Christopher Dawson

Boab Prison Trees – Fact or Fiction?

Were boab trees in Western Australia really once used as makeshift lock-up cells, or is just it an urban myth?

Death Rides a Penny-Farthing

How a fall from a 19th-century bicycle led to a injured finger and to death and a surprising headstone symbol.

The Gallows of the Old Windmill Tower

Depiction of the 1841 hanging (Telegraph, 10 March 1970)

Two Aboriginal men were hanged at the Brisbane windmill in 1841. I look at the unresolved question of exactly what type of gallows was used that day.

The Seven Devils of George Street

Printer's Devil over main entrance, old Printing Office, George Street, Brisbane.

Seven sandstone devils keep watch over Brisbane’s George St. from their vantage points on the old Printing Office. Find out how these rather strange objects found their way there.

Colonial Columns: ‘Observations made on a journey to the natives at Toorbal, August 1841’ (Part Two)

The vivid description of missionaries journeying a few day’s north of Brisbane in 1841, and their encounters with various Aboriginal peoples along the way. Part Two.

Colonial Columns: ‘Observations made on a journey to the natives at Toorbal, August 1841’ (Part One)

Extract from Carl F. Gerler's sketch of the German Mission Station at Zion's Hill, 1846. (John Oxley Library)

The vivid description of missionaries journeying a few days north of Brisbane in 1841, and their encounters with various Aboriginal peoples along the way. Part One.