(Part Two) Constable Tom King: Hero of the Maryborough Great Flood of 1893 [Greg Young]

Note from Sharon Hollingsworth: Today, guest blogger Greg Young (great-great grandson of Tom King) continues the saga I began in (Part One) Tom King: Hero of the Maryborough Great Flood of 1893 located at  http://elevenmilecreek.blogspot.com/2011/01/part-one-constable-tom-king-hero-of.html  In that I told about the illuminated address Constable King had been awarded by grateful citizens. (Am just thinking that back in those days they did not have helicopters and motor boats like the present day rescuers are lucky to have, King and others only had strong arms to row with!) In this installment Greg tells about his quest to track down the present day location of the illuminated address and provides a few more details of how highly regarded his ancestor really was and gives a brief biographical sketch as well as a few other interesting bits and pieces that tie in with the Ned Kelly story!

Greg Young writes:

As a child I had discovered the fascinating story of Ned Kelly and was reading everything I could find on the subject when my visiting maternal grandfather told me that his grandfather, Thomas King, had been part of the police hunt for the Kelly gang. This only added to my interest and it reminded me that history is closer to us then we sometimes think.

As amazing as my family connection was, I was reticent to find out about Thomas Irvine Orton King. Would he be a typical man of his times? A brutal overseer of the trackers? Perhaps he was a member of the ferocious and feared Native Police; a force of white officers who led teams of trackers to “disperse in the usual manner” any aboriginals deemed a “problem.” Dispersing meant killing all members of camps - men, women and children of all ages, no matter what the alleged crime. (Thankfully, he was not!)

My search for the truth about Ned Kelly has continued for over 42 years and in the last decade I have found many anecdotes and stories of Tommy King that show him to be a most amazing man, respected and admired by all who knew him.

When it was announced that King (who had "fists like sledgehammers") would be travelling to Victoria with trackers from Fraser Island, the Courier Mail wrote: "The Kellys have got after them the best man, on horseback or as a tracker that Queensland can produce" and, it continued, "a more honest or brave heart than his has never trod the path of duty." The QLD Police refer to Tom King as their most famous policeman, his name associated with the capture of many Queensland criminals.

The search for Tom King led me to investigate the Queensland town of Maryborough where Tom spent many of his years as a policeman and where he is buried.                                                                                                                   
Maryborough still retains many of its colonial buildings, one of which houses the Maryborough Historical Museum. It is there that the illuminated address presented to him is now kept. Ironically it is flood damaged from the 1956 floods that inundated the city. King's police handcuffs were also displayed there but were stolen from the Museum in 2009.

My visit to the Museum and my request to see the illuminated address was met with blank looks until one of the volunteers remembered where it was kept locked in a drawer, awaiting restoration. When I told the volunteer staff about the "Hero of the Maryborough Floods" and my relationship to him, stories and links to other descendants in the area were forthcoming.

Greg Young holding the flood-damaged illuminated address that had been presented to his great-great grandfather Tom King.

King came from a family of Policemen, his father Walter was a Sergeant in Ipswich, QLD who resigned from the force in the early 1860s, leaving his family in Australia to fight in the American Civil War. Walter returned to Australia in 1865 and re-enlisted in the QLD Police, remaining in Ipswich until his death in 1896. Tom's brothers Nathanial, William and Walter also joined the Queensland Police Force. Tom King's association with the local Butchulla people and his knowledge of their tracking practices were invaluable and there was a mutual respect between this Irish-born policeman and the local aborigines. King was made a Bunda ("a father, brother, son combination and a respected person, allowed to sit in the Dora or Bora" - "A Dulungbara Perspective" by John Dalungdalee Jones).

His attitude to justice is clearly stated when he was chastised by journalists in 1894 for allowing an Aboriginal prisoner that he had apprehended to escape, though he later recaptured the suspect.
“Why did you not shoot him in the back?” he was asked. He replied “A man is innocent until proven guilty, and I do not shoot innocent men."

The citizens of Maryborough did not forget Tom King's bravery and years of service, and when he died in 1917 he was honoured with a state funeral. Horse drawn funeral carriages paraded through the streets of Maryborough and the grateful residents lined the streets to pay their respects. Strangely, this honor did not extend to a headstone and Thomas King is buried in an unmarked grave in the Maryborough cemetery.

Tom King in 1912. Taken when he was a member of the Pialba Shire Council. 

The trackers he took with him to join O'Connor in Brisbane for the trip to Victoria  included Gary Owen who was called Barney, Jack Morris (Jacky) who had befriended a Catholic priest in Victoria and adopted his name to become Jack Noble, and Willy Woondunna or Wondunna. In 1980 a suburb between Torquay and Urangan (not far from Hervey Bay) was named Wondunna in honour of the tracker and a plaque placed upon his grave in a small cemetery in Hervey bay.
A little known Kelly connection is worth noting: Willy's son Frederick Woondunna created a scandal when he fell in love with (and married) the sister of the local Missionary - Ethel Gribble - daughter of J. B. Gribble - the man to whom Ned Kelly returned his watch at Jerilderie (after it was souvenired by Steve Hart).