General News
22 October, 2025
Dead centre of town ‘alive’
A GUIDED walk through a cemetery may, for some, sound a little morbid, but for those with a keen interest in local history, or perhaps enjoy the tranquillity and peace of such a location, an event such as this is far from sullen.
More than 50 people have joined a guided walk-through sunny Port Douglas Cemetery, led by former funeral director Stephen Oldham.
He explained that Port Douglas was founded in 1877 and was initially named Salisbury, or sometimes Island Point and occasionally Port Owen. Eventually Port Douglas was chosen in commemoration of the-then Queensland Premier John Douglas.
During the walk presenters brought histories of deceased local personalities to life. Kaye Priem, who lives in Shannonvale, told stories of Scottish Thomas Lowe, founder of the Shannonvale sugar plantation. He built a two-story home on the banks of the river there and employed household help and farm workers.
She said: “Mr Lowe liked to go to Mossman, drink too much and misbehave, so one night the police decided to give him a fright. There was no lockup, so they chained his ankle to a big log and left him out in the police yard. The next morning, apparently, when a woman was sweeping out the Exchange Hotel bar, Mr Lowe, a man of about 1.93m and very broad shouldered, walked in. He eased through the door with the log on his shoulder, walked up to the counter and said: ‘I’ll have a rum please’.”
The first grave visited was that of George Freshney who died in 1878, not long after Port Douglas’s founding.
Mr Oldham said the 21-year-old red cedar timber cutter George cut into his leg with an axe and it became infected and he died of his injuries
One notable death was that of William Thomson, who was supposedly murdered by his wife Ellen Lynch Thomson and her lover John Harrison.
After a committal hearing in Port Douglas Court House, they were both convicted in Brisbane, which resulted in Ellen being the only woman to be hanged in Queensland.
William’s headstone, erected by his brother Thomas, reads: “Met his death by cruel and treacherous murder”.
During the walk, Father Barry Paterson, dressed in his clerical robes, explained the life of Rev Edward George Taffs, a well-known minister who oversaw the building of St David’s Church in Mossman from 1912.
Unfortunately, he did not live to see it finished, dying in 1950.
The congregation only recently erected a modern headstone for him in Port Douglas Cemetery.
Society secretary Lynn Anich has researched the murder of Mitar Gavrilovich in Cassowary in 1938.
His brother Bozo was finally convicted of shooting him in the head while in bed next to his wife Millie Vico, who survived.
Bozo served 10 years hard labour and was then deported. Millie apparently married again.
Frederick Carstens, originally from Copenhagen, Denmark had his monument in Macrossan Street erected by his second wife to celebrate his work.
He was instrumental in establishing the Mossman Central Mill and lobbied for the building of the Port Douglas to Mossman Tramway in 1901.
He was jockey club secretary and Douglas Divisional Board chairman from 1893 to 1898, continuing when it became the Douglas Shire Council.
The beautiful angel on his grave is new, replacing one of Carrara marble that was desecrated in 2004 and which now sits, headless, by the cemetery’s rotunda.
Graves of the only two people killed in the devastating cyclone of 1911 were visited during the walk.
Timothy O’Brien was escorting his mother across the street when a sheet of iron blown from a nearby building hit him in the head.
Andrew Jack also died when his house at Killaloe collapsed on him.
Another nearby grave was that of Catherine, or Kate, Tait who died aged 13 after falling off a veranda in 1899.
Society’s vice president Ann-Marie Fapani said Ms Tait’s mother, Bridget Tait, was running the North Australian Hotel, later named the Central.
It was damaged in the 1911 cyclone and was rebuilt as a two-story building, some of which survives.
There are reports of Kate’s ghost roaming the hotel. Bridget died in 1912 and her four surviving daughters ran the hotel until the 1940s.
William Buchanan built Buchanan’s Family Hotel on the corner of Wharf Street in 1878 with his father-In-law John Gibson.
William died young in 1883, apparently of either Mossman Fever or possibly typhoid, aged 46, caught probably at his farm, Bonnie Doon which he established in 1881 on the Mossman River.
He left his wife Annie and six children to run the pub, now called the Court House and Bonnie Doon farm, from which its sugar cane was the first through the mill in August 1897.
Annie married James Rose, an engineer, in 1887 and had two more children. She ran the hotel until the turn of the century when her daughter took over.
Those attending the cemetery walk were notably surprised when flamboyant Diana Bowden, creator of world-famous shell jewellery and proprietor of Nautilus tea rooms came to life.
Local actor Judy Gittings, sipping from a glass of transparent liquid, told how she and her husband Max had come from England and finally settled in Port Douglas, where she paid children two shillings for 10 shells to make her innovative jewellery.
Nautilus became the restaurant of today. She liked a drop of alcohol and passed away from drinking cleaning fluid from a vodka bottle.
Finally, society’s life member Pam Willis Burden told some stories about the late Noel Weare, founder of the Douglas Shire Historical Society and the Court House Museum.
Passionate about sharing the history of Port Douglas, Noel worked tirelessly, fighting for the preservation of many buildings, the original flagstaff on Flagstaff Hill and Dixie’s Shed. Pam said without Noel, much of the Shire’s heritage would be lost.
Finally a wake was held in the rotunda and a toast was raised to ‘our dearly departed’.
Well, I’m off to raise a glass to our history makers, so for now it’s Gazza signing out.
Send your stories to gazza@cairnslocalnews.com.au
