KARDIA STOKES

This is an excerpt from FRAGMENTS OF THE KENNIFF STORY, a collection by Kardia Stokes (c. 2002) of interviews and anecdotes, accompanied by photographs from 'Kenniff country' and historical gravesites associated with the story. Starting point for FRAGMENTS was R.P.J. Good's Ketching the Kenniffs, The Origins and Exploits of the Kenniff Brothers Patrick and James, first published in 1996 and reprinted in 2001. The story of the Kenniffs is about one of the most heinous crimes committed in Queensland pastoral history, and tells of events that happened just over one hundred years ago.

Right: Resting place of Patrick Kenniff's bodily remains at South Brisbane Cemetery, Dutton Park.

The original flowerbed, which it is said a mysterious black-clad lady tended for 30 years, has now been replaced by a stone slab.

Prison records dating from November 1902 note for the 5 ft 9 1/2in tall prisoner, weighing 11.3 stones, the following marks and special features: 'Female bust with 3 doves and branches in their mouths right-hand bicep, Female head with chain on neck and 5 doves with branches in their mouth left-hand bicep, Scars on right-hand forearm and back of head.'

A quick look at the scene at the turn of the century shows the brothers were known as notorious horse and cattle thieves and had frequent encounters with the law. In early 1902, while plying their trade in the remote Carnarvon Ranges in southwest Queensland, north of the township of Mitchell, they were wanted by police once more, this time on a warrant for the theft of a bay pony mare. The mounted search party consisted of a constable, a station manager, and a 'blacktracker', in the vernacular of the time, the latter also leading a packhorse. Upon catching sight of their quarry on the second day in the secluded Lethbridge's Pocket area of the ranges, the policeman and the station manager were killed, presumably shot dead in the attempt to apprehend the Kenniff brothers. Two bodies were discovered several days later, burnt to charcoal, in a packsaddle strapped to the constable's horse. Their identification was positive and the two Kenniffs became the only suspects. There were apparently no witnesses other than the Aboriginal tracker who testified to hearing shots that did not originate from the constable's pistol. However, he could not comment on who did the firing as, from where he was, he was unable to see what actually happened. He said he turned his horse and fled when he saw one of the Kenniffs galloping towards him.

It all happened on Easter Sunday of 1902. The hunt for the alleged killers lasted for almost three months. After a frosty winter night, on Monday, 23 June 1902, the Kenniffs were captured in scrubland near Mitchell. At the trial both brothers were found guilty of murder on circumstantial evidence and convicted to death by hanging. But James Kenniff was lucky. Due to intense lobbying, his sentence was commuted to 16 years in gaol with hard labour and a royal pardon saw him released even sooner, in November 1914.

*** Studying journalism at the University of Southern Queensland, I was given the task to write a three-part, 4,500 word newspaper feature on any subject likely to be of interest to the readers. My chosen subject was the Kenniffs.

It seems not many Queenslanders, let alone Australians, have heard of the Kenniffs and I cannot clearly remember when I first encountered their story. It was somewhere in New South Wales. When I moved to Queensland in 1993, I had all but forgotten it except that it related to some type of bushranger.

In 1998 an elderly local man pointed out to me the gravesite of a lady of German descent in the cemetery at Tara, southeast Queensland. By coincidence, friends had recently presented him with a copy of Ketching the Kenniffs as they knew of his interest in the 'Kelly Gang' and in Queensland bushranging stories in particular.

The grave in the Tara cemetery turned out to be that of Emilie Auguste Dahlke, mother of Albert Christian Dahlke, one of those killed in Lethbridge's Pocket. Just then the above study assignment came up and I discovered more about that family as time went by. But the Kenniff feature story took priority and I began to conduct interviews on the subject.

The most prominent interviewee was R.P.J. Good, whose detective handiwork with Ketching the Kenniffs has created a compelling history out of fragments of evidentiary nature. It could have dispelled many of the myths circulating around the Kenniffs; but I found that they had not been silenced altogether. Another contributor to my feature story was a southwest Queensland grazier who is adamant that the old legends hold true and it's a tale of the underdog versus high society. Then there are those unfamiliar with details who do not engage in siding with one or the other but nevertheless are touched by history in their daily encounters. They live with buildings and structures still extant, partly or wholly after all these years, or walk the hallowed groundsonce trodden by those whose stories keep us spellbound. A further source of enlightenment were those that bear the Kenniff name and who therefore are constantly assessing its relevance to their own lives.

It seems preposterous and audacious in this massive re-calibration of our global societies to indulge in Queensland bushranging history. And yet, I can see the link sufficiently clearly to continue the line of thought. The line of injustice, inequity and exploitation unfortunately seems to link all human history since it entered the realm of consciousness.

Perceived injustice does not simply touch, but strike. It does so on a deep, personal level, and is cumulative, the more and the longer we remember and pass on what we remember. Memory contains the seed of the present which propagates the future. What is told about the Kenniffs has been clouded by suspicions of unfairness and injustice, the cause of which is not necessarily found within the legal framework. Something seems missing. 'It is the sum of all your judgments that counts.' I believe this line from F. Scott Fitzgerald encapsulates the essence of human morality. Literally, it seems a call to dusting out the corners of knowledge, allowing for error, and using logic and reason merely as a compass to try and understand the human condition. A timely invention, the too-hard basket, sits there in sinister innocence. In spite or because of it, it is incumbent on its owners to deal with the complexity of histories, their authors and interpreters. With three-dimensional vision, staring down at the picture for long enough, we can survey a tile as surreal as the story of the Kenniffs in the mosaic of time.

FRAGMENTS OF THE KENNIFF STORY is a collection which consists of a newspaper feature, an interview with a contemporary 'Kenniff', previously published stories on the Dahlkes, and anecdotes gathered during a trip to North Queensland. These fragments contain a bias of necessity, an eclecticism dictated by circumstance. But there is another type of bias, rendering fragmentary what once was whole: Nature gives where it must and takes where it can. What survives to this day and can be touched, seen, photographed, has already been apprehended by the nature process, dissembled, disintegrated, corroded, recycled. The water canister remains so far vastly unchanged in what is an unnatural environment for its utility, namely the Miles museum. The lay of the land persists, old trees today were saplings then and might be able to remember a tale or two, but they can't talk so that we might hear. Headstones on graves wither with time if a human will does not make and remake them to last as symbolic reminders of a past. Yet, even then they remain fragments, pieces of an incomplete jigsaw puzzle of evolving history.

Kardia Stokes,
December 2003