In 1913 Cairns OIC and Police Inspector John McGrath remarked in his annual report to Commissioner William Cahill “It will be necessary to form a new station at Babinda, where a sugar mill will be erected towards the end of the year. It will be the centre of a large sugar district which will carry a permanent population. An Acting Sergeant and Constable will be required for this station, which is 40 miles from Cairns and 28 from Innisfail”. Further requests by Cairns Police District saw the erection of tents at Babinda on 30 July 1914 to act as a temporary Police Station, and by March 1916 a proper building was completed which included accommodation for the Sergeant and his family.
Babinda Police Station, 1918.
Image No. PM0275 Courtesy of the Queensland Police Museum.
A destructive cyclone swept through Babinda in March 1918 leaving only a few buildings intact. In true community style the town and police facilities were repaired or rebuilt and policing in the District continued. In July 1926 Wirth’s Brothers Circus came to town and one of their adventurous elephants decided to stretch its legs and break into the police yard. It knocked over and destroyed two new water tanks, nudged the stable building out of plumb, and tore palings off the fence, before wandering off into a swamp where it was finally detained. The repairs to the police station were estimated at £21 and 10 shillings with Wirth’s Brothers picking up the bill.
Wirth’s Brothers Circus elephant detraining in Lismore, NSW, c1925.
Image courtesy of TROVE.
Often in country towns, police accommodation was less than ideal and a shortage of housing and exorbitant rents made life somewhat more difficult. Constable Frank Stevenson described his rented Babinda home as follows:
“The house occupied by me consists of three small rooms with iron walls and is neither ceiled nor lined and has no outside accommodation whatever and is built on a swamp and all within a hundred yards of a Chinese shop, two Greek shops and two Brothels. I am paying 25 shillings per week rent and have since been billed 7 shillings and 6 pence per month for sanitary rates. This being the only available house on my arrival at Babinda, I took it in the hope that better accommodation may be gained, but since then and at present there is not one vacant house in Babinda. I consider it very unfair to have to ask a woman to live in such a house and that there being two Brothels within such a short distance of the back door with the comingcrushing season it will be more or less unpleasant for my wife, she being a delicate woman and suffering the after effect of a recent nervous breakdown and it will be impossible for her to live there…”
Commissioner of Police William Harold Ryan, c1930. Commissioner Ryan’s tenure ran for 9 years from 1925 to 1934.
Image No. PM2298 Courtesy of the Queensland Police Museum.
Police Commissioner William Ryan, in a memorandum via the Cairns District Inspector, advised Constable Stevenson it was not the Commissioner’s business to find a suitable house for the Constable and his wife. Constable Stevenson successfully transferred to Gordonvale in January 1927. Babinda is known as the wettest Australian town and police history documents further cyclonic events. The town is also surrounded by stunning mountain ranges and the Great Barrier Reef and although beautiful, can be dangerous places. Babinda Police, with assistance from Innisfail Station have coordinated many search and rescue missions due to road fatalities, lost bush walkers and in May 1985 a plane crash. In 2014 police staff consisting of one Sergeant and two Constables police the largely agricultural Division of sugar cane, banana and tropical fruit farms. They are supported by one Administration Officer.
Babinda Police Station, 2014.
Image Courtesy of Babinda Police Station staff.
This information has been supplied by the Queensland Police Museum from the best resources available. The article was written by Assistant Curator Virginia Gordon and Museum Assistant Georgia Grier.
The Police Museum is open 9am to 4pm Monday to Friday and 10am to 3pm on the last Sunday of the month (Feb-Nov) and is located on the Ground Floor of Police Headquarters at 200 Roma Street, Brisbane. Contact: E: museum@police.qld.gov.au
“FROM the VAULT – Policing Babinda” by the Queensland Police Service is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (BY) 2.5 Australia Licence. Permissions may be available beyond the scope of this licence.
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