History helps us make sense of ourselves. It provides a narrative that helps us understand where we come from and guides us where we are going. I felt that strongly in Ireland, and now feel its pull as an Aussie for 25 years though it was Australia’s geography that first attracted me not its history. My earliest memories of Australia were the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef in a glossy table-book at my aunt’s place from relatives who moved to glamorous Sydney. I was also fascinated by a second memory, probably from an episode of Skippy, of a boomerang which thrown would return to the thrower. The boomerang reminded me Australia was the home of Aboriginal people who lived there first. Aborigines were non-existent in Melbourne where I first lived in 1988. They were visible when I moved to Brisbane, though not admired as they were mostly drunks, beggars or both. Indigenous people were over-represented in jail.
Brisbane’s jail for over a hundred years, was Boggo Road, an imposing and intimidating castle on a mound in Brisbane’s southside with the best views around. The story of Boggo Road Gaol is central to the story of Brisbane and the wider story of Australia and is a story under threat. Most prominently seen from Annerley Road I’d never been there until yesterday because as a northsider I’d never been down that far south on Annerley Road. I’d been thinking about visiting for over a year, but my desire was quickened by reports suggesting developers are hovering.
Annerley Road was always an important thoroughfare on the way to Ipswich (if neglected by us northsiders) but had a reputation for its terrible condition. Initially called Bolgo Road, it became by association “Boggo” to users frustrated by the road’s poor drainage. When a penitentiary opened in 1883 authorities called it Brisbane Jail but Boggo Road seemed to capture the immobility of its inmates.
Transportation finished 40 years earlier but the jail had one link to Brisbane’s convict era. Its executioner’s bell was forged in 1838 in the Moreton Bay penal colony. The bell was a mournful reminder for convicts of every era and at Boggo it was rung three times before an execution and three times 15 minutes afterwards. Patrick Kenniff heard the bell as he went to his death in 1903. Kenniff was a cattle duffer hanged for the murder of a policeman out west. He was the first white man to be condemned to death on the word of an Aboriginal, police tracker Sam Johnson. Kenniff went to the gallows proclaiming innocence, and the crime may have been committed by his brother or father.
Boggo’s last execution was Ernest Austin, hanged in 1913 for the murder of a young girl. Doubts over the effectiveness of capital punishment led Queensland to become the first state in Australia to abolish it, under EG Theodore’s Labor government in 1922. That Queensland was humanitarian in the 1920s may surprise, but Boggo was no place for liberals. The prison was state of the art in the 1880s but showed its age in its golden years; filthy, overcrowded and with a fearful reputation. It held Queensland’s worst murderers but also held many people on lesser crimes, jailed for their sex, their colour or their poverty.
The worst cells were chicken wire sheds in the open. These small exposed enclosures were home to recalcitrant prisoners or those the gaolers hated. They had no bed or blankets and their latrine buckets blew over in the wind. It was as bad as Changi and gaolers denied its existence for years. Finally photos emerged forcing authorities to close it down. An underground dungeon continued for recidivist offenders.
Boggo Road was not a foolproof prison and many escaped, oddly all in daylight. The most notorious escapee was Arthur “Slim” Halliday who absconded twice by the same method. The irregular shape of the prison enabled blind spots on the wall which guards could not constantly observe. Halliday took advantage of one to escape in 1940. He was re-captured after two weeks and his gaolers increased the size of the guardhouse on the walls to guard what inmates called “Halliday’s Leap”. It only moved the blind spot further down the wall. Halliday and two others found the new spot in 1946. Halliday was better at escaping than staying free and was re-captured again after four days. Authorities did not like being made to look like fools by “the Houdini of Boggo Road”. When Halliday was finally released he was framed for the murder of a taxi driver and he didn’t get out until the late 1970s.
By then the building was dating badly. Care of prisoners was rarely the attention of hard-line Nationals leader Joh Bjelke-Petersen. His tough on crime approach was geared to filling prisons rather than changing conditions in them. While the government presented a forward-looking Queensland at the expo in 1988, Boggo Road Gaol down the road remained a model of inhuman Victorian-era punishment. The prisoners had the last laugh. The Nationals government booted Joh out of office amid corruption controversies. Five prisoners took to the roof of Boggo Road. For two days prisoners smuggled up food to the five. After they were stopped, it became a hunger strike. Three days later there were protests outside the prison in favour of the prisoners. A rock band plugged speakers into a nearby house and played their songs at full blast. An Aboriginal flag flew from the top of the prison, reminding the world in front of news cameras their people were the worst affected by incarceration. The UN hammered Australia on the atrocious treatment of prisoners in Queensland and the state government finally agreed to close Boggo Road. The rooftop protesters came down in victory, with one additional condition: a bucketload of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
In 1988 remaining prisoners moved to Wacol and the most notorious place in Queensland was empty. In the 1990s the women’s prison was demolished to make way for an Ecosciences Precinct and park (freeing up the view) leaving the remaining blocks for private tours. The Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society is unhappy about the tours which it is says are expensive (I paid $25 for a 90 minute tour yesterday). The Society says the jail is a public asset and they welcomed Leighton Properties plans to redevelop the site retaining the oldest buildings which date from 1903. But tour operator Jack Sim says his business is on the line.
The remaining buildings are heritage-listed but that may not be enough to save them. I don’t trust Leighton Properties to do the right thing by Boggo Road. Like most developers they are capable of killing the goose that lays their golden egg while “honouring” history (think Oaks Festival Towers). Boggo Road should remain recognisable as a place of state internment, and its history, ghosts and memories faithfully recorded. Our sense of self as Queenslanders and Australians demands nothing less.
Woolly Days 
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