apparently ended in Cesar's death. The cage was then opened, and the bull rushed out and back to his stable. For precaution's sake, the tiger's van was brought up, and, to the general surprise, Cesar rose to his feet, glanced round as if afraid the bull was still there, and then bounded into the van. The tiger was found to have five ribs broken, besides having a number of wounds from the bull's horns. He is expected, nevertheless, to survive. It is said that all wild animals - bears, lions, panthers, and tigers - fare badly in combat with the Spanish fighting bull. Man and the elephant are the only sure victors over these active and ferocious beasts."
(The Capricornian, 12 March 1898)

Detail from Henri Rosseau, 'Struggle between a tiger and a bull', c.1900

Another bull vs tiger fight took place in front of a huge crowd in a bullring at San Sebastian, Spain, in 1904. The fight was staged in a large cage in the centre of the arena. A cameraman was set up behind a barrier to film the event, but he fled in terror when the bull charged him. The Bengal tiger was reluctant to enter the arena, and when it did the Andalusian bull charged him down and gored him, but the tiger caught him in the neck before retreating and positioned himself to pounce. This was repeated occasionally over half an hour before the crowd grew impatient at the lack of action. A photographer climbed into the arena and prodded the tiger with an iron rod through the bars, but the animals simply stood and stared at each other.

At this point the furious Homer-Simpsonesque spectators "jumped into the arena and shouted all the names they could think of at the animals, hissed, lit squibs, and danced like mad creatures round the cage". This caused the bull to once more gore the tiger against the side of the cage, which made the wall fall over. Now the heroic bogans who had been taunting the animals fled in hysterical terror, and the Gendarme and everyone with a gun "blazed away indiscriminately" at the tiger. One report had eleven people wounded, but another had fifty being hit with bullets, with fourteen severely wounded, three in a critical condition, and one woman dead. The tiger, which had been too badly injured by the bull to attack anyone anyway, was also shot dead. After this it was torn to shreds by 'souvenir hunters', cutting off parts of the tiger's body as keepsakes. All of which proves that the most dangerous animal of all etc, etc.

'Tiger and Bull' by Alton S. Tobey

The French government moved to ban these fights from taking place in France, although several hundred people gathered in a private enclosure in Marseilles in 1908 to watch just such a fight, this one staged with the intention of filming it. Not all went to plan because although the bull was ready for a fight, the tiger retreated to a corner and stayed there, prompting yet more human stupidity and cruelty. The impatient crowd pelted the animal with bricks and stones, and the attendants prodded it with an iron bar, turned a hose on it, and finally exploded fireworks in its face, but the tiger could not be provoked. It was returned to the cages and a second tiger produced. This one was much hungrier and instantly attacked the bull, which turned and ripped the tiger's shoulder open. The wounded tiger crawled back to its den, after which it was too dark to film any more and the fight was postponed until the next morning. However, when the time came and a tiger was about to be driven into the enclosure again, the police arrived and arrested the promoters, smashed the photographer's cameras, and led the cinematographer away in handcuffs.

Despite the cameraman's problems at San Sebastian in 1904, a silent movie short of that event called 'Tiger and Bull Fighting' was produced and screened to Australian audiences in 1906. The filming had reached the point where the tiger was pressed against the cage, but audiences were informed that the scene in which the bull supposedly killed the tiger was 'missing'. This movie was in circulation for a few years, and was quite possibly shown in Brisbane, but in 1909 the Sunday Times of Perth advised the film's distributor that they would...

"do well to drop such films as "Bull and Tiger Fighting," "Bear hunting in Russia", these exhibitions being anything but of an elevating character. Usually the "savage tiger" is an ancient, toothless, doped animal, which can't get out of its own way, and seems glad to crawl into a corner, and die of disembowelment."

Tiger attacking a calf, Roman mosaic, 4th century CE

The movie itself seems to have died of disembowelment and disappeared, as did the staging of bull and tiger fights in general. For the record, it looks like bulls generally got the better of the tigers, but then these were contests between bulls trained to fight and tigers trained to be docile. There were always plenty of idiots to watch them, however, and if the producers of Reality TV shows were given half a chance, they would quite happily stage animal fights and no doubt they would find a huge audience too.

* Unlike the result of cricket match between the Queensland Bulls and the Tasmania Tigers, which nobody cares about.

Getting into Hot Water in a Boggo Road Cell

2012-01-29T10:04:00.002+10:00

"He took a roll of toilet paper, unrolled and loosely rerolled a bunch of it, then tucked the bottom up through the hole in the middle, put it on the rim of the toilet bowl, and set it afire. It burned in a cone, like a burner, and lasted long enough to make a metal cup of hot tea."

That's how Edward Bunker (Mr Blue from Reservoir Dogs to you), writing in his book Education of a Felon, described how a fellow prisoner used to illegally heat his water in the Los Angeles county jail in the 1950s.

"We'd kill for a cup of tea"

Here, as a follow-up to my article on illegal prisoner-made tattoo guns, is another piece on ingenious cellblock contraband, although this time I cover the somewhat less-edgier subject of how prisoners got to make themselves a lovely cup of tea while locked away for the night. Kettles and heaters were not allowed in the Boggo Road cells, but a number of objects in the Boggo Road Gaol Museum collection show that some thirsty inmates managed to get around this problem. As with the tattoo machines, it usually involved a bit of imagination and scrounging various items from around the everyday prison environment.

In his book Doing Time, about life in Victoria’s Pentridge Prison, author Barry Ellem described how inmates could rig up a simple electrical device in their cells:

"Another technique prisoners employ to get hot water is to make up an electric gadget similar to an element in an electric jug. This is called an immerser. If the cell is not a power cell the immerser is plugges into the electric light socket. Electrical shorts and power failures have occured because of this."

The plastic cup below, found in a Boggo Road kitchen, was similarly adapted to work as a mini-kettle. It contains an immerser constructed from matchsticks, electrical wiring, cotton thread and a razor blade. The wiring would have been attached to a power source such as a light socket.

Queensland Museum item #H-46038

This immersion heater made from a power cord and razor blades was found in a prison cell in Hamburg, Germany.

Image: Marc Steinmetz

The metal jug below, confiscated from a Queensland prisoner, has been adapted in a similar way:

Queensland Museum item #H-45725

This grill, from a Mexican prison, is made from a tin can, electrical wire, dirt and a stove burner surface element.

Image: Marc Steinmetz

Like the one described by bunker, non-electric stoves were a bit simpler and could be made from a couple of empty tins, a few screws, and a bootlace for a wick. The upper tin sits on the three screws in the lid of the lower tin. The wick was coated in lard, which acted as wax does in a candle. The lard was sneaked out of the prison kitchen and rolled into balls so it could be ‘sold’ to other prisoners. When available, paraffin could also be used. The stove below was made from an old coffee tin and used in Boggo Road during the 1980s.

Improvised water heater, Boggo Road Gaol
Collection, #1993.54 (BRGHS)

So there you have it. Inmate resistance to authority took many forms, not all of them necessarily confrontational. Sometimes getting a hot cup of tea or coffee during the long hours couped up in a cell was one of the little ways in which prisoners got one over the system. 'C'est la tea'.

Tigers, Roller-Coasters & Special Effects: Brisbane’s 19th-century Dreamworld

2012-01-22T17:30:00.003+10:00

Did you know that Victorian-era Brisbane had a resort that was Dreamworld, Seaworld and Movie World all rolled into one quaint 19th-century package? It was the 1890s, a decade before the advent of cinema, and the citizens of Brisbane loved to get out and about for their family entertainment, heading to parks, theatres, forests, museums, the coast, and anywhere the public transport of the day could get them. If they took the steam ferry from Petrie's Bight, near Customs House, they could visit the Queensport Aquarium & Zoological Garden.

Real Estate ad showing the neighbouring Aquarium Estate in 1889
(John Oxley Library, #97488)

The Queensport Aquarium, in the Brisbane riverside suburb of Hemmant, opened to much fanfare on 7 August 1889. Public aquariums had been hugely popular in England since the 1850s (following the abolition of a tax on glass!), allowing the British public to see fish other than kippers for the first time. Most seaside resorts had (and still have) an aquarium building, and the craze took off here in Australia too.

Queensport was more than just a simple aquarium, however, it was a whole resort in itself. Set in eleven acres of landscaped grounds, the centrepiece was a two-storey aquarium with six fish tanks, each one measuring 13 feet long, 4 feet wide and 5 feet deep. Other attractions included a seal pond, a small zoo, fairground rides, a fernery, fountains, and a 1,400-seat concert hall and stage, complete with plush curtains and electric organ, that was the venue for concerts, theatre and opera. There was also a sports field that was mostly used for cricket and picnics, and the grounds were illuminated by new-fangled electric lights.

Where modern theme parks often have 3D movie screenings, the aquarium had its 19^th-century equivalent in the ‘camera obscura’, a primitive optical device in a darkened space that projects a picture of the surrounds onto a screen (see how it works here). At the time, this was considered to be special effects entertainment.

Camera Obscura

The fairground rides included ‘flying machines’ (flying foxes), swing boats, donkey rides, a merry-go-round, and an early form of roller coaster known as a ‘switchback railway’.

Switchback railway, Folkestone, England, circa 1900. Some brilliant 1904
footage of this contraption in operation can be seen here.

Apart from the fish and seals, other animal attractions were monkeys, apes, snakes, emus, panthers, cheetahs, and tigers named Jimmy, Sammy, Sir Roger and Dina. This menagerie had belonged to Charles Higgins, who had previously kept them at Toombul and also in a flimsy enclosure on the corner of George and Turbot Street in the city in 1888. Needless to say, this all ended badly when one of the tigers escaped and savagely mauled a man, exposing his brain. A newspaper account printed the understatement of the year when it described passers-by being "startled" by the sight of an enormous man-eating Bengal tiger actually trying to eat a man in George Street, and unsurprisingly everybody "hurriedly left the vicinity" (I would think replacing "startled" with "pant-shittingly terrified", and "hurriedly left the vicinity" with "running screaming for their lives", would probably be a more accurate description of what happened). The eventual move to safer cages at Queensport was no doubt heartily welcomed by everyone in Brisbane.*

The Queensport venture was initially a huge success, with the public flocking to the aquarium in their thousands. On the biggest days, such as Easter Monday and Boxing Day, steamers full of happy day-trippers would leave the company’s wharf at Petrie’s Bight every half-hour. The owners worked hard to get the public in, providing an array of other novelties in including the ‘Electric Orchestrion’ machine, rifle-shooting and archery exhibitions, Punch and Judy shows, minstrel shows, pedestal dancing, and moonlight trips on the steamers Woolwich and Natone.

One notable visitor was ‘Professor’ Christopher Fernandez, a travelling aeronaut whose specialty was ascending half a mile in a hot air balloon, setting off fireworks, and then parachuting back down to the ground. However, not all went according to plan during his appearance at the aquarium in May 1891, when his balloon failed to reach sufficient height and came down on nearby Gibson Island, where the good professor found himself bogged knee-deep in mud. A promised relaunch never happened due to bad weather, although Fernandez did successfully pull off the stunt at other venues around Australia.

Like most 19th-century riverside structures, the aquarium was subject to occasional damage by the Brisbane River. The big floods of 1890 and 1893 caused considerable damage, as did a gale in March 1892 that blew the switchback railway and several empty tiger cages into the river. Events like these would have added to what must have been considerable costs in maintaining the place, and although the owners soldiered on, the aquarium seems to have become much less popular by the mid-1890s. This demise is not well documented, but in late 1897 most of the content and structures were advertised for sale, including all the remaining animals and their housing. The pavilion and sports grounds stayed in place, however, and still attracted large picnic groups for a few more years. In 1900 the land was actually considered as the site for what later became the Princess Alexandra Hospital, and the pavilion was sold in 1901 prior to the land being subdivided.

The Queensport Aquarium wharf can be seen to the right in this picture of
people surveying flood damage in 1887 (JOL, #66442).

The suburbs of Brisbane would never really see anything like the Queensport Aquarium & Zoological Garden again.

* The tiger's victim was an Austrian man named Peter Bertram, who survived the attack. A couple of years later he was charged with murder, and so would have spent time in Boggo Road Gaol on remand.

Where are all the "Heterosexual Vampire Killers"?

2012-01-19T11:20:00.000+10:00

Just a little rant for this week before another 'proper' history article...

As some Brisbanites would know, Tracey Wigginton was recently released from prison after serving 21 years for the 1989 murder of council worker Edward Baldock. She and three friends lured him to a West End park where he was then stabbed 27 times. During the subsequent trial her co-defendants claimed that Wigginton had 'drank' some of his blood and had a bit of a vampire thing going on, supposedly avoiding sunlight and mirrors, drinking blood obtained from the butchers, possessing 'occult powers', and all that other childish lame crap that vampire-obsessed wannabees do before they grow up.

Given the habit of reporters to come up with sensationalist nicknames for criminals, it was no surprise that Wigginton attracted a silly label. Given the fact that the crime was committed in West End and she liked playing vampires, the 'West End Vampire Killer' might have been expected, but as this was Queensland in 1989, a time when male homosexual activity was actually illegal, then the fact that Wigginton was gay was considered to be an important part of her 'media character' and she was accordingly dubbed the 'Lesbian Vampire Killer'.

A terrible, terrible movie that is either about people who kill lesbian vampires, or lesbians who kill vampires, or maybe lesbian vampires who kill people.

I'm not going to get into some debate about the length of her sentence or what kind of a person she is, but was does annoy me is the way a whole new generation of idiot reporters have jumped on the 'Lesbian Vampire Killer' bandwagon, using the term in every headline, in every second sentence, and in every story on the case. It annoys me because the nickname is straight-out homophobic.

Since when does the sexuality of a murderer actually get incorporated into their nickname? Ever heard of 'Jack the Heterosexual Ripper' or the 'Bi-Curious Boston Strangler'? Of course not. It seems that the sexuality of murderers is only worth mentioning if they're not straight, like it somehow makes them more evil.

The fact that this woman is gay is of no consequence and has nothing to do with the crime she committed. So why push the word 'lesbian' to the front of every story about her? It is not 1989 anymore, and its about time some reporters realised that.

Young, Shipwrecked & Black: Australia's unlikeliest hangman

2012-01-12T19:55:00.000+10:00

A historically unique event took place in a prison yard off Brisbane's Queen Street one cold Monday morning in July 1857. In fact, not only was what transpired there unheard of in the rest of Australia, I have yet to find anything similar taking place in Britain or 19th century USA.

What happened was the judicial execution of a prisoner, and although a total of 94 people were hanged in Brisbane and Queensland, this was the only time that the executioner was black (African-American, to be precise), which was all the more surprising because the prisoner was white. I say surprising because in the 1850s Brisbane and the surrounding districts were gripped by the racial tensions of the frontier, with some newspaper editors practically advocating race war to remove what they saw as the 'Aboriginal threat'. Aside from this, Chinese/European relations in the colony were also very bad. In a racial sense, capital punishment was a one-way street under western laws: Whites executed non-whites (and other whites of course).

Except this one time. The prisoner was William Teagle, who had brutally murdered his defacto wife in Toowoomba. The Sheriff of Queensland, William Brown, only received official confirmation of Teagle’s hanging just six days before it was due to take place, leaving him no time to requisition an executioner from Sydney, and so two days before the set date Brown went down to the wharves and 'waited in great anxiety’ for the Boomerang steamer to arrive from the south. To the sheriff’s great disappointment there was no hangman on board, so he had to race against time to find one.

This was no easy task, as hangmen were social pariahs at the time, but with one day left a ‘volunteer’ was found. Well, not exactly a volunteer, because the man was a prisoner and his price was a whopping ₤25 (two months wages for the chief prison warder back then) and a free pardon. The sheriff may have been desperate to agree to this, but the prisoner was almost as desperate to get out of Brisbane because during the previous six months of his life had taken some very unexpected turns.

His name was Thomas Woodby, a 20-year-old African-American from New York who had previously worked as a cook on the whaling brig Packet, which sailed from Sydney in mid-1856. After eight months at sea and with 150 barrels of whale oil on board, the brig was caught up in a vicious gale several hundred kilometres due west of the northern New South Wales coastline and struck the Middleton Reef. The Packet was badly damaged and before it sank the crew abandoned ship in two small boats with nothing but biscuits and water. They were at sea for four days before finally being picked up by the schooner Ebenezer, which dropped them off at Cowan Cowan, on Moreton Island. They arrived in Brisbane in a ‘most destitute state’ some eight days after the Packet went down and were given shelter and clothing by the locals. It was March 1857.

Woodby soon found a job as a boatman on the Kangaroo Point ferry, but a couple of weeks later he appeared in the police court on two charges of stealing, firstly for a watch, and secondly for a bag of sugar. Unrepresented in court, he was acquitted of the first charge but found guilty of the second and received a one-year sentence for larceny. Initially he was to serve this in Darlinghurst Gaol, Sydney, but after a couple of days the judge changed the place of imprisonment to Brisbane.

So it was that in July 1857, only a few months after being shipwrecked, Thomas Woodby was confined in a dilapidated prison in a foreign country, with most of his sentence still before him. When he was offered the job of hanging Teagle in order to obtain a free pardon and a large sum of money, it was too good an opportunity to pass by.

Given the racial mix of the main players, it was fortunate for the authorities that this was to be Brisbane’s first-ever private execution. A couple of years earlier the New South Wales parliament had abolished public hangings, which were felt to be having a detrimental effect on the populace, and so the gallows were erected in a yard of the Queen Street prison instead of on the street outside, as had previously been the practice. (This prison stood on the site of the current General Post Office).

The gaol on Queen Street, 1850 (John Oxley Library, #153725)

Privacy was still an issue because the tall gallows could be seen over the low prison walls, so a large piece of black calico cloth was draped around the upper part of the gallows to shield it from public view. The execution process itself passed smoothly, except that Teagle struggled on the end of the rope for two minutes after the drop. Sheriff Brown, however, was impressed by the way Woodby handled the job. Thomas Woodby was subsequently discharged from the Brisbane prison in September 1857, his ‘orderly behaviour in gaol’ being noted in the prison register, and with that he disappeared from the local historical record.

I’d love to know what happened next to that young African-American with £25 in his pocket (assuming the contract was honoured), and maybe one day I'll make a concerted effort to track him down in the records.

Or maybe someone who knows could just tell me?

In the meantime, why not take a look at my book No Ordinary Run of Men: The Queensland Executioners.

What Lies Beneath: The Secret Underground History of Brisbane

2012-01-04T13:22:00.001+10:00

It occurred to me recently that there is a lot of nonsense floating around about old underground cells and tunnels in Brisbane. If the rumours are to be believed, Brisbane is sitting atop a vast subterranean network of 19th-century hidey-holes and secret passageways, and its a wonder the whole city doesn't just collapse into the ground.

And we all know what happens then.

Boggo Road has more than its fair share of such stories, but the old Brisbane Gaol that stood on Petrie Terrace during 1860-83 has a couple of its own. One mystery involves the remarkable 19th-century reporter Julian 'The Vagabond' Thomas, who wrote a whole account of his time locked in an underground cell there in 1877. He described in detail of how the gaol governor kindly granted him access to the cell for six hours, his arrival at the gaol, the structure of the cell, and of how he and the governor shared drinks afterwards. However, there is actually no other evidence that this cell even existed. It is not on any existing plans, it is not mentioned in any other records, and it didn't show up during a recent archaeological dig of the area. Now, I'm a bit of a fan of Thomas, who did great work going 'undercover' in prisons, immigrant homes, asylums, soup kitchens, etc, but this one is hard to explain away. Did he just make it up? Quite possibly, but if that was the case then why did the gaol governor Frederick Bernard not rebut his story?

Another story I heard about the old gaol was that a secret tunnel ran between it and the Lord Alfred Hotel (est. 1870 as the Prince Alfred Hotel), directly across Petrie Terrace. What is now used as the cellar was reported to have been used as a lock-up in the 19th century, but the police have no record of them ever being used in this way. A few years back I actually got to go and investigate this place, which to tell the truth looks much like a regular hotel cellar, but there is what appears to be a short passageway running in the direction of Petrie Terrace, blocked off with a fibro sheet. However, historian Thom Blake, who worked on the archaeological dig across the road, reckons there is no tunnel here and this is just an urban myth.

Cellars of the hotel, 2006.

Some underground cells that actually did exist were the infamous 'Black Holes' of Boggo Road, but from my time working at the Boggo Road Gaol Museum it is clear that these cells have become a highly misunderstood part of the prison's history, mainly due to confusion of different cells used in different eras. The original No.1 Division was built in 1883 with two underground cells, also known as 'black peters', which were used to hold troublesome prisoners for 24 hours or so. They were down ten stone steps under a trapdoor in the floor. A former superintendent described them in this way in 1982:

"An abrupt left turn and a half dozen paces brought you to the door of the cell. When this door opened, it revealed another door hinged to the inside of the cell wall with a buffer area of fourteen inches between each door. Even with both doors open, the darkness inside the cell was incredible. The air was foul and the floor was usually covered with water from underground seepage. The use of the black peters in this wing was discontinued some years ago. To sentence men however bad they may be, to be locked away in these cells was barbaric to say the least, and their use should never again be contemplated."

B Wing also contained two ‘dark cells’, which were also underground but were better ventilated as they adjoined an external wall. The new No.1 Division, built 1968-74, also had punishment cells, which became infamous as the modern ‘black holes’. Although these were mostly underground, they were built into sloping ground and so had some external ventilation. They were, however, felt to be inhumane and were closed in 1984 under public pressure. In late 1987 the Bjelke-Petersen state government made a controversial decision to reopen the cells in order to contain Aboriginal protesters who were felt to be a threat to World Expo '88. This move sparked major riots across the Boggo Road prisons. The punishment cells were closed by the state government in 1989 as they were in breach of United Nations regulations regarding the treatment of prisoners.

Another subterranean feature of Boggo Road was the tunnel at Boggo Road connecting the two male divisions of the prison, allowing inmates to be securely transferred to and from the No.2 Division workshops. This tunnel was built when the workshops opened in 1929. The roof of this tunnel was removed during 1970s construction work and the tunnel was filled with rubble. An archaeological survey in 2005 located the tunnel, which was fairly well preserved, but it was decided that tunnel was not historically significant enough to warrant preservation. I witnessed this excavation, and here it is:

One of the few real tunnels under Boggo Road (Austral Archaeology)

The remains of this tunnel were destroyed by construction work on the Ecoscience building next to the prison, but at least it did exist, unlike another Boggo Road tunnel that I recently heard about. This tunnel allegedly ran underneath Annerley Road to the Boggo Road prison, and was used to transport laundry between a convent built on land opposite the Dutton Park primary school and the prison. Is it just me, or would there be risk management issues in digging a tunnel from a prison directly into a convent? Apparently, this this story used to be told by 'Ghost Tours' and so, needless to say, the tunnel was totally haunted. The story, needless to say, is total codswallop.

Not only was there never a tunnel under the road, there was never even a convent there! The land was the site of Websters bakery from 1880s until the mid-19th century, and some time later the land was purchased by the Sisters of Mercy with a view to putting a hospital staff car park there. There absolutely never-ever was a convent anywhere on Annerley Road. How you get to have a story about a non-existent tunnel running to a non-existent convent is best explained by reading this, this, this, and also this one too.

Well done Jenkins! At last we have a way to transport laundry across the street! This all makes perfect sense!

There is a certain irony that the Boggo Road reserve is now sat atop some major tunnelling activity. A huge Busway tunnel was excavated directly beneath the prison in 2009, and now there are plans afoot to excavate a rail tunnel right next to the prison. When complete, this tunnel will also be used to transport laundry to imaginary convents around Brisbane.

Some people also believe that at the end of World War 2 the U.S. Army, which had big bases around Brisbane, buried all kinds of their equipment around the city rather than go to the trouble of taking it back home. This great website lists all kinds of stories about this, including military aircraft buried at Archerfield Quarry; Bren guns buried in swamps area near Eagle Farm; BP-38 Lightnings buried at Eagle Farm airfield; buried engines at Banyo; engines, cars, trucks and Harley Davidson motor bikes buried in the Forest Lake area; wrecked aircraft dumped at Johnston Street, Bulimba; Merlin engines from Archerfield dumped near the corner of Cavendish Road and Stanley Street; military aircraft, machinery and surplus equipment dumped in a flooded quarry at Morningside; plus other equipment buried in suburbs such as Herston, Windsor, Norman Park and Willawong.

How much of this is true? Some stories are quite factual, such as the ammunition dump found at Nundah near the Gateway Bridge. Others seem to be urban myths, like the tales of old army jeeps under what is now Fairview Park, in Fairfield. Local residents have claimed the jeep story cannot be true as the area was just lantana scrub until 1955, when it was made into a council dump and later on a park

The problem with what lies is beneath is the fact that it cannot be seen, much like the 'afterlife' or, as once was the case, the surface of Mars, the bottom of the oceans and the centre of the earth, and so vivid imaginations always fill in the blanks. That has certainly been the case with the tunnels of Brisbane.

Do you know of any other local hidden tunnel stories? I'm sure there must be more out there.

PS: I have recently heard rumours of a mysterious 'Clem 7 Tunnel' near Woolloongabba, and stories that a few people have even driven their cars through it. I haven't met anybody who has seen it, and it is probably just another urban myth, but will let you know if I hear anything else.

2011: A Year of Doing History to Death

2011-12-30T09:54:00.000+10:00

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...

The Myth of ‘Halliday’s Leap’

2011-12-20T10:32:00.001+10:00

Arthur Ernest 'Slim' Halliday, convicted murderer and infamous Boggo Road escapologist during the 1930s-1960s, is the subject of some incredible tales, some tall, some true. Like the time he bent a solid metal cell door back with a winch made from bits of wood and bed sheet. Or the time he burned a hole in roof of the mattress workshop in a bid to escape. Or when he made a replica gun from bits of leather. These are some of the true tales.

Arthur 'Slim' Halliday, 1937 (BRGHS)

There is, however, one particular story that is as tall as it gets. During one of my first visits to Boggo Road I took a tour with a highly-respected former prison officer who told our group all about 'Halliday's Leap', the place where Slim Halliday jumped off the roof of E Wing cellblock in 1940 and landed on the top of the perimeter wall before making good his escape. At the time I totally believed it - such is the authoritative power of the tour guide - but after I worked at the museum and spent more time in the area, I realised that the story and the numbers just didn't add up.

The legendary leap would have involved jumping from a three-storey cellblock roof onto the top of the red-bricked outer prison wall, a near-impossible feat involving a drop of eight metres over a width of four metres. The curved top of the wall itself is no more than 30cm wide and is over seven metres high – not the safest landing spot for someone jumping from a great height. Imagine jumping off the roof of a two-storey house, aiming to land perfectly on a 30cm-wide ledge, without breaking your legs or spine or falling over when you do land, because that ledge is seven metres off the ground - and someone with a rifle on the neighbour's roof will shoot you if they see you. It is, basically, a feat requiring all the abilities of Spiderman, and Slim may have been a lot of things but he was no superhero.

Track, outer wall, and cellblock at Boggo Road.

I delved into the official records at Queensland State Archives and a very different story emerged, but one that was no less impressive. To run through it briefly; Halliday had planned this escape for months, secretly making and hiding escape ropes, grappling hooks and wire cutters in the prison workshops. One day he slipped unnoticed from a line of prisoners and scaled the 10-foot high fence of the exercise yard to gain acces to the Track that ran around the inside of the perimeter walls. He climbed onto the workshop roof and dropped down through a skylight that gave him access to the inside of the workshop, where he cut through wire mesh walls with the hidden wire cutters to get to his escape ropes. He climbed up onto the roof again and hooked the longest rope over the outer wall, at a place he had worked out to be a blind-spot from the towers. He dropped the shorter rope down the side of the workshop and climbed down onto the Track, then climbed up over the prison wall using the first rope before changing his clothes and making his escape.

A – Location of ‘Halliday’s Leap’

B – Workshops

T – Towers

No.2 Division, Boggo Road, in the 1940s. (BRGHS)

Halliday's escape route 1940 (BRGHS)

There is no room in this article for the tale of the massive manhunt, shoot-outs and high-speed car chases that led to Halliday’s recapture, which is all covered in detail in my book The Houdini of Boggo Road. Of more relevance here is how the myth of 'Halliday's Leap' grew. One clue comes from discussions with local residents who were children when the escape happened. When news of the breakout got out, local parents ordered their children to stay home, but the kids had other ideas and formed themselves into 'posses', excitedly roaming the local streets in nervous pursuit of the escaped prisoner. They circulated a story that Halliday had jumped from a roof during his escape, and in the process of ‘Chinese Whispers’ this became a cellblock roof. This story took hold, and 50 years later it had become accepted even within modern prison officer circles.

Halliday escaped over the blind spot at this section of the wall again in 1946, and it gained the name of of 'Halliday’s Leap’ quite early on. Following yet another escape attempt by Slim, this time in 1953, a newspaper ran an article with the headline 'HALLIDAY’S LEAP HEADACHE FOR BOGGO ROAD STAFF: WEAK SPOT IN THE PRISON WALLS'. However, the blindspot had in fact been fixed in 1947 with the erection of a new stand-alone guard tower (called E tower) in the prison grounds to the southeast of the workshops. The workshops and Halliday’s Leap were later demolished as part of the prison modernisation of the early 1970s. The myth of Halliday's Leap has only been demolished in more recent years.

The Woman in Black: Solving the mystery of a vanishing ghost

2011-12-14T00:10:00.002+10:00

Every town has a 'white lady' ghost story. I know my hometown does, and they're pretty much par for the course as generic ghostlore goes. ‘White Lady’ stories have been around for centuries in Britain, and are generally associated with some romantic tragedy or other, usually being women who have lost a husband or lover and wear Victorian-era clothing. A variation on this theme are 'Lady in Black' stories, and the South Brisbane Cemetery has one of its very own. In recent years, however, this particular Lady in Black has been suffering something of an identity crisis, but I think we can now resolve some of those issues for her.

Tracey Olivieri, author of 'The Ghosts of South Brisbane Cemetery', grew up in the local area during the 1970s and recalls children trying to scare each with ‘lady in black’ tales back then, telling each other of a dark figure moving through the cemetery. The most common theory was that it was the ghost of a heartbroken young 19th-century widow who used to visit the grave of her dead husband every day. She died unexpectedly, but had not realised this and still tended the grave, wearing her mourning clothes. According to Tracey, "If anyone approaches her she just lowers her head and simply disappears amongst the graves. She is not menacing and is not a ghost to be scared of". She was only ever seen within 'the Teardrop’, which is the part of cemetery on the hill near the main entrance. The cemetery roadway circles around it to form the shape of a teardrop.

By the late 1990s, however, ghost tours had started in the cemetery and the backstory changed dramatically. This online version dates from 2001:

"A woman in a black Victorian dress often walks down the road through the cemetery towards the prison... Many old-timers claim she's the tormented spirit of the only woman who was ever executed in Queensland!"

The woman that the 'old-timers' refer to here is Ellen Thomson, who was executed at Boggo Road in 1887 and is a rather obvious candidate for a ghost story. She was the only woman hanged, a mother of six, a convicted murderer, and an Irish Catholic who died clutching a crucifix and proclaiming her innocence. If you are doing a tour in the cemetery where she was buried, next to the prison were she was hanged, it's a no-brainer. The basic story, as it was relayed to me, went something like this: Because she was a woman, she was given special dispensation to be buried outside section 6B, where executed prisoners were normally buried, and now her ghost could be seen wandering near section 10C, wearing the black dress she was buried in and clutching a string of rosary beads to her chest etc etc...

Ellen Thomson, 1887 (QSA, #ID2947)

What is interesting about this tale, however, is the fact that it was the headline story for the cemetery tour for a few years before it completely vanished without trace from the itinerary. A new story with an all-new 'lady in black' suddenly appeared, this one featuring a nun with a ‘skull’ face. So what happened to Ellen? Why was her story dropped so abruptly, never to be spoken of again? Surely her story and character were sufficiently interesting, and much more believable than a skull-faced nun?

Scooby Doo, where are you?

After recently speaking to people who went on those early tours, I think the mystery of the vanishing ghost has been solved. It turns out the ghost tour had been taking people to the WRONG GRAVE! The hanged Ellen Thomson actually had been buried in section 6B after all, back in 1887. The ghost tour people had been taking customers to the grave of a different Ellen Thompson, who died in 1903 and was buried in section 10C. Whoops.

South Brisbane Cemetery

This was a glaring mistake that couldn't go undetected for long, and sure enough the truth was realised at some point prior to 2004. Unfortunately, this left the ghost of the executed Ellen Thomson haunting the wrong part of the cemetery, so it seems the story was quietly disappeared while a new one appeared in its place. The Catholic element was retained, but the action moved to the Teardrop, a different part of the cemetery.

And what happened to the older ghost? The one that used to wander around in the black dress with the rosary beads? If that part of story was true (even if this was the wrong Ellen Thompson grave) surely the same ghost would still be around there anyway, right where ghost tours had so long claimed it was? Apparently not. When the mistake was realised, the tour spot vanished and it seems that the ghost went with it.

This is a nice little example of why things like the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery and Moonlight Tours become necessary, to make sure that the ever-unfolding history of a place like South Brisbane Cemetery stays on the straight and narrow.

PS: I am not going to get caught up in any debate about who the so-called Lady in Black actually is, because I don't know if ghosts even exist, or what they are, or if we can attribute identities to them. If we can connect ghosts to specific tragic tales, then a good candidate in this case would be the local woman whose husband drowned at sea in 1899, several weeks before her two-year-old daughter burned to death, and six months before she killed herself. Her other children found her suicide note at dawn, and her movements were traced to the South Brisbane Cemetery, where her hat and cloak were found near footsteps leading to the riverbank. Later that day the police recovered her drowned body from near the same spot.

She was buried with her little girl in a grave near the Teardrop.

How to Build a Boob Gun... & Why You Shouldn't

2011-12-08T19:01:00.000+10:00

Some of the most popular objects in the Boggo Road Gaol Museum collection were the 1980s prisoner-made tattoo machines, or 'boob guns' in jail slang. These illegal items were not only testament to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of some inmates, they were also an artefact of resistance against the powers-that-be. Our tour guides had working models of these things that were always a big hit with visitors, and I once put together a display about these tattoo machines at the Anthropology Museum at the University of Queensland. The sight of passing uni students stopping to take notes is always a good indicator of interest!

Tattoo machine from the Boggo Road museum collection.

Tattoo machines like this were an illegal item in prison, not only because prisoners were required to maintain the same appearance during their sentence, but also because they could be used as weapons. Another important reason for restricting their use in more recent years has been to minimise the spread of communicable diseases such as hepatitis C by sharing needles. However, none of this stopped inmates from getting tattoos, and there were over 100 tattooing items in the Boggo Road collection, including both complete and incomplete machines and components, showing that tattooing was a widespread practice within the Queensland prison system.

These machines could be cobbled together using bits and pieces found around a 1980s prison. The diagram below shows what the components were, and the table below that shows where these bits and pieces came from:

Image: C. Dawson

Component	Material	Probable source
Drive rod and barrel	Pen	Issued for hobby work, etc, in cells
Needle and connecting pin	Needle or pin	Sewing needles and pins from industry workshops
		Wire (later sharpened) from workshops, or paper clips issued as stationery
		Diabetic needles from the prison hospital surgery
		Mathematical compass, issued for hobby work
		Guitar string
Frame	Toothbrush	Prison issue
Connecting pin	Matchsticks	Prison issue
Spindle	Buttons	Prison clothing
Motor	Motor	Extracted from audio cassette players or radios (allowed in cells)
Wiring	Electrical wiring	Same as above
Tattoo ink	India ink	Issued for hobby work in cells
	Charcoal	Ground from spent matches, mixed with oil
	Pen ink	Obtained from split tube of pen and mixed with margarine
Binding for frame and components	Cotton thread	Prison clothing or workshops
	Adhesive tape	Industry workshops
	Glue	Industry workshops

Ink was applied to the skin prior to puncturing with the needle, although sometimes a mix of ground charcoal and water was used. Professional tattoo shops use special inks that do not irritate the skin and are unlikely to cause allergic reactions. Makeshift inks used in prison tattoos may be unsafe and damage the skin, causing permanent scarring. They can also contain dangerous chemicals.

This is how the machine worked:

Image: C. Dawson

AND HERE IS WHY YOU MUST NEVER ACTUALLY USE THESE THINGS

Apart from the obvious risk that an inmate could leave prison with some bloody awful tattoos, there are SERIOUS health risks involved with prison tattoos, as sterilising the makeshift equipment is difficult or impossible. Apart from basic skin infections, deadly diseases like hepatitis and HIV/AIDS can be passed from one prisoner to another when needles are re-used. The playing card on the left below is from a deck issued to prisoners, while the poster to the right was also used in Queensland prisons.

So all-in-all, brilliantly clever devices but potentially fatal to use. So don't.

Did I mention the bad tattoos?

More about tattoo machines and other prisoner-made illegal devices and objects can be found in the book Shivs, Bongs & Boob Guns: Made in a Queensland prison cell.

Brisbane's Lost Plague Cemetery

2011-12-05T13:19:00.003+10:00

There are a few places around Brisbane that housed specialist burial grounds in the past, such as Peel Island ('lepers') and Saint Helena Island (prisoners), but one of the most forgotten spots has to be Gibson Island, in the Brisbane River near Hemmant. Today it is the site of a fertiliser factory, but back in the 1900s Gibson Island was home to Brisbane's plague cemetery.

Gibson Island, on the Brisbane River near Murrarie, as it looks now. The Gateway Bridge can be seen in the background.

Bubonic Plague, or the 'Black Death', is something more usually associated with the Middle Ages but outbreaks of plague, spread by rats and introduced by ships from overseas, were common in Queensland at the turn of the 20th century. The first case was on Hawthorne Street, Woolloongabba, in April 1900. Over the next ten years there were 499 cases of bubonic plague officially reported in Queensland, resulting in 219 deaths, many of these in Brisbane.

Medical staff in plague protection gear, Maryborough, 1905 (John Oxley Library #53460)

The outbreaks led medical authorities to implement strict public health and sanitary measures. Plague-affected houses were quarantined, cleaned and fumigated, bed linen and curtains burned, and an iron stockade was erected around the property and two neighbouring houses. Rat-catching teams went to work, and over 90,000 rats were destroyed.

Destroyed rats, Brisbane, circa 1900-02 (John Oxley Library #108588)

Precautions also extended to the care and burial of victims. During the 1900 outbreak, plague victims were often sent to Cairncross House, the quarantine station on the riverbank at Colmslie. In May 1900 the highest spot on Gibson Island was selected as an isolated burial ground for those who died. The bodies, wrapped in sheets soaked in carbolic acid and placed in lime-slaked coffins, were transported on a special ‘plague boat’ and accompanied by only two warders and a doctor from the quarantine station, who was specially authorised to read the funeral service.

The first burial, that of 18-year-old Richard Shanahan, took place in May 1900. Family members often wanted to make other arrangements, and in July 1900 there was an emotional scene at the North Quay wharf when the mother of 15-year-old victim David Fihelly 'strongly objected' to him being taken to Gibson Island. The authorities finally consented to her wishes and interred the boy at Toowong instead.

At least 14 people were buried at Gibson Island during 1900, and in April 1901 a decision was taken to cease the practice on the grounds that it was 'cruel and unneccesary' and 'bitterly resented by relatives of the victims'. The funerals were also felt to take the medical officer away from the quarantine station for too long. Families were now able to make their own arrangements, but only after the bodies had been carefully coffined by Health Board officials.

After this time plague victims were buried in different Brisbane cemeteries, including at least three people in South Brisbane Cemetery. After 1909 there were 12 plague-free years in Queensland, and after an 1921 outbreak that caused 63 deaths, the last reported case of plague in the State was in 1922.

For such a relatively unknown part of Brisbane, Gibson Island actually has a surprising history. The island was originally known to the locals as Brophy (not Brophe, as is often stated) Island after a hermit farmer who lived there. It was also known as 'One Man Island' for the same reason. By the late 1880s it was known as Gibson's Island, after an engineer who was in charge of dredging the river.

Aquarium Passage, the waterway on the southern side of the island, was so named because an aquarium opened there in 1889. In addition to the aquarium there was a 'dance hall, a zoo, a roller coaster, and a cycle track'. The aquarium was washed away in the big river flood of 1893, although most of the zoo animals were saved. It fell into decline after this, but after the world wars Gibson Island became something of a resort again. The Friend family opened a kiosk on the island in 1919 when the island was all bush, and beaches attracted many Brisbanites every weekend. By the 1920s a popular sports recreation ground had been developed, but a power station opened on the island in the 1950s. It is likely that the construction projects on the island have destroyed any remains of the plague burial ground.

Gibson Island Power Station, circa 1953 (John Oxley Library #203755)

P.S. A few years back I heard speculation that the bodies at Boggo Road might have been plague victims, but anybody thought to have the plague would not have been kept in a crowded prison, given the potential for an epidemic to break out.

Australia's Next Top Bizarre Death-Contraption

2011-12-01T17:13:00.004+10:00

That some better method of inflicting death than hanging should be adopted we readily admit. It is at best a disgusting method of execution, and is liable either to degenerate into something like torture, or else to lead to a shocking mischance such as happened yesterday. There are many well-known methods of producing painless extinction, and one or other should be adopted. (Brisbane Courier, 14 June 1887)

So wrote one reporter after the execution of Ellen Thomson, during which the rope cut into her neck and blood gushed over the floor. And he was right. Hanging is one of the most unpredictable methods of execution and often did not go according to plan, which in the late 19th century was to break the prisoner's neck quickly and cleanly. However, some prisoners in Brisbane were strangled to death as a result of the 'drop' not delivering enough force to the neck, while on other occasions the head would be almost removed due to too much force. In fact, on one memorable occasion in 1879, the prisoner's head WAS completely pulled off when he reached the end of the 'drop'.

There was much debate around this time as to the best method to use, and while the French still used the much-more predictable guillotine, the electric chair was being developed in the USA. The unpredictability of hanging drew occasional comment in Queensland newspapers on the subject of alternative execution methods. These correspondents apparently gave a lot of thought to the subject, some of them much more than seemed healthy.

When convicted murderer Patrick Collins was hanged at Petrie Terrace in 1872 he was given an unusually high drop and the shock of the fall resulted in in his head almost being severed from his body. The sight was apparently ‘sickening to behold, and many turned away from it in horror’, and prompted John Kelly of Fortitude Valley to write to the Brisbane Courier to complain that hanging was ‘barbarous and unscientific’. He helpfully suggested that garrotting be used instead, in order to make the ‘the operation as physically painless as possible to the victim, and as little revolting as possible to the beholden’:

The “garotta” is an instrument which fulfils these conditions. An armchair, in which the victim is seated, his legs and arms secured to those of the chair, an iron collar, having inside the back, in a recess, a sharp chisel-shaped cutter, which can be shot forward by some mechanical contrivance, is adjusted around his neck; a touch from the executioner, and the cutter, entering the neck, severs the spinal cord, and, without a groan or a sigh, earthly life ceases to exist. No red torrent gushes forth, no nervous struggles shock the onlookers. Is not this a more scientific and more humane way of severing the spinal cord, than our rude way of wrenching asunder the cervical column? In many parts of these colonies, people kill their cattle in an analogous manner, but by simpler means. (Brisbane Courier, 15 June 1872)

Humane and civilised execution in the Philippines.

A Queensland Times correspondent of 1874 suggested that it was ‘by no means certain that in hanging and beheading that death is instantaneous’, and so suffocation by carbolic acid gas should be used. The writer recommended that, after the prisons of the colony had been ‘furnished with air-tight cells and other proper apparatus’, execution could be carried out in what amounted to a gas chamber. 'D.H.F.', another advocate of carbolic acid gas, went to greater lengths in 1892 and described the required apparatus, which he felt was ‘far preferable to hanging, decapitation, garroting, or this new-fangled “electrocution”’.

Construct an air-tight perpendicular shaft, say 3ft. square by 10ft. in height, open at the top, and provided with a close-fitting door. The floor would consist of perforated metal, which would form the top of a small chamber airtight at the bottom and sides. Inside the shaft would be a seat on to which the criminal would be strapped, after which the door would be closed. A strong iron vessel containing lime and sulphuric acid and provided with a stop-cock would be placed in the airtight chamber below the floor. When all was ready this vessel would be opened and the gas would pass up through the perforated floor carrying the ordinary air above it. If a sufficient supply of carbonic acid gas is generated death must ensue very rapidly. Anyone wishing to experiment on a small scale with this method of causing death may easily do so with a glass tube about 1ft. long and 3in. or so in diameter. It would be very easy to fasten a floor of wire gauze about 3in. from one end. An ordinary bottle will take the place of the iron vessel, and the carbonic acid gas can be produced with the ordinary tartaric acid and soda of commerce. By some such apparatus the effect of the gas could be watched on a mouse or some other small animal. (Brisbane Courier, 27 April 1892)

Lord Carbarlick-Skullface, no doubt coming to a Ghost Tour near you soon. *sigh*

Just before the first Boggo Road hanging took place in 1883, 'Verdugo', a correspondent to the Brisbane Courier, described hanging as ‘a troublesome, difficult, and illiterate', and advocated poisoning condemned prisoners in their sleep and then hanging them afterwards for the statutory hour.

In 1893, 'Humanity' wrote that he had ‘often thought that drowning would be an excellent method of execution, and one free from many of the disagreeables associated with execution by hanging, beheading, and electricity.’ He had, in fact, given the subject enough thought to devise the following:

Requirements: An iron tank, 10ft. by 4ft. in diameter, open at the top, and filled with water, placed in position so that the top would be level with the floor on which the officials and the victim would stand. The victim, having had his hands tied behind him, and a weight of 100lb. or so fastened to his feet, would be lowered foot first into the water, and after remaining submerged half-an-hour, would be lifted out, and the customary ceremony of pronouncing life extinct performed. (Brisbane Courier, 18 July 1893)

Despite all this 'expert' advice, no garrotting chairs, gas chambers, midnight poisoners or drowning tanks were ever required at Boggo Road and the Queensland government persisted with hanging until the last execution took place in 1913. They must have been reassured, however, that upstanding citizens were out there devising new-fangled murder contraptions and sharing their plans in the newspapers.

Have YOU ever designed an unnecessarily-complicated 'Mousetrap'-style death machine and had it published in the local newspaper? Share your stories here.

The Boggo Road Burials Mystery

2011-11-26T21:17:00.001+10:00

In the excellent 1980 Robert Redford prison movie Brubaker, the chief warden discovers multiple unmarked graves in the prison grounds and his attempts to unravel the mystery lead to political scandal. In the mid-2000s big questions were being asked about the possibility of bodies having been secretly buried in the grounds of Boggo Road. Was there a Brubaker-style mystery to be unearthed there? All the rumours suggested that indeed there was.

The mystery took shape back in the 1970s, when excavation work for sewerage pipes was taking place in an exercise yard in the new No.1 Division and three officers noticed a line of circular patterns in the walls of the newly-dug trench. One of the officers recalled seeing twelve ‘dark patches’, all of them about 45cm below the surface, 30-40cm in diameter, and uniformly spaced about 60cm apart. Another recalled seeing only four patches, which were light grey in colour as opposed to the more naturally-coloured soil surrounding them. I have in my possession stat decs and hand-drawn maps from these men relating to this incident.

When they reported what they had seen, their bosses informed them that, ‘all bodies were reinterred to Dutton Park' (meaning South Brisbane Cemetery), indicating that on-site burials actually had taken place at some point. They were also ordered to keep quiet about the incident. One of the officers, however, took some samples from the patches, which he described as being ‘very gooey... like wet clay’. These samples were stored for thirty years before being handed over to the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society and then forensically tested at the University of Queensland in 2003. The tests discovered microscopic bone fragments of Caucasian origin, and degraded DNA sequences. The report concluded that the DNA was either from the remains of at least two individuals buried at the site, or from more recent contamination of the samples, or from a combination of these two sources. It called for further testing and an excavation of the site.

An archaeological survey of the No.1 Division in 2005 (at which I was present) failed to locate any graves, although it is very possible that the test trenches were dug in the wrong place. It has also been suggested that most of the soil in the area was removed during the 1990s demolition of the No.1 Division, which would have also removed any trace of the graves.

So were there bodies at Boggo Road? The 1970s trench was dug in an area that, according to prison lore, was once a burial ground. This was, in previous years, just outside the north-eastern wall of the original No.1 Division, built in 1883, not far from the original Superintendent’s House. Older officers recalled seeing white crosses painted on the outside of the prison wall there in the 1930s, and when one superintendent’s wife maintained a garden near there, the officers would joke with her about not gardening too close to the graves in case she dug up a skull. When the new No.1 Division was constructed this area was underneath an exercise yard.

Approximate location of the burial sites circa 1952 (John Oxley Library #65253)

There is also hearsay evidence of graves at the front of the prison. A 19th-century photograph (below) shows some white fencing, similar to a grave border, under a tree to the front left of the driveway from Boggo Road. A retired officer who owned the image claimed to have seen several grave sites here in the 1930s, some being fenced and one bordered with stones. In the photograph, however, this area is partially obscured by trees, making it difficult to observe the alleged graves.

Front of the prison off Boggo Road, South Brisbane, in the late 19th century. The alleged graves referred to above are to the left of the driveway under a tree.

So we know that early officers have a memory of a couple of burial sites, and that in the 1970s grave-like markings in the ground were seen during excavation work. It seems very likely that there were graves in the north-eastern area at some point, but these graves would have been destroyed in subsequent construction and demolition work.

Which leads to a bigger mystery...who were they?

The graves could not pre-date the prison, as they would have been exposed during the original construction works. It has been suggested they were the remains of executed prisoners, but Brisbane City Council records clearly indicate that all the prisoners hanged at Boggo Road were buried in lot 6B at South Brisbane Cemetery so I would think that explanation is unlikely. They could have been the graves were those of other prisoners who died at the gaol from causes such as suicide, disease or murder. I have heard it said that they could be bubonic plague victims, but plague victims were quarantined in a building at Colmslie and there is no way the authorities would have held such a person inside a tightly-packed prison. Over a hundred inmates died at the site in the 117 years that prisons operated there, some from highly infectious diseases, but the records regarding these burials are incomplete. As far as we know, records regarding deaths may also be incomplete.

The truth is that, if there were graves behind Boggo Road, nobody knows who the people were. Different people may have different theories, but no solid evidence has been provided to back them up. The bodies have long gone, but the mystery remains for now.

For more on this subject, see my article ‘The Dead Outside the Fence: Burying executed prisoners in Brisbane, 1830-1913’, in the Queensland History Journal vol. 20, no.8, November 2008 (Royal Historical Society of Queensland).

The Strangest Argument Ever Made Against Capital Punishment

2011-11-17T12:37:00.001+10:00

Queensland was the first part of the old British Empire to abolish capital punishment. This happened in 1922, with the simple addition of this one sentence to the Criminal Code: ‘The sentence of punishment by death shall no longer be pronounced or recorded, and the punishment of death shall no longer be inflicted’.

The road to abolition was not so simple, however, and this was the second time that a Queensland Labor government (we also had the world's first Labor government, by the way) had tried to pass the bill. The first attempt was in 1916, and parliamentary debate featured a range of arguments in favour of and against the idea, including what has to be one of the most left-field cases ever made against capital punishment.

Speaking against abolition, the Opposition Queensland Liberal Party contended that the issue was unimportant as there were more pressing concerns at hand, such as World War I. Their main line of argument was that capital punishment was a deterrent to crime, and that the absence of the death penalty would result in the rise of ‘lynch law’. The Old Testament sentiment of ‘an eye for an eye’ was raised on numerous occasions.

The arguments in favour of the bill included the religious (a prisoner would be deprived of the full opportunity for repentance); medical (murderers sometimes had ‘mental disease’); practical (hanging failed to act as a deterrent); judicial (even though mistakes had been made in the past, the sentence was irrevocable); and moral (the punishment does not fit the case nor effect the reformation of the offender). It was left to Dr William Taylor to bring an entirely new perspective to the debate.

Dr William Frederick Taylor (John Oxley Library #135461)

As the official parliamentary records show, Taylor argued from a spiritualist viewpoint, asserting the existence of telepathy and astral planes, and that the death of a criminal only serves to release his consciousness into the astral plane, which would cause more harm than good:

By killing the body you free the mind of the individual, and his consciousness is much more capable of influencing others than it was before. That is the great argument against the death penalty… by killing the body, you liberate the criminal, who will do more mischief than he could possibly do if you keep him in his body, it is a mistake to kill him...

If you kill the body with its five senses, the vehicle for the ego, or consciousness, to manifest through on the physical plane, you do a very stupid action, for the evil-disposed man can from the astral plane influence more easily the minds of dwellers on the physical plane than he could do while in his physical body.

Having introduced an angle that nobody saw coming, Taylor then flipped his argument around, saying that although he preferred imprisonment for murder, even inside a prison cell the prisoner may still be able use telepathic powers to influence others into committing crime:

We all know that such a thing as telepathy exists, and if you can concentrate your thought sufficiently you can transmit that thought to some other individual who will receive that thought and act on it...

If you shut him up in a cell he is powerless to do any evil, unless he has a sufficient mental power to concentrate very strongly, and even then there is not much possibility of his doing any evil.

All Glory to Hypnotoad!

To be fair, Taylor was in many ways a great man, having a brilliant medical career and being an early advocate of such causes as female suffrage. Like many others he turned to Spiritualism during the carnage of World War 1 (in which he lost a son). However, this was probably one of the strangest arguments ever presented on the floor of the Queensland parliament.*

After a short debate the bill was defeated, but the Labor government made a second and successful attempt to pass the abolition bill in 1922. William Taylor entered the astral plane in 1927, and has been influencing the minds of unsuspecting Queenslanders ever since.

* Not including the speeches of Bob Katter.

Sticks and Stones

2011-11-09T23:00:00.002+10:00

This is an update on my recent article 'The ghost that haunted South Brisbane Cemetery... from a thousand miles away', and hopefully the last on the subject for a while.

Cameron 'Jack' Sim of Brisbane Ghost Tours is coming under increasing scrutiny from others in the paranormal field. One quality new blog called 'Haunts of Brisbane' describes him as 'an unqualified salesman plugging gimmicky tours based on fictionalised "heritage"', while others publicly accuse him of having 'the worst reputation I have ever heard of'. This comes in the wake of my own less-than-complementary articles about 'most haunted polls' and the publication of misleading photos.

Above: South Brisbane Cemetery at night

Although I thought I was more restrained in my criticism than others, it was no surprise when I received an email this morning containing legal threats from Mr Sim. As I have said before, ‘from now on communication on these matters will be dealt with in the public sphere’, so here we are. Although Mr Sim did not have the fortitude to address me himself, I will direct my comments to him anyway. This is the letter, with corrective comments from myself:

'Dear Chris Dawson,
We are aware of what has been happening on Facebook. There have been 3 incidents of people commenting on our Facebook page just to attack our business. We know these people are connected to you and The Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery. We even suspect that some of them may have been invented by you for this sole purpose. We are asking you now to cease and desist or we will have to take action against you. Their comments are defamatory and rude. Our regular customers who follow our Facebook page have written in, upset about what has been happening. This cannot go on.

The false assumption that the Facebook critics are actually me, or ‘connected’ to me, is a rather paranoid premise on which to base a legal threat. Am I going to be sued for the comments of other people on Facebook? If so, God help us all.

'I am also aware of what you have recently posted on 'The Boggo Blog'. Firstly, I am the host on the South Brisbane Cemetery tour. I received the photo and I posted it on Facebook. I mislabelled the photo, I am aware of that and it was a simple mistake. It was very good of our customer to send us these photos and we are very happy they did so. I have apologised profusely for mislabelling it. However, Chris, it was a simple mistake. You have then taken my personal error and broadcasted it, turning it into this ridiculous claim that we have been stealing photos. I am very happy to take responsibility of what happened but not to take responsibility for your outrageous claims.

I wrote that this incident was either a mistake or outright deceit. Ghost Tours have claimed that it was a mistake of ‘mislabelling’, despite the selective editing of the text that explained this was not a picture of the cemetery. In fact, even after the discrepancy was pointed out, Ghost Tours bunkered down and insisted that it WAS from a night tour at the cemetery. The claim that it was actually the South Brisbane Cemetery tour guide that made that ‘mistake’ is very revealing.

For the record, I did not ever say that anybody was ‘stealing photos’.

'These ongoing attacks affect, not only Jack, but they affect our staff and customers. They affect me personally and our poor customer that graciously gave us these unexplainable photos.

Actually, the ‘poor customer’ actually thanked the guy from Haunted Australia (who called Jack Sim an 'immature child' with 'the worst reputation i have ever heard of') for his comments on the Ghost Tour page. Go figure.

I must remind you, Chris, that we will have to be working together in the future (says who?) and we think you should come to terms with that now and stop this parade of stooges coming across our Facebook page and slinging mud. We are not dumb. Not only are they upsetting our ever faithful customers but they are muddying your name as everyone knows they are connected to you.

Deconstructing critics is not a very mature way handling criticism. This imaginary ‘parade of stooges’ are in reality a range of individuals who I have no control over and in most cases don't even know. While it is quite flattering for someone to think I have this level of control over an army of willing henchmen, it is seriously unhealthy to assume that random people who criticise you are somehow all working together in some kind of conspiracy.

Is the Courier-Mail reporter who recently gave the South Brisbane Cemetery Ghost Tour a terrible review in on the conspiracy too?

'We wish that you would stop these school yard squabbles and cyber bullying and conduct yourself like the professional business man that you claim to be.*

Sticks and stones etc etc...

Holding people to account for their assertions in a public setting is not ‘cyber bullying’, it is a normal part of discourse and negotiation in the field of history and heritage. If someone makes an incorrect claim, it is usual for that claim to be countered by the presentation of facts. That is all I have ever done in my blogs.

As for ‘professionalism’, when my behaviour has resulted in multiple visits and warnings from the police, appearances in court, and being banned from dealings with several community groups (I can name five, there may be more), then I will have reached Mr Sim’s level of professionalism and he can lecture me all about it then.

Behind his manufactured façade, it would seem that 'Jack' Sim’s modus operandi for over ten years has been to bully, threaten and abuse. Now that this behaviour is finally being exposed in the public domain he suddenly wants the 'schoolyard squabbles' to stop and everyone to forget what happened. And how does he go about this? With apologies and a mea culpa? No, just the usual threats and insults.

'I am very happy to meet with you and discuss any problems you have. Just let me know.

E____ H____**
Acting Tour Manager
Ghost Tours Pty Ltd'

You know what I’d be happy with? For 'Jack' Sim to either show us this bloody National Geographic article in which Brisbane was ‘voted the second most haunted city in the world’, or just come out and admit that it does not exist. We're all waiting!

* Having never owned a business, I certainly don't recall ever describing myself as a businessman.
** As I believe the person whose name was attached this email either never wrote the email, or did so under instruction, I have removed her name from this article. Especially as she left Ghost Tours shortly after this was sent.

The ghost that haunted South Brisbane Cemetery... from a thousand miles away

2011-11-07T13:30:00.003+10:00

Anyone who read my ‘Ghosts Busted’ article or my Haunting Question book would know my skeptical take on the paranormal industry. There are all kinds of people in that industry, good and bad, and I am out to bust myths about the heritage places I am involved in, and will expose any attempts to distort the history or reputations of these places. Protecting heritage is not just about saving bricks and mortar, its also about stories and history.

With that in mind, there was a bit of trouble last week when a photo, apparently of an ‘eerie face in the mist’, turned up on the Brisbane 'Ghosts Tours' Facebook page. It looked like this:

It was accompanied with the unequivocal claim that it was taken during a South Brisbane Cemetery Ghost Tour on the previous Saturday night. Which is interesting, because it is not South Brisbane Cemetery. Anyone who knows the place could tell you that straight away. What's more, the photo was taken during broad daylight.

Then, quite luckily, the same photo also turned up on the ‘Haunted Australia’ Facebook page, with one crucial difference – this time it was full and uncropped. On that page it was correctly identified as being of the Hobart Penitentiary and Chapel, under a glorious blue sky:

There is no way an informed person could look at that and think it was a night tour at South Brisbane Cemetery, but that is exactly what Ghost Tours claimed it was. A little bit of Facebook fisticuffs broke out when commentors pointed out it was not the cemetery, but Ghost Tours insisted that yes it was, a stance they dropped when the photographer intervened to point out that it was a pic of the Hobart Penitentiary taken back in 2006. He went on to say this had been made clear in a part of an email he sent to Ghost Tours, an email they reproduced online but with the relevant paragraph pinpointing the location edited out.

Sorry, said Ghost Tours, we misread the email. This excuse asks the reader to believe that they failed to notice the large non-cemetery sandstone building taking up half the photo before they cropped it out; that they also failed to notice the broad daylight in the pic; and that they failed to notice the explanatory paragraph that they themselves edited out of the email.

Either it was an act of monumental incompetence, or a bit of outright deceit. Readers are of course entitled to make up their minds, but I think the Moonlight Tours blurb of 'explore the cemetery with the people who know it best' was never more apt.

The whole sorry incident also highlights one of the themes of The Haunting Question, in that photos like this can be spread around the Internet and go on the 'record' as another ghost statistic. Which is what would have happened here without the intervention of those meddling kids.

AN UPDATE ON THIS ARTICLE IS AVAILABLE HERE.

The Boggo Road Markets

2011-10-24T09:13:00.007+10:00

The Boggo Road Markets are on every Sunday, 7am-1pm, outside Boggo Road Gaol, Annerley Road, Dutton Park.

The Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society will be having a stall at the markets on a monthly basis. Follow us on Facebook to receive up-to-date news about when we will be there.

The new Boggo Road markets opened yesterday morning and the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society was there for the occasion. We set up our stall with flyers and our Inside History books, many of which are about the gaol and the history of the local area, and these sold well. It was particularly good to see people coming up to the stall and tell us they already had some of the books and how much they had enjoyed them. A little genuine praise goes a long way with me. In fact, it was meeting various people at the stall, old faces and new, that was probably the highlight of the day for us.

Boggo Road Markets, 23 October 2011. There's us in the blue-and-white-striped stall (right).

Over the course of the day we had numerous long chats with people with a direct or family association with the gaol, or a long family history in the area. We also signed up several rather splendid new members to the historical society.

One of the most useful functions of the stall was updating people on news about the gaol, as we received lots of queries about Boggo Road being open for tours (despite it closing six years ago). Even people who had just spent five minutes talking at a Ghost Tours stall were still completely unaware that the gaol was not open for tours. It never fails to amaze me that we are the only source of honest and reliable information on this subject. One man even informed me that he'd heard the buildings inside the gaol walls would be ripped out and replaced with a shopping centre! We were able to work out that he was in fact referring to the planned retail strip outside the gaol.

Will the markets be a success? That remains to be seen, because although visitor numbers were good for the first morning, it was obvious from what we heard at the stall (and the size of some cameras) that many people were expecting to get inside the gaol itself. It will be interesting to see how visitor numbers pan out over the next few weeks. The weekend Brisbane market scene is already quite full, but the quality of the stalls (and, although I really hate this word, the "vibe") at Boggo Road gives these markets a good chance of longevity.

In the meantime, I would suggest that parking a big food truck right across the iconic front gates was a mistake, blocking what should have been the visual centre of the markets. The advantage of having such a unique backdrop to the markets is lost if you can't even see the thing.

PS: This is not the first time the gaol has been used in this way. Sunday morning markets were also held there back in 2001, with stalls outside the main gates and scattered inside the grounds and corridors. These markets suffered from bad timing, and after some initial success they were wound down after an unfortunately long series of wet Sunday mornings affected visitor numbers. However, they were useful in bringing new people to the gaol. I lived just across the road from the place at the time and going to those markets was the first time I had been inside Boggo Road. To come back almost exactly ten years later, having in the meanwhile started a historical society that now has 230+ members, was a nice little way to mark that anniversary.

Have you been to the Boggo Road Markets? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

UPDATE 30 October 2011

We were back for the second week of Boggo Road markets yesterday. Numbers were down a bit from the first week, but we still had a decent day. Many people were still confused as to whether the gaol was open or not, but once again we were able to provide a bit of reliable info.

Boggo Road Reopening Saga V: A New Hope

2011-10-04T10:44:00.001+10:00

After months of waiting, the Boggo Road Reopening Saga entered a new phase last week with the announcement that Leighton Properties have signed a project deed with the Queensland Government for a $275million development of parts of the Boggo Road Urban Village (BRUV), including the old gaol itself.

Before we light any fireworks, I should point out that no concrete plans have yet been made, especially regarding the gaol, and now is just the start of a consultation period for coming up with a plan for the gaol. This will take nine months, and the resulting plan will then require approval from the Queensland Heritage Council and the Brisbane City Council. Renovations and repairs to the gaol will take place when/if approval is granted. A 2013 reopening still looks like the most likely scenario.

Yesterday afternoon I had an introductory meeting with Public Works officials and representatives from Leighton to discuss what happens next, and what shape the overall development will take. Overall plans for the BRUV include:

There will be residential and retail buildings near the gaol.
Boggo Road gaol will be a ‘centrepiece’ of the Boggo Road Urban Village and used to attract visitors to the area.
The state government will still own the site, and in the long term will be looking for a level of financial self-sufficiency from the gaol.
A retail strip is planned for between the gaol and the Ecoscience building.


Proposed retail strip between the Ecoscience Building and Boggo Road Gaol.

In terms of the gaol itself (and once again emphasising that no concrete plans have been made) the following (among other things) came up in discussion:

Some areas inside the prison will be reused/readapted for commercial purposes. The extent of how much, and what form it will take, will be one of the outcomes of the upcoming consultation.
Developers are looking at ‘commercial’ reuse of at least one of the cellblocks.
Developers emphasised that school visits and education will be a priority.
They are also looking at on-site storage and display of artefacts
The next few months will be a ‘data collection phase’ which will include research of the history, discussion of possible use options, and Tanner Architects will do a physical audit of the buildings

One thing that the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society will be insisting upon is that the consultation process is honest. A successful outcome is dependant upon factual input, and we will be very proactive about exposing any second-hand-car-salesman routines and pie-in-the-sky lies from the private sector. We have locked and loaded all the facts we need, and I left the meeting happily assured that the senior public servants and professionals responsible for a $275million project already have their bullshit detectors well and truly switched on, as you would expect.

There will be several further meetings between the BRGHS and Leighton Properties, and we will be pushing to make sure the final plan incorporates our own ideas. Until then, there is much work to be done.

‘Aggressive, bullying and intimidating’: It’s not all tea and cardigans in the Local History scene

2011-09-27T21:17:00.001+10:00

Local historians have a rather quaint image; polite pensioners in cardigans sat in the archives, sifting quietly but excitedly through 19^th-century requisition records for railway department construction projects - and so it should be. But what happens when the practice of non-profit local history conflicts with private business interests? Usually, not very much, as the people involved are generally quite sane and rational. Sometimes, however, it can get quite nasty. In my decade of volunteer work with historical societies I have, unfortunately, come across more than my fair share of nasty.

It raised its ugly head again last week when the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery, a community group of which I am a member, was attacked by Cameron ‘Jack’ Sim, owner of a small business called Ghost Tours. In some disingenuous online marketing material, in which he claimed to have recently 'won' a heritage award, he had an unnecessary little dig at the FOSBC, saying that his business had been 'under fire' from them.

(Just for the record, the so-called 'award-winning' project was actually overseen by the Ipswich City Council and included mixed funding from public and private sources, of which he was just one contributor. Having an excessive admiration of himself, Mr Sim is always nominating himself for awards and this project was one of four others recognised with a commendation in the local heritage section of the National Trust of Queensland annual awards, finishing behind three gold and eight silver medallists. It placed joint 12th out of 16 listed entrants.)

A couple of people posted mild criticism on the Ghost Tours Facebook page about the dig at the FOSBC, and both received a nasty cut-and-paste diatribe from Mr Sim. The FOSBC is now forced to publicly defend ourselves and set the record straight on this matter, because if Mr Sim is prepared to send such material to Facebook posters who are unknown to both him and ourselves, who knows how many other people have heard the same thing from him? His comment is reproduced here, and I have highlighted specific comments which I will be dealing with.

"Dear Matt,
Your comment you posted yesterday was removed, along with another persons. Neither of you are long term followers of Ghost Tours, and your comments are made specifically to attack our business. I am happy to furnish you with the details. Tracy Oliveri and Chris Dawson who claim to represent the FOSBC undertook a campaign to have Ghost Tours closed down in 2009. The intention behind this was that they intended on running their own ghost tours through South Brisbane Cemetery using a psychic medium.What is low and wasn't very nice was the way that these people, representing FOSBC, attacked our tourism business. Both of these individuals have been served defamation warnings from Ghost Tours Pty Ltd and myself. Ghost Tours Pty Ltd supports many voluntary organisations, but the FOSBC is not one. Matt, we expect that followers of this newsletter to be supporters of our company and its historical work, not people who clearly are stooges for an aggressive, bullying and intimidating so-called voluntary organisation. Until such time that FOSBC forms into a separate, legally responsible, not-for-profit organisation (which it currently is not) our company will not support this organisation. And frankly we would encourage the public not to support FOSBC either. I assume that you are a stooge for FOSBC. So there is no loss in me making it clear to you that you are not welcome on our facebook page. Please give my regards to Chris and Tracy and remind them that I will just add your comments to the portfolio of material relating to their attempts to defame me and my business.
JACK SIM"

Here goes then. I will try not to insult Mr Sim, and will stick to provable facts.

Did we try to close down a business so we could set up our own in its place?

Absolutely not. In early 2009 the FOSBC was approached by a woman interested in conducting not-for-profit 'paranormal investigations' in the South Brisbane Cemetery. Doing these as fundraisers for volunteer heritage projects seemed like a good idea, but during the planning process Mr Sim made a range of threats to try and stop them from happening because he felt that they threatened his business interests.

Although we were not deterred by his threats, the FOSBC eventually came to the conclusion that the paranormal investigations were not appropriate inside a cemetery and dropped the idea. People were buried there to rest in peace, and we would respect that. However, Mr Sim's behaviour had opened a Pandora's Box. The more we looked into what was happening, the clearer it was that cemetery night tour/ghost hunt activities were an unregulated mess of commercial exploitation. The Brisbane City Council (BCC) obviously agreed because they instigated a review, and prohibited all cemetery 'ghost hunts' pending the outcome.

At the same time, and in the wake of large-scale 'satanic' vandalism in the Toowong Cemetery, the FOSBC joined with the Friends of Balmoral Cemetery and the Greater Brisbane Cemetery Alliance to lobby the city council and state government to implement cemetery by-laws to help curb vandalism and trespass. Stopping all night tours was a preferred option. We also felt that when it came to deterring nocturnal trespassers, promoting cemeteries as novelty supernatural venues was not helping the situation.

Did we want to close down Ghost Tours?

Absolutely not. Cemetery tours are only one part of the business anyway. However, I do think that Ghost Tours should either lift their game or get out of our cemeteries because in my opinion they are:

Disrespectful
Not only do far-fetched stories of vampires et al sully the memory of real people buried in cemeteries, but conducting occult ritual during tours to summon the 'Grim Reaper' (as Ghost Tours apparently do in Toowong Cemetery) disrespects the spiritual and functional values of a cemetery. A place where people honour the memory of their loved ones. These tour rituals were supposedly banned after Brisbane City Council found out about them in 2009, but we have heard that Ghost Tours still conduct them regardless.

Historically inaccurate
All opinions on the quality of ghost tales aside, much of the historical content of the tours is questionable, often contradicting the historical record. Part of the job of protecting the heritage values of a place is debunking urban myths and making sure that the History is actually correct. In places like Edinburgh historians have even started doing tours specifically to debunk the misinformation told on the many ghost tours there. In fact, just last week, the following review of the South Brisbane Cemetery Ghost Tour appeared in the Courier-Mail:

"The problem with the tour is not the yarns, which, of themselves, probably have enough of the right elements. Moreover both raconteurs are too flat and robotic, so glib that they are unable to breathe atmosphere into their stories. Many of them are flawed, besides. Scene-setting fundamentals such as dates and locations are missing. Accuracy can be wanting."
(Matthew Fynes-Clinton, QWeekend, 24 September 2011)

Discouraging heritage research and activities
Mr Sim is openly hostile to other people and organisations conducting cultural heritage activities which he feels might impact upon his personal business interests, and aggressively tries to discourage such activities and research (more on this below).

The BCC review was completed in November 2009 and the outcomes were:

Licenses and fees were now required for the right to conduct night tours in BCC cemeteries.
These licenses do not provide licensees with exclusive use of a cemetery.
Tour marketing, content, and tour guide clothing must be deemed appropriate by the BCC.
No 'ghost hunts' allowed (too disrespectful).

So a lot of inappropriate practices were stamped out, and Ghost Tours would, for the first time ever, be required to pay something for the privilege of commercial access to cemeteries (see here for outcomes at the state government level).

In the wake of the BCC review, the FOSBC debated their own stance on night tours. As was stated on their website at the time

"Some of us feel that the group should stick with the curfew line, although others feel that if there are to be night tours, then we want to raise standards by offering affordable, historically-accurate and genuinely engaging night tours at South Brisbane." (November 2009)

After much discussion the not-for-profit Moonlight Tours were started in 2010, in order to raise the bar. We would still quite happily encourage the council to enforce a cemetery curfew, even if it ended night tours, but as long as they are allowed then we will make sure they are done properly.

So my reasons for wanting Ghost Tours to either improve or leave our cemeteries was entirely unrelated to the establishment of Moonlight Tours. To say we tried to close down his business in order to do our own ghost tours is patently wrong.

Did we receive warnings for defamation?

Mr Sim made many defamation threats during this period, and every single so-called 'warning' was deemed to baseless by the several individuals and community groups who received them, and subsequently ignored. The emptiness of these threats is proven by the fact that they were never followed up on. The general standard of the threats is exemplified by his text above, where a person's mild criticism of him for criticising someone else is somehow 'defamation' by the person he was criticising in the first place!

Is the FOSBC an 'aggressive, bullying and intimidating' organisation?

These things can be subjective, and both sides in any conflict may feel that they are the victim, but all the records clearly show that the 'bullying, intimidation and aggression' came from Mr Sim. After he found out about the planned tours he made unwanted phone calls on a daily basis to the woman involved, and when she would not return his calls he began leaving messages at her workplace. He was then warned by the police to stop contacting her, but when he did not do so she sought a peace and good behaviour order. In July 2009 Mr Sim appeared before Ipswich Magistrates Court, and although the order was not granted on a technicality (it was brought under the wrong section of the law), the presiding magistrate was heavily critical of Mr Sim, describing him him as 'arrogant' and a 'bully boy'. He was warned that if he continued with his behaviour he would end up in the Supreme Court charged under the telecommunications act.

There is much more to this, too much to include here in any detail. We received yet more threats when we started our Moonlight Tours, and also when Tracey released her book Ghosts of South Brisbane Cemetery, resulting in Mr Sim having to be warned off by the police before he would stop. As a result of all this the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery, the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society and the Friends of Balmoral Cemetery all refused to have any dealings with Mr Sim.

The email record clearly shows Mr Sim's belligerent attitude. For example, he wrote to FOSBC secretary Tracey Olivieri to complain about the proposed not-for-profit 'tours':

"We will seek legal action against any individual, business or company that seeks to damage or destroy our business interests. This is not a threat, aggressive behaviour or harassment. It is a business’ right to defend its commercial interests... those stories and tales told on our ghost tours are copyright and form part of the intellectual and material property of our business operations."
(18 June 2009)

What Mr Sim seems to be saying here is that he thinks it is illegal to try and compete with his business. As he told us in another email, "there is no room in the market place for a rival operator" (15 May 2009). How many businesses out there have the privilege of a self-proclaimed monopoly? We have dozens of other emails from Mr Sim which make for very interesting reading.

'So-called' voluntary organisation?

The FOSBC is made up entirely of volunteers, so why is Mr Sim implying that the FOSBC is not a volunteer organisation? Like many other volunteer and community groups around Australia, they have chosen not to become an incorporated association. Such a move is of course entirely optional, and the FOSBC volunteers have opted not take on the administrative hassles and expensive costs that come with incorporating. They have families, jobs, and plenty of other work to do (for example, organising two post-flood clean-ups at the cemetery this year, each attracting 100+ people). And we certainly don't want to associate ourselves with Mr Sim's activities by accepting his so-called 'support'.

"...we would encourage the public not to support FOSBC"

I can only presume this comment makes it okay for others to 'encourage the public' not to support Ghost Tours. Such 'encouragement' could take the form of "Boycott Ghost Tours".

"...the portfolio of material relating to their attempts to defame me"

For the record, we do not know the Facebook commenters. We don't even know if, like Mr Sim, they are using assumed names. It does not make sense to take the comments of complete strangers on Facebook pulling you up for publicly attacking a community group, assume they must be associated with that community group, and then present it as evidence against that same community group in a court of law.

It seems that Mr Sim needs to accept that there are a range people out there who don't like what he does.

In conclusion...
As a result of his attempts to stop our not-for-profit fundraisers, Mr Sim dished out several legal (but baseless) threats, was warned a number of times by the police, and appeared before court. Tracey and myself made zero legal threats, were never warned by the police, and did not appear before court, yet Mr Sim now claims that we are the 'aggressive, bullying and intimidating' ones. I think the record speaks for itself.

I have gone public with this in order to defend the reputation of the FOSBC and the people in it, including myself, now that it is clear that Mr Sim has been smearing our name and slandering us to others. I have dealt only in provable facts here. Will there be yet more legal threats because of this blog? Maybe, but from now on communication on these matters will be dealt with in the public sphere.

In the meantime, if you have had a similar experience then please do let us know. We would love to hear from you.

We're Gonna Clean Up Boggo Road

2011-09-15T08:45:00.000+10:00

In a blog about a recent visit to Boggo Road I wrote that there was 'little difference' in the condition of the place as compared to when I last saw it in 2005. After going in there last Sunday for a cleaning bee, I would now like to retract that statement. It's one thing to casually stroll around noting that a building hasn't fallen down yet, and quite another to stand there with a mop, bucket and broom faced with the task of actually cleaning it.

So it was on 11 September when members of the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society went into the old prison for our first cleaning bee since the museum closed six years ago. It was like stepping back in time to open the main gates and walk around with the keys in my hand again, then to open doors and find calendars and newspapers from 2005. It was also a bit like an archaeological dig knowing we'd have to scrape away layers of dirt to reveal the prison in its former glory.

We had about 30 people there during the day, armed with buckets. cloths, brooms, mops, gloves, spray bottles, gurneys and squidgees. First on the agenda were the cellblocks, and because the cells have barred windows with no glass there was a six-year build-up of dust on the floors. This proved very tricky to sweep because while half the dust is swept into a nice little pile, the other half goes straight up your nose. Although most of the dust was cleared from the cells anyway, next time we will be using a mega-uber vacuum cleaner to finish the job.

We also got into the gutters and drains, removing inches of dirt that were blocking them. Some areas were scarier than others, but the toilets were made usable again, to the relief of all.

"You first." "No after you." "No, after you, I insist."

We had one or two hiccups, notably when Phil killed the digital security system keypad with a blast of high-pressure water, prompting a visit from the security services. Fortunately the now-clean keypad miraculously came back to life later in the day. John P's single attempt to blow the dust from a cell with a leaf-blower ended just as you'd expect, but he seemed to be in his element in the gatehouse, being all no pasaran and keeping non-BRGHS visitors away.

All-in-all it was great to get back inside Boggo Road, roll up our sleeves and get stuck into cleaning the place. The buildings benefitted from the visit, and so did our group. There has been some concern within the BRGHS that the place was not being looked after properly, and now we can do it ourselves to make sure that it is. Having some actual hands-on work to do at the prison is great for morale as people have been getting impatient about getting back inside Boggo Road. So although it's not opening for a few years yet, this is a brilliant way of staying in touch with the place.

The first clean-ups will be obviously be the hardest, but we aim to reach a point where we can stroll in, wipe over some surfaces, do a quick sweep of the floor, and its finished. That day is still far away though, and until then the BRGHS will be going into Boggo Road every month to fulfill the first of our founding objectives:

"#1: To work to preserve, maintain and promote the site of the No.2 Division at the former Brisbane Prison."

Crims & Screws

2011-08-29T07:52:00.000+10:00

Another battle of wits between Mackay, Fletcher and Godber in the classic sitcom Porridge.

I first got involved at Boggo Road about ten years ago, not through some interest in prisons but rather through a desire to work in a museum. I had never actually stepped foot in a prison before. Although a few family members and old schoolmates have been inside prison, I never gave the places too much thought, so I went into the field with very little idea about the overall relationship between officers and prisoners. I had assumed (again, without giving it any thought) that they lined up on opposite sides of the fence, one side trying to control, the other side trying not to be controlled, with the inevitable conflict in between making Boggo Road so infamous.

These notions were probably influenced by the usual suspects; too many movies and bad journalism. Dramatic stories of the goings-on at Boggo Road were in the Courier-Mail all the time in the late '80s/early '90s, providing regular fodder for cartoonists like Sean Leahy. The officers he drew looked like big, square-headed, broken-nosed, brutish thugs, which is also how he tended to portray the prisoners. They were basically two gangs of Neanderthals at war with each other. I soon found that the reality was, as usual, much more subtle and complex, as prison officers and prisoners are a very eclectic mix of individual personalities, much like any other large groups of people in society.

Until 2004 the Boggo Road Gaol Museum was run by a small group of former officers and a few other volunteers. They would tell tour groups the story of the prison from their own perspective, but even among these few tour guides there were quite large differences in attitudes and opinions. I soon worked out that this was quite normal, and it was very difficult to get two officers to give the same version of events about anything that happened in Boggo Road. While this can be interesting for a historian trying to gather information, it can also be a headache at times.

One area that was instantly noticeable was attitudes about prisoners. Some officers were all-too-ready to throw around negative generalisations, while others knew there were good eggs and bad eggs among all groups in the prison. After all, officers and inmates saw each other most days of the week, and in some cases a somewhat friendly relationship would develop over time. Sometimes not. As one former officer told me, he saw the prisoners as 'fingerprints', no two the same, and the key was to know what kind of approach he should take with each person. Everyone thrown into this potentially-volatile mix had their own personality and they had their own individual relationship with everyone else in there.

An eye-opener for me was the former inmates who occasionally visited the museum. When I was researching the book 'Escaping Boggo Road' I read up on the 1973 escape of Trevor Bateman and Ronald Russell. They seemed like archetypal bad guys, one a murderer, one an armed robber, and both of them jail-breakers. A a few years 'Bluey' Russell himself popped into the museum for a chat with John Banks, the 'hard-but-fair' museum manager and former officer, and apparently they got along just fine talking about the old days.

Another happy museum visitor was Nathan Jones, former armed robber and prisoner who tried his hand at pro-wrestling in the USA as the 'Colossus of Boggo Road', and has also made a number of movies. Jones was a notoriously difficult prisoner, a 7-foot 1-inch man prone to the kind of angry outbursts in which he once bent back a thick metal cell door. Again, here was a former 'enemy of society' who left prison a very different man. People change.

Chatting to former prisoners about the prison and the officers is also very revealing. Quite often they express their respect for individuals within the system, not everyone, but certainly some. Indeed, one of the items in the Queensland Prisons Collection is a 'sorry you're leaving card' given by prisoners to the late Don Walters, another former officer and museum manager, when he retired. The prisoners thanked Don, a couple calling him a 'humanitarian', and some of these people turned up to his funeral in 2003 with their families. Another example of the unexpectedly (at least to us to us outsiders) complex interaction of people within Boggo Road.

There again, Boggo Road was no game of Happy Families and a lot of people have terrible memories of the old prison and would be happy to see it vanish from the landscape. And that's not just the ex-inmates who suffered there, but also those former officers who left the job with various levels of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Then again, some of those who suffered want the place to remain open and tell the full story of life inside, gory details included.

The point is that you can't pigeonhole people from Boggo Road based on their history as either officers or inmates.

If we could use television as a rough guide to real life (which we can't really), then a good example would be the classic TV show 'Porridge', set in a 1970s British prison. The main focus is on the prisoners, a mixed bunch of guys, some more likable than others, with a few nasties like Harry Grout thrown in. The characterisations of the officers are a bit limited, with the 'hard' Mr McKay and the 'soft' Mr Barrowclough being towards each end of the spectrum. What you see in Porridge is not just comedic conflict between the two tribes of officers and prisoners, but also between the prisoners (and the officers) themselves. Even prisoners at the time said it was the 'most accurate portrayal of real prison life on TV'.

This inter-personal and systemic conflict is at the heart of Boggo Road's history. The central element of any compelling story is conflict, and Boggo Road has that in spades, on so many levels, and all new researchers need to leave any preconceptions at the door.

Back Inside Boggo Road!

2011-08-14T08:14:00.001+10:00

A couple of weeks back I took a range of BRGHS members, including university academics, former museum workers, and ex-officers and inmates, back to Boggo Road. The occasion was an inspection of the grounds of the old prison in the company of Public Works officials to let us check what kind of condition the place was in.

There has been much speculation within the BRGHS over recent months about what was happening to the buildings behind the prison walls, with a few members still convinced that 'the government want to knock it down', despite the fact that Public Works have employed people to look after the grounds internally and externally. Letting people inside to see for themselves proved to be very useful.

Feedback was varied, and points of view seemed to depend on when people had last seen the place. Those who had not stepped foot in Boggo Road since the 1980s, when it was still a fully-functioning prison, were not too impressed, but the museum staff who worked at the site until 2006 saw little difference. Even John Banks, the notoriously difficult-to-please former museum manager, said he was 'pleasantly surprised' by the condition of the old gaol. There has of course been a bit of wear and tear on the buildings, but they are as solid as ever and the grounds are looking good, as I reported when I visited Boggo Road a few months back. We did notice one or two problems, which I won't go into here as I am currently discussing a solution for these with Public Works, which should be ready to roll within weeks. Watch this space for news of that one.

All talk of the actual condition of the place aside, it was great to see such a mixed bunch of people exploring the old gaol, some for the first time, others having a much, much longer and deeper experience spanning several decades. Everyone saw it through their own eyes and memories, and had the chance to chat to the public servants about what is happening there.

There were also unexpected visitors in the form of a family of four, who saw that the small door within the main gates was open and walked inside wanting to have a look around. So even though Boggo Road is off the beaten track and has been closed to the public for almost six years now, casually open the door for 30 minutes and 'they will come'!

The Extraordinarily Dubious World of Ghost-Quackery

2011-08-09T10:01:00.000+10:00

Another shot was fired in the War on Science last week when Brisbane's Courier-Mail (they describe it as a 'newspaper' apparently) printed some unadulterated horseshit on 'ghostbusting'. The big news was that a couple of suburban kids had bought some ghost-detecting gadgets off the Internet and were using them to, well, detect ghosts.* This includes a 99-cent smart phone app that translates supernatural communication into English (at 99 cents, how can it NOT work?). Stop Press! In other breaking news, some kid bought mail-order X-Ray glasses off the back of a comic and was using them to check out ladies knickers.

How people like this get girlfriends.

As is often the case with ghosty-type news, it was just a nothing story, lazy journalism with all the investigative depth of a water cracker. Actually, that's probably a bit harsh, because after allowing the usual quacks in the field to say words in a meaningless sequence, the reporter balanced their views with those of University of Queensland Associate Professor of Philosophy and paranormal sceptic William Grey, which is a bit like balancing a cupcake with the USS Nimitz.

Professor Grey said that, 'anecdotal evidence should be scrutinised carefully', which I liked straight away because that is the EXACT point of my recent 'Haunting Question' book. He also added that there 'was no scientific basis for believing modern technology could detect paranormal activity', and, 'I don't dispute for a moment that this equipment will detect electromagnetic fields... What I find extraordinarily dubious is the suggestion that these technological devices can be used for detecting a ghostly presence.' Once again, spot on.

Further sanity was restored in the online comments section for the story, where most people lined up to point and laugh, and also offer the ghost hunters in question some top value shopping deals:

"Delusion takes many forms, doesn't it."
"A fool and his money are soon parted."
"LOL. An app that can interpret ghostly communications. Somebodies having their leg pulled."
"Gadgets to pick up the spirit realm? There are mugs everywhere."
"The only expert quoted in this article made it clear these machines have zero scientific credibility in this context, but as long as we're here I have a 'fairy detector' made out of an old Corn Flake box these guys might be interested in purchasing."
"what these boys are doing is the exact opposite of ghostbusting, they're actually inventing ghosts"
"I have a spanner that can detect paranormal entities.. I will sell it to you for $450."

"$450, complete with batteries. But you must NEVER cross the streams."

Unfortunately, one or two old porkies were also reheated and served up again in the form of 'Brisbane is Australia's most haunted city". Here we go again. I hate to use the same phrase twice in an article, but this is yet more 'unadulterated horseshit'. I have dealt with this 'most haunted' guff before, and claims that 'Brisbane is the second most haunted city in the world' have recently been PROVEN by others to be false. It is simply NOT TRUE, and any person who circulates this stuff has zero credibility. The Internet, however, has the power to keep regurgitating this stuff back up for unsuspecting punters.

Still, there is an obvious market for this stuff, and it can only be a matter of time before a) Choice magazine savagely exposes the technological quackery, or b) You can buy a ghost-detecting app for your phone. Oh, that's right, they already did that last one. *slaps head*. It actually doubles as an app for detecting gullible boofheads.

"Oh no, we've been detected. Quick, put the Invisible Helmets on!"

* To be fair, these ghost hunters are probably only 12 years old and trying to impress that goth girl at school. There are actually a (very) few paranormal investigation groups out there who have a solidly realistic approach to the subject matter and do some interesting work. Stories like the one in the Courier-Mail, however, are counter-productive and tarnish the whole field.

How much would you pay to get into Boggo Road?

2011-08-04T12:29:00.001+10:00

How much do you think it should cost to get into Boggo Road Gaol? $5? $10? $20? $45? This is a question to think about as the future of the gaol remains, as always, up in the air.

[UPDATE: Vote here!]

The state government is currently looking to lease the old prison to a developer, who would then be required to consult stakeholders and come up with a management plan that would see Boggo Road used for a mix of heritage and commercial non-heritage purposes. It's a process I myself could support, but of course it all depends on "the mix". The Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society would be aiming to maximise the heritage protection of what is, after all, not a particularly large site. As a strong community group, we are also keen to ensure that a high level of community access is maintained.

One result of the planning process would be to designate which organisations will provide a range of visitor services at Boggo Road. The BRGHS has plans to provide these services, and one of our primary concerns is that they are as affordable as possible. Why? Simply because the unique capacity of the site to teach about crucial issues like crime and punishment makes equitable access a key priority, especially for school groups and young people.

The BRGHS has direct experience of how pricing affects accessibility. We used to run school tours at the Boggo Road Gaol Museum at just $4 per head, and night tours cost $10. It was this affordability that made the place so attractive for school groups, who returned to us year after year. This fact was confirmed in 2005 when Public Works allowed a small business to offer tours and functions at Boggo Road. These were vastly more expensive than the services we offered, and the results spoke for themselves. Schools were simply not interested in paying about $15 per head for tours, so while the BRGHS ran hundreds of school tours during that year, the private company attracted hardly any bookings at all!

The story was much the same with functions and site hire. Something like 100 functions were booked at Boggo Road in 2005 under the basic site-hire fee option. In contrast, only a small handful of the expensive ‘all-frills’ function packages were booked. This shows that while people wanted to hire the place for their various functions, they also wanted to organise the content of their own events and not pay through the nose for a pre-dictated food/drinks/street-theatre package.

This is an issue that the BRGHS will continue to push with government. For comparison, I will list what the other major Australian heritage prisons currently charge (a list of smaller sites is added below this article). Note that EVERY one of these is funded and managed by government or non-profit bodies, making the Queensland government the only one unwilling to properly invest in this kind of site:

Maitland Gaol (Economic Development and Marketing Division, Maitland City Council:

Self-guided audio tour: $15/$12

Ex-inmate tours and Ex-warders tours: $17/$14 (day) $24/$21 (night)

Escapes/History tours: $18/$15

Psychic tours: $29/24

Old Dubbo Gaol (Community Services Division, Dubbo City Council)

Self-guided tour: $15/$12

Theatrical performances/costumed characters: no extra charge to above

Theatrical night tours: $25/$20

Adelaide Gaol (Department of Environment & Natural Resources, on-site services provided by the Adelaide Gaol Preservation Society)

Self-guided History tours: $13/$11

Guided history tours: $17/$15

Guided night tours, Ghost tours: $28

School groups: $6 per student

Port Arthur (Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority)

Numerous historical sites, various passes available

Ghost Tours: $22/$12

After Dark Pass (Ghost Tour and meal): $61

Old Melbourne Gaol (National Trust Victoria)

Admission: $22/$18/$12 (Self-guided, with live ‘Ned Kelly’ performances)

Hangman’s Night Tours: $35/$30

Fremantle Prison (WA Housing and Public Works, with the Fremantle Prison Advisory Committee).

Day tours (two themes): $18.50/$15.50 each, or $25/$22 to do both

Tunnels Tour: $59/$49/$39

Torchlight Tour: $25/$21/$15

It is worth noting that all these not-for-profit sites create just as many jobs, and probably more, as they would under private business models.

As you can see, there are a range of prices charged for various services at the heritage gaols, with most admissions costing $10-20. Melbourne is one of the most expensive at $22 entry, but that gets you access to a massive complex which includes the ‘Old Magistrate’s Court’, the ‘Police Watch House’, and the multi-award-winning ‘Crime and Justice Experience’. It is obviously just not possible to replicate this product at Boggo Road, and logic dictates entry would therefore be much cheaper.

The closest comparable heritage prisons to Boggo Road would probably be Maitland, Adelaide and Dubbo, where entry includes a self-guided audio tour for $15-17. There are also a range of themed guided tours available, and the BRGHS is hoping to provide similar day and night options. What we would charge for such tours is still unclear, but while the days of the $4 school tour are over for Boggo Road, there is still a capacity and need to keep the price in single figures for this particular market. Obviously, one of the ways to achieve this would be with a dedicated volunteer base - an option not open to private business.

Old Melbourne Gaol, run by the National Trust and winner of the highest prize in the Victorian Tourism Awards for the last three years in a row.

However, private business proposals could make Boggo Road the most expensive heritage gaol in Australia, with basic night tours costing up $45. Compare this to similar tours in the other prisons. Port Arthur, an established world-class venue, is only half that price. Based on past evidence, it would be fair to guess that prices for other services, even general admission, would be as wildly expensive if Boggo Road was to be run mainly for the financial benefit of a private business. In fact, the only way for that business to have any chance at all of succeeding would be to completely remove any cheaper price options for the public.

We simply can not afford to let the public be priced out of visiting Boggo Road. The BRGHS has better plans to make Boggo Road affordable, and we will be arguing our case whenever the opportunity arises.

JUST FOR THE RECORD...

The sites listed below are small-to-medium heritage gaol sites in Australia, and all are operated along not-for-profit lines:

NEW SOUTH WALES

Cooma Gaol Museum (NSW Department Corrective Services)

Hay Gaol Museum (Hay Shire Council)

Narrabri Old Gaol Heritage Centre (Narrabri & District Historical Society)

Silverton Gaol Museum (Broken Hill Historical Society)

Trial Bay Gaol (NSW National Parks and Wildlife/Friends of Trial Bay)

Old Wentworth Gaol (Wentworth Shire Council)

QUEENSLAND

Normanton Gaol (Normanton Council)

Old Croydon Gaol (Croydon Shire Council)

Saint Helena Island (QLD National Parks & Wildlife)

northern territory

Fannie Bay Gaol Museum (National Trust NT)

Old Stuart Town Gaol (National Trust NT)

south australia

Redruth Gaol (National Trust SA)

tasmania

Ross Female Factory (TAS Parks & Wildlife)

Barracks and Convict Gaol, George Town (George Town & District Historical Society)

Cascades Female Factory Historic Site (Female Factory Historic Site Ltd Board)

Hadspen Gaol (Westbury Historical Society)

Old Hobart Gaol (TAS National Trust)

Richmond Gaol (TAS Parks & Wildlife)

victoria

Ararat County Gaol [aka J-Ward] (Friends of J-Ward)

Geelong Heritage Gaol (Rotary Club)

western australia

Albany Convict Gaol (Albany Historical Society Inc.)

Derby Police Gaol (Commissioner of Police)

Guildford Old Town Gaol (Swan Guildford Historical Society)

Old Courthouse and Gaol, Perth (Western Australia Museum)

Old Cue Gaol (Shire of Cue)

Old Toodyay Gaol Museum (Toodyay Shire Council)

Roebourne Old Gaol Museum (Shire of Roebourne)

There are only three privately-operated heritage gaols. These are either accommodation centres (Mount Gambier Gaol and Gladstone Gaol Tourist Complex, both South Australia) or a hospitality training centre (Old Castlemaine Gaol, Victoria).

Quick Quiz: What is Brisbane's Oldest Surviving Municipal Cemetery?

2011-07-30T16:23:00.001+10:00

I have asked a few Brisbane residents and historians this question lately, and none of them gave the correct answer of 'South Brisbane Cemetery'. The actual 'birthday' of a place like this open to interpretation - was it 15 March 1866 (when the land was selected), or 7 May 1870 (when the cemetery was declared 'open'), or 1 August 1870 (when the first recorded burial took place there)?

Using the last option, next Monday will be the 141st birthday of South Brisbane Cemetery. There were earlier cemeteries at Milton (now the site of Lang Park); a convict burial ground on Skew Street (near Roma Street); and a cemetery on the site of the current West End State School that was used either once or never, depending on your source. All these have long since disappeared. There are also older surviving cemeteries in Brisbane, such as the ones at Nundah and Gods Acre, but South Brisbane is the oldest intact MUNICIPAL cemetery.

That first burial was that of Jane Hockings, who died aged 74 at her 'Rosaville' home in South Brisbane on 31 July 1870. She was the mother of Albert J Hockings, a successful politician and businessman, and one of the original trustees of the cemetery. He ensured that his late mother had a fitting memorial that not only reflected his affection for her, but also the prominent social standing of the family. Maybe he also wanted make the first headstone special to give the cemetery a dignified start in life. Jane's memorial, which depicts a woman dropping flowers, is quite beautiful, not just because of the artistry of the stonework, but also because of the massive fig tree that stands nearby and drapes a dappled green canopy over the whole area.

Jane Hockings' headstone, portion 8A, South Brisbane Cemetery (BRGHS)

Despite its status as the city's oldest municipal burial ground, for a number of years South Brisbane Cemetery did not receive as much historical attention as its younger sisters at Balmoral (1874) and Toowong (first burial 1871, officially opened in 1875). There are many 'Friends of...' cemetery groups in Brisbane, at places like Balmoral, Gods Acre, Toowong, Tingalpa and Nundah, but the last cemetery to have such a group formed was South Brisbane, in 2005. Even the excellent Brisbane: Cemeteries as Sources book from the Brisbane History Group contains a number of articles on a wide range of cemeteries, but none about South Brisbane. This is of course all changing now as the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery have done a massive amount of research work over recent years and are now publishing books and conducting tours to increase awareness of the importance of this heritage-listed place.

So, while I don't know how happy a cemetery can be, a happy 141st birthday to the South Brisbane Cemetery, and here's to the next 141 years.

The Only Woman Hanged

2011-07-08T08:46:00.000+10:00

A couple of weeks back I headed over to the Judith Wright Centre in Fortitude Valley to see Presumed Guilty, a new play about the last weeks of Ellen Thomson, who was hanged at Boggo Road in 1887 and so became the only woman to be judicially executed in Queensland.

The cast of Presumed Guilty

Presumed Guilty was written by crime fiction writer and BRGHS member Margaret Dakin. I first met Margaret a few years back, during the early creation of Presumed Guilty, and lent her a bit of a hand with some of the historical research. She also carried out research at libraries and archives, and if you know the story of Ellen Thomson, this background work really shines through in the play. I have dabbled in the Ellen Thomson story for my book A Pit of Shame, which gives an overview of the story, but it is obvious that Margaret has delved much deeper into the details than I did. The personalities of all the characters - the prisoners, the murder victim, the judge and the solicitor - all ring true and lend the play an authenticity that anyone who knows the story will appreciate. However, it did leave me wishing that I could view the play through the eyes of someone unfamiliar with the story behind the script.

Ellen Thomson

All the feedback about Presumed Guilty has been very positive, including that from several descendants of Ellen Thomson who also attended a performance. I'm no critic, but I certainly enjoyed it. The actors all did well, the staging was good, with some nice little historical props, and the way the story moved from crime scene to courtroom to cellblock gave the story just a hint of, dare I say it, an 1880s Law & Order!

The story takes an obviously sympathetic approach to Ellen's circumstances, but whether or not you think she was guilty there is no denying she was treated very harshly by the state, and other women who committed much worse crimes were not hanged.

Don't worry if you missed it, because Presumed Guilty will also be performed at the Banco Court, in the Brisbane Supreme Court, George Street, on 12 July. Tickets must be pre-paid ($15/$10) (email switchboardarts@hotmail.com)

Congratulations to Margaret for producing a fine work, and I can't wait to see it performed at Boggo Road itself one day.

Boggo Road Reopening Saga IV: Revenge of the Cross River Rail

2011-07-06T09:13:00.001+10:00

Plans for the reopening of the Boggo Road prison have become more uncertain as the Cross River Rail project faces stiff competition for funding.

The Cross River Rail, which was deferred for two years after January's floods, is a nine-kilometre rail link from Salisbury to Bowen Hills, including five kilometres of underground rail. There will also be an underground station on the Boggo Road reserve. The project is still at feasibility planning stage and further work was dependant upon available funding, hopefully from Infrastructure Australia, but the CCR now faces serious competition for that source of funding from other projects.

How does this affect the prison? Well, first of all, the government are looking for someone to come in and develop land next to the old prison, probably for retail/residential use. Part of the deal is that the developer comes up with a plan for 'reusing' the prison, which will mostly remain a historical/cultural site. So the reopening of the prison is linked to the successful development of the land next door.

The problem has been that the land next door will have an underground train station built there. The station will have two entry/exit points (black dots, above). The black dot to the left in this image is in the centre of the land that will be developed (see full map here). Obviously, a developer needs to know the what-when-how-and-where of this station before they can commit millions to their own plans.

This was quite straightforward last year, but when the CCR project was suspended after the January floods everything was thrown in the air. Feasibility planning for the CCR has continued, but would only proceed beyond this stage once funding was available. Melbourne's very similar Metro 1 project, however, is further advanced in the planning process which may make it more likely to attract Infrastructure Australia funding, ahead of the CCR.

All this adds further uncertainty to the future of the CCR, which in turn directly affects plans to develop the Boggo Road Urban Village and of course reopen the prison. In our most recent talks with Public Works, it was suggested to us that if there are significant delays in the CCR project come 2013, the state government and the developer could commit funds to open the old prison early. That remains to be seen of course, but a further problem is that there is a state election due in the next 12 months, and a change of government may well mean a big change in funding plans for Boggo Road, for better or for worse.

As it is, our best guess is still that the prison should reopen in 2013 at the earliest. Nothing, however, is written in stone yet.

Get Your Stinking Paws Off Our Headstones!

2011-06-15T10:55:00.000+10:00

Here’s a mathematical equation for you: with Queensland's death rate projected to double within 30 years, and Brisbane City Council's (BCC) three active cemeteries expected to be ‘full’ (technically, they already are) within two decades, demand for Brisbane burial spots is expected to quadruple.

All of which could add up to bad news for old headstones.

A state government inquiry - The environmental impacts of conventional burials and cremations - was set up in March to look into the subject of funerary practices and has found Queensland is fast running out of burial spaces. An issues paper tabled by the committee this week contained a range of options to address this problem, which reportedly include digging new graves in spaces between older ones, reusing unmarked 100-year-old burial sites, and reusing lease-lapsed graves every 40 years. The full list of options, which seem quite reasonable, are listed here.

Although the 40-year reuse idea was described in the press as ‘radical’, graves in Brisbane cemeteries have been reused like this before. Check the BCC online grave location records and you will two or three unrelated people in most graves, buried years apart. I think the reuse gap used to be about 30 years. Nothing new or radical there.

However, the issue of particular concern to me is that of headstone protection. MP Carryn Sullivan, who headed the parliamentary inquiry, said;

‘There are a lot of graves in Queensland that are more than 100 years old and of course some of them are war graves or significant graves and they should be exempt.’

Does the use of the word ‘graves’ here also refer to headstones? If so, will there be removal of headstones to accommodate new graves?

This is an important question, because the BCC submitted to the inquiry that their supply of new graves would be exhausted in as little as 10-15 years, and the BCC has previous form when it comes to getting rid of headstones. Back in the 1970s they removed and dumped hundreds of them in their efforts to speed up the then-anticipated demise of South Brisbane Cemetery.

The BCC (as well as the state and federal governments) have long taken an economic rationalist approach to Heritage, basically saying, ‘if it’s not making money, we don’t want it’ (except of course for their precious City Hall). I also get the impression from personal experience that some officials in the cemeteries department don’t do enough to protect the heritage values of their cemeteries. Brisbane has some of the worst maintained and least protected historical municipal cemeteries I have ever seen in Queensland. There again, a new wave of cemetery usage might make them lift their game as far as maintenance goes. There’s no point paying thousands of dollars for a nice new grave and headstone if the council just let falling or growing trees destroy it (not to mention the occult rituals, parties and illegal restorations taking place in Brisbane cemeteries, but that’s another story).

Another important question is, who decides which graves are ‘significant’ and which are not? Significance is a very moveable feast. Everything around us has ‘historical potential’ in that, over the course of time, even the most everyday items will become gain historical significance. Heritage is often lost during that twilight time when something is merely 'old' but not yet 'historical', and so is deemed not yet worthy of protection.

I sincerely hope this process of deciding what is significant and what is not does not turn into another exercise in removing ordinary people from the historical record while protecting the rich and powerful.

While it is good to see some cemetery problems being acknowledged, hopefully leading to good outcomes for our historic burial grounds, there is a potential problem with old headstones and cemetery groups need to be demanding a guarantee from BCC that not a single headstone will be removed just to make way for a new grave.

At least not until the BCC convert City Hall into low-cost apartments... there is a housing shortage as well as a burial space shortage, you know.

The Heavenly Garb of Ipswich

2011-05-26T13:47:00.003+10:00

I've always liked Ipswich. As a city it seems to take its heritage a lot more seriously than neighbouring Brisbane (where I live) does. Maybe its the underdog theme, but it is obvious that the people of Ipswich see heritage as a way to raise the profile of Queensland's oldest provincial city and make it a great place to come and visit for those of us who appreciate a bit of history. It takes care of its old buildings and celebrates them, whereas Brisbane shows off a select few and screws the rest in the name of making a quick $ (the most recent example being the Regent Cinema). I also appreciate the down-to-earth working-class nature of the place too, having been raised on a council estate myself.

So it was a particular pleasure for BRGHS president Tracey Olivieri and myself to pick up the cheque this week for the 2011 'Viva Cribb Bursary'. This bursary is awarded each year to a project that fosters an appreciation of the local history and heritage of Ipswich. It is named in honour of Viva Cribb, a dedicated champion of history in Ipswich and a great-granddaughter of Benjamin Cribb, a notable early resident of the city.

Tracey receives the cheque from Cllr Pahlke

Our project involves the research, writing and publication of a book called In Heavenly Garb: The Headstones of the Ipswich General Cemetery. This work follows on from our Rock of Ages: South Brisbane Symbolism (2008). The aim is to not only explain and display (in colour) the rich headstone symbolism that can be found within the cemetery, but to use those stones to tell the story of colonial Ipswich.

Tracey already has an extensive knowledge of the cemetery from her work as Lead Project Officer on a recent heritage cemeteries project with the Ipswich City Council, and is familiar with each and every headstone in this and other burial grounds around the city. We have now begun selecting and photographing the stones that will feature in the book, and researching the lives of the people buried beneath them. Each cemetery is a unique reflection of the place they serve. Long-forgotten names remind us who lived there in harder times, how long they lived, and maybe where they came from and how they died. The Welsh, Hebrew and German inscriptions on some of the Ipswich headstones, and the Chinese names in the 'Pagan' section of the cemetery, point to the varied ethnic history of the town.

A blackmith's headstone, Ipswich Cemetery

Headstone of a native of the Isle of Man, Ipswich Cemetery

It will be great to work on a full-colour book for the first time, and we intend to produce a really good publication that will be a credit to Ipswich. Hopefully, In Heavenly Garb will be just one of a growing number of publications focussing on this place, because it is clear that as we go through the 21st century Ipswich will become the preeminent Heritage City of Queensland.

Boggo Road Revisited

2011-05-14T14:25:00.000+10:00

Last month I was contacted by a reporter from a local newspaper who wanted to interview me about the future of the Boggo Road prison, given that the Ecoscience block next door to the prison had just been officially opened and the prison was still closed. We had a chat on the phone, then I sent her some documents clearly spelling out the position of the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society, and finally we met up outside the prison for an interview and photo shoot. I took the opportunity to have a good look around the place (from the outside) and must say I was quite impressed with how well it was looking.

Looking to the main gates

The interview itself went well enough, but I never saw the article as I was away camping for a while and missed that issue. It was only last week that a friend forwarded me a digital version, and I must say I was a bit surprised with the outcome. Headlined ‘JAILHOUSE ROT’, it had an angle on the story that did little to dispel some of the misconceptions floating around about the current state of play with Boggo Road. The following should hopefully tidy up some of those things:

Is the prison ‘being left to rot'? In my own opinion, the answer is definitely no. However, there are members of the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society who think otherwise, a situation that has come about because of the difficulty in getting information and updates about the painfully slow site redevelopment process, and the general lack of access.

Are the government trying to ‘offload management of the site onto a developer’? Well, yes they are, and the Public Works minister’s comments in the article that they ‘negotiating with a developer that would become caretaker of the site’ confirm this. However, the claim in the article that ‘the State Government is set to sell the iconic Boggo Road Gaol’ is simply not true, and was certainly never made by me. They are looking for someone to lease and manage the place, and it is not for sale.

Finally, and less importantly, I was not an ‘original volunteer’ and did not take tens of thousands of schoolkids through the place on tours, as stated in the article – this was all the work of the ex-officers and other BRGHS staff who managed the site from the 1990s.

Side of the former staff quarters

Anyway, by the time I saw the article I had already been contacted by people who wanted to interview me for a documentary that was to be shot inside the old Boggo Road prison in early May. This was my first visit inside the place since 2006, and truth be told it was a strangely emotional experience walking into a place that I had spent so many great hours working in, but had been locked out of for so long. I can only imagine the feelings stirred among returning ex-officers or prisoners who actually had a much deeper experience inside there. Seeing my old office, walking around the perimeter track and yards, stepping inside the cellblock, sitting in the Circle, was all a step back in time for me. It was hard to believe five years have passed.

Yours Truly in front of F Wing

The place was looking pretty good, all things considered. A loose gutter here, a leaky tap there, and the cells could do with a sweep, but the grounds were in good order and not too different to how the historical society left them five years ago.

Looking from the Circle to the gatehouse

So, in a nutshell, I can report that the place is in generally good condition and is not rotting away, and that the state government, despite their lack of interest in heritage, is not looking to sell it off. There's been enough misinformation spread around about the reopening of Boggo Road lately and it is important to get the facts straight, if only to reduce the number of phone calls I get from people who've heard that misinformation and call me up worrying about it.

Boggo Road, Boggarts, and Ghosts

2011-04-14T12:14:00.001+10:00

Having recently been involved in the production of two local history books on the subject of the paranormal, I have been asked a few times if I actually believe in ghosts. Well, the short answer is no, and as an advocate of the scientific method I would say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

However, as Hamlet said, 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy'. I have an Anthropology degree and well understand the extent and importance of belief in the supernatural in small-scale cultures. My experiences with the Fijian community in Brisbane taught me that elements of supernatural belief that were part of everyday cultural life back in the island villages had been transported to the suburbs of the River City.

In a different way, ghosts were a part of my own cultural background. I was born and raised in Heywood, Lancashire, and just like anywhere else we kids we had our fair share of local ghost stories. These included Ernie Potter, supposed to haunt the derelict cotton mill near where we lived; the White Lady, who rode her horse off a high cliff at Ashworth Valley; and two lovers who are said to haunt Ashworth Chapel.

Ashworth Chapel

Historically, locals called ghosts 'boggarts', and the writer Edwin Waugh wrote of some of these stories in his account of Heywood in 1855 (it was so tempting to call my book The Boggarts of Boggo). One that he mentioned was the 'Gristlehurst Boggart', which is interesting as we lived very near to Gristlehurst Wood and spent a lot of time over there as kids, but nobody ever mentioned anything about any ghosts there. In this sense, the historical value of recording ghost stories is clear, but what happens when the actual process of recording and disseminating those stories come into doubt?

This is a question taken up in parts of the new Inside History books 'The Haunting Question: Boggo Road Ghosts' and 'Ghosts of South Brisbane Cemetery'. It is one thing when the supernatural is an important part of cultural beliefs, or even just a playful part of local folklore, but what happens when it is commercialised? What happens when people actively 'market' places as being haunted, in an attempt to drum up more business? See my last blog for an example of this.

The modern 'paranormal industry' is entirely unregulated, unchecked, and open to all kinds of manipulation. For every individual with a genuine and ethical scientific interest in the subject, there are a hundred charlatans and suburban arsehats who are doing little more than play-acting. That is not to say I don't understand the appeal of the subject matter. In my early teens I read Colin Wilson ghost books and even entertained thoughts of going to study at a place like the College of Psychic Studies in London. I grew out it soon enough, but still find it to be an interesting subject when approached in the right way, which for me would be the historical and cultural perspective on the phenomenon of ghost stories.

Unfortunately, modern technologies have facilitated the spread of so much unadulterated crap that there is an increasing need to sort the wheat from the chaff. This is what The Haunting Question is an attempt to do.

At the moment there seems to be a concept of quantity over quality at play with ghost stories, in which a story is held to be true simply because it pops up on so many websites. There is a snowball effect created by lazy writers and bloggers just cutting and pasting already-regurgitated material from other websites. What I want to do is apply a bit of contextual analysis and ask some previously unasked questions. Where and when did this story originate? Who is spreading it? Do the historical details check out? WHY is it being told? Also, what is the effect of this on the heritage values of that place?

Significance is a very moveable feast, and the significance of heritage places needs to be protected as much as the bricks and mortar. It may not be to everyone's taste, but by looking at the story BEHIND the stories, The Haunting Question is a serious attempt to protect heritage from marketing spin.

Brisbane Ghosts Busted?

2011-04-04T22:29:00.230+10:00

(Read below this blog for an update)

Last October I posted a blog questioning claims that Brisbane is the second most haunted city in the world - 'as voted by National Geographic'. Six months later the question of whether or not this rather interesting claim is true can probably be answered.

I first decided to check out the validity of the methodology and results, but the problem was that the poll in question could not be found anywhere online. Eventually an email was sent to National Geographic asking for further information, but their response was:

"There are no references in our files indicating that National Geographic magazine has said Brisbane is the second most haunted city in the world. We are asked from time to time whether the National Geographic Society has ever rated lakes and sunsets as to beauty or towns as to climate. It has not generally been our policy to do so, since personal opinion plays so large a part in determining such things."

So National Geographic were basically saying that not only could they not find the poll, but they don't do polls as a rule anyway. At this point it was probably quite fair to start doubting the veracity of the '2nd most haunted' claim, but the search continued for the elusive poll. After all, nobody could get away with telling such a whopper, so it must be somewhere, right?

Months passed, and although dozens of paranormal-themed websites with their own 'most haunted' polls gave widely varying results, there was no mention of Brisbane anywhere. Edinburgh, London, Paris, Rome, York, Gettysburg and plenty of other historic places figured prominently, but not Brissie. Another query to National Geographic produced a similar reply to the first one. They were "unable to find any information on a National Geographic poll of haunted cities."

And then, late last year, there it was. Sort of. I found a kind of 'poll' conducted in 2004 not by National Geographic but by the grandly-titled US-based 'Ghost Research Foundation International', which was in reality a backyard operation that folded soon afterwards and the leader went on to work as a host on a cable TV shopping channel show. The deeply-flawed methodology was to simply ask 'ghost organisations and authorities in the field' how many ghosts they knew of in their town, and then just accept the answers they received as being somehow reliable. There is no way such a method can produce anything like credible results, but for the record the top three here were 1:York, 2:Brisbane, 3:Chicago. Brisbane, it seems, had FOUR TIMES as many ghosts as either Paris or Edinburgh, and London did not even register in the top ten. All listed cities were western, with no mention of major Asian or third world cities at all.

So that was it. The only-ever mention of Brisbane in any 'most haunted' poll results, and it sweeps to number two. Which begs the question - who the hell did they ask?

Although the inherent dodginess of these results is clear, what is much more important (but much less clear) is how this came to be presented as a National Geographic poll. Well, that's a question for the person still making the claims to answer. As it stands, there are no links to the alleged National Geographic poll and any evidence it even exists. Current evidence actually suggests that Brisbane was NOT voted the 2nd most haunted city in the world by National Geographic, but as always I am prepared to stand corrected if any evidence to the contrary is presented. Until then, if you want something like an honest assessment of these claims, well, who ya gonna call?

(This subject and more is discussed in my new book The Haunting Question: Boggo Road Ghosts)

UPDATE 11 October 2011

A big thanks to the members of the public who have recently contacted me with updates on this story.

In the time since this blog was published a number of people posted on the Brisbane 'Ghost Tours' page asking about where they could find the alleged poll (as it was Brisbane Ghost Tours who made the original claim). None of the commentors could find the poll anywhere. On 30 May Ghost Tours posted:

Hi everyone - I will be posting a scan of the NG article shortly. They took their source from a Paranormal society who they interviewed for an article on The Most Haunted City - which was quoted as York. Brisbane was mentioned along with Chicago.

Well, that fair enough, and... hey, wait minute there! The story just changed! We had originally been told that Brisbane was the second-most haunted city in the world AS VOTED BY THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE. Suddenly that's changed to "They took their source from a Paranormal society who they interviewed for an article". From reading that, it looks like it wasn't a poll at all. And those York-Brisbane-Chicago results are from the worthless 2004 poll I mentioned above.

Okay then, let's wait for the promised scan. Weeks passed, and in July a commentor claimed that he had "Just got a reply from NG - they did no such article". Months pass, and still no scan. Then, on 12 September, Brisbane Ghost Tours posted:

Dear Karen, Matt and others who have expressed concern about the NG article, The article does exist. It is not a lie. The article was researched by the National Geographic Society about haunted places all over the world. We happily supplied information to NG. We are the first to admit, in comparison to other older places, Brisbane is an unlikely candidate. The fact is, that NG published this material and we have reflected it in our marketing. Accusing us of lying is unacceptable on this webpage. We'll find a copy of the article and post a scan of it to this Facebook page.

The story unravels that little bit more. Remember how Ghost tours claimed that "a Paranormal society" provided the info to National Geographic? Now it emerges that it was Brisbane Ghost Tours themselves who told the National Geographic researcher about Brisbane's alleged 'most haunted' status.

The scenario now looks like this:

Someone is researching an article for a National Geographic travel website (NOT the magazine) about York's 'most haunted city' status.
Brisbane Ghost Tours provides them with info that Brisbane is the second most haunted city (repeating results from a discredited 2004 poll).
Brisbane is 'mentioned' in the subsequent article.
This is somehow transformed into a Brisbane Ghost Tours marketing claim that National Geographic voted Brisbane the 2nd most haunted city in the world.

After months of promises an article might be produced but it will not back up the original marketing claim, which Ghost Tours seem to be backtracking furiously away from. Sure, any article might mention Brisbane, but it will not answer the important question of where the claim that National Geographic magazine voted Brisbane the 2nd most haunted city in the world really came from.

Ghost Tours, you can fool some of the people all the time, etc, but we're not bloody stupid. I guess I can now remove the question mark from the end of this blog's title.

UPDATE 23 November 2011

Unsurprisingly, there is still no sign of the alleged article. Not even any indication as to where it is (name of publication, date, etc.) so others can go and find it themselves. It is now painfully obvious the article or poll as first described does not exist, yet Jack Sim of Ghost Tours continues to peddle the same discredited advertising line, which only serves to further discredit his own reputation. Brisbane deserves better than this.

UPDATE 12 December 2011

Still nothing. More and more questions are being asked of 'Jack' Sim, and he ain't answerin'. I heard on the grapevine that new evidence exposing Second-most-hauntedGate is on its way.

Big win for cemetery groups as new vandalism laws are passed

2011-03-28T13:22:00.000+10:00

Lobbying by Brisbane cemetery volunteer groups has finally paid off, with the Queensland Parliament recently passing amendments to the Criminal Code that will make it easier to prosecute cemetery vandals. The Friends of Balmoral Cemetery (FOBC) and the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery (FOSBC) have long called for more legal protection for cemeteries, and the subject received massive publicity when vandals who caused extensive damage at Toowong Cemetery in 2009 got off scot-free because it could not be proved that they did not act without consent of the owners of the grave plots (most of whom are dead).

Damage at Toowong Cemetery, 2009 (brisbanetimes.com)

By coincidence, on the same day that the alleged vandals were acquitted, members of the FOBC were meeting with Attorney-General Cameron Dick, who flagged the changes that have now become law. The new laws have reversed the onus of proof regarding 'unlawfulness' and now require the defendant to prove that they acted with the consent of the owner or entity responsible for the site. Penalties have also been increased where damage is caused to a cemetery, gravestone, place of worship, or war memorial.

A new offence will address the issue of persons inappropriately interfering with graves (but where the conduct does not, in law, amount to 'damage') to allow for a prosecution for wilful damage. This one is of particular interest to the FOSBC, who have seen graves at the heritage-listed cemetery illegally restored (i.e., without permission from responsible heritage bodies), an act that may now constitute wilful damage.

Di Farmer, State Member for Bulimba, congratulated the the FOBC on their achievements in helping to push the change. She wrote that, 'these particular amendments to the Criminal Code were widely applauded by both sides of politics, and I was really proud to be associated with the group who lobbied for it. Well done! Look forward to celebrating with you about it at some stage very soon.'

Kelvin Johnson, past president of the FOBC, wrote that, 'This is real proof what a community group and alliances can do and how they can through effective organising, lobbying, leading the debate and for forming linkages and alliances... change the law for the greater good.'

Having worked with Kelvin and others on this matter through what have been some frequently frustrating times, I can only agree. Never again will we see cemetery vandals walk free from court because of a legal loophole. The cemetery groups will continue their efforts to defend our cemeteries as the Brisbane Cemetery Council still to need to improve their own laws in this area, and there is much work to be done combating the inappropriate use of cemeteries for parties and pseudo-Satanic arsehattery. In the meantime, a big thanks to the state government for changing the old laws, which I know had caused considerable public outrage after the Toowong case, and hopefully we will never need to see the new laws in action.

The Boggo Road Reopening Saga

2011-03-15T18:00:00.002+10:00

Well, it's official... Boggo Road Gaol will probably be closed until 2013. We got the word today from the government minister himself, Simon Finn, who wrote:

"With respect to any reopening of the Gaol, without basic safety and access works being undertaken there is ongoing concern about allowing regular access to the site by community or tour groups even in the short-term. Any reopening is unlikely to be before 2013 and this is the same advice provided to all inquiries."

Turns out that what we've been telling everyone for the last five months is true. Ignore anything you hear about the gaol opening this year, because it's just not going to happen. The state government has long shown an unwillingness to invest in heritage, but the final nails in the coffin were the floods and cyclones that ensured all government money would, understandably, be going elsewhere in Queensland. It would have cost at least $500,000 just to get the place up to basic health and safety standards to allow in regular tour groups etc - and that's without any further spending on making the place the top-class museum/historical site it truly deserves to be.

The good news is that there is a process in place that should protect the heritage values of Boggo Road and ensure it will be a place worth visiting when it eventually does reopen. I have always believed that as far as the 'new' Boggo Road Gaol goes, it is case of 'do it once, do it right'. This place has the potential to be every bit as good as the heritage prisons at Fremantle, Melbourne and Maitland (with world-heritage-listed Port Arthur probably being in a unique category).

The BRGHS will be involved in the consultation process for planning at Boggo Road and will be pushing our own vision for the site to be a vibrant and innovative community arts hub, hosting a dynamic programme of affordable historical interpretation via a wide range of art forms and media. The Australian experience has shown that heritage prisons can only succeed by embracing a not-for-profit and community ethos, and we will be driving this point home to make it happen at Boggo Road.

In the meantime, the Boggo Road reopening saga looks set to extend to eight years. However, with over forty of the near-200 BRGHS members now on 3-year memberships, we will most definitely be around when those big green gates finally open up again.

Stop Press: Event billed as 'great' actually turns out to be great!

2011-03-07T12:24:00.002+10:00

The 'Great Graveyard Shift' took place at South Brisbane Cemetery yesterday, and we could not be more pleased with the results. We (the the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery and the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society) had organised about 50 people to come along for this community clean-up, but in the end we had over 90 turn up and register with us! Taking into account that at least ten people who said they would come didn't show, we were amazed at the numbers.

This included about 30 cubs and scouts from the Tarragindi and Kurilpa groups, who were a hive of activity and really stuck to their task for a few hours, which for kids is a huge effort. The rest of us cleaned around various parts of the cemetery, and everyone got stuck into the free morning tea and lunch.

I had a chat with event co-ordinator Tracey Olivieri afterwards, and we agreed it was especially rewarding to see so many children taking part and enjoying themselves. One of our major aims this year is to foster greater community respect for the care and use of cemeteries, and hopefully these kids (many of whom were seeing the cemetery for the first time) will long remember this positive experience. They were certainly fascinated by the headstones, and it was great to see them develop an understanding of what the place used was for, when it was used, what it means to others, and what work is required to maintain them.

This was also the case for a lot the adults as well. One of the major benefits of these events is the community involvement, because the more time and effort people spend cleaning or even walking around cemeteries like this, the more they care about the place. While the parts of the cemetery we cleaned look so much better now, what I find more rewarding is this engagement of people with heritage and the development of better community ties with a place.

All in all, it was an excellent follow-up to the Sister Suburbs Sunday clean-up we had in January, and the FOSBC and BRGHS are now planning for another community clean-up project to take place later this year.