The murder of William Stephens in 1866 at Mooloolah
It is useful to set the scene. In February 1866 the Gympie gold rush was two years in the future and the Gympie Road did not exist. There was a settlement at
Mooloolah Heads started by William Pettigrew. It was largely a base for the shipping of timber cut in the hinterland. William Grigor and James Lowe ran a store there where the basic rations could be purchased. Pettigrew ran steamships on the coastal run between Brisbane and Mooloolah Heads, his major vessel at the time being the Gneering. The hinterland was divided into a few large cattle runs, with Edmund Lander and the Westaway brothers being the main
operators in this area. As the following will demonstrate at least two timbercutters, Charles
Kinmond and Robert Keely had huts in the area that is now Glenview. They lived in slab huts and there were no roads as such, only bush tracks with very few travellers. There were no other towns or settlements north of Caboolture. When reading contemporary accounts of the events there are frequent references to ‘Mooloolah’. This can lead to confusion as they refer to the port of Mooloolah Heads (now known as ‘Mooloolaba’) not the present township of Mooloolah which did not exist in 1866.
The local Aborigines, the Kabi Kabi tribe or language group were, in general,peaceful and some worked in the timber industry. There were often a few hanging around the store and the settler’s huts at Mooloolah Heads, doing odd jobs.
One such person was known as Captain Piper and he had apparently worked for Tom Petrie as a foreman in a gang of cutters in the Mooloolah and Maroochy River area. He was a large, strong man and one writer describes him as a Hercules in comparison to other members of his race.
In February 1866 botanist William Stephens was at Mooloolah Heads waiting for the Gneering
to take him back to Brisbane. He was employed by the Queensland Government Botanist Walter
Hill to collect botanical specimens for a display at the forthcoming Melbourne Exhibition.
Included in his collections were seeds of the bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii) which grows in the
area north and west of Mooloolah Heads. Stephens discovered that the Gneering would be some time before it arrived in port. Therefore he decided to travel on foot to Brisbane, a distance of about 84 miles, collecting plants along the way.
He purchased rations from the store and, in the
process, displayed a number of silver shillings which he carried to pay Aborigines for work they
carried out for him. One account suggests that Captain Piper, who was in the vicinity, mistook
these for gold sovereigns, perhaps providing an explanation for what was to follow.
The suggestion is that Stephens is alleged to have collected bunya seed from a tree which was
traditionally owned by Captain Piper, an act that would have made him an enemy of Piper.
Stephens hired Aborigine Tommy Skyring to guide him on the way to Brisbane. Skyring had
previously guided Stephens in the area. Local accounts describe Tommy Skyring as being
emaciated, weak and in poor health. He had consumption (tuberculosis) of which he died a few
months later. He declined offers by Captain Piper and Johnny Griffin to help carry Stephens’s
effects, but apparently these two followed Stephens and Skyring when they left on 24 February 1866. Robert Keely, a local timbercutter, was going in the same direction and joined Stephens and Skyring and they set out from Mooloolah Heads. One account says that Stephens intended to spend the night at the hut occupied by timbercutters Kinmond and Peter Campbell, but stopped at a waterhole on the Mooloolah River (later known as ‘Deadman’s Waterhole’) to boil the billy and cook some damper or johnny cakes for lunch. Keely declined an offer to stay and left them about 3:00 pm to carry on to his hut which was a little beyond Kinmond and Campbell’s hut, a few miles away.
