"Going over the hill" – Stone River State Farm 1944 -1962

I would hazard a guess that few Herbert River Valley locals know that once there was a prison farm at Stone River. Perhaps that is because it was relatively short-lived. Her Majesty’s State Farm, Stone River, located 21 kilometres south-west of Trebonne opened for ‘customers’ on 18 November 1944, though it was not officially proclaimed until 8 March 1945. It was the fifth prison farm to be established in Queensland. Its purpose was to provide: prisoner rehabilitation, punishment and prison administration. The prison was de-proclaimed in 1962, just 18 years after the first prisoners passed through its gates. The Stone River State Farm, was established explicitly for male long-termers and lifers though other types of prisoners were sent there soon after it was opened.

Though they were prisons, prison farms came to be called State Farms rather than prison farms. The premise was that these farms would provide the food stuffs for the prisons, engage in local industries, and that in rural surroundings, employed in productive employment prisoners might have a better chance of being rehabilitated. The Registers of male prisoners admitted is held at the Queensland State Archives. That registers record “a prisoner’s criminal history and physical descriptions. The type of information recorded was: prisoner's name and number, date of admission, offence, sentence, where and by whom committed, date of sentence, date of discharge, number of previous convictions, place of birth, trade, religion, age, height, colour of hair and eyes, make, complexion, education, weight, descriptive marks and how and when disposed of.”

The prisoners were paid a minimum wage and given rights that prisoners in walled prisoners were not. Prisoners could decorate their huts (long before prisoners in regular prisons were permitted to) and could freely engage in extra-curricular activities such as swimming and playing cards and chess, even watch movies in the recreation hall occasionally. There is something of an irony in this as with the decline in the death sentence, life sentences increased as a result. Yet, these often notorious, murderers and rapists were fast-tracked to prison farms.

The State Farms were essentially ‘prisons without walls’. They were low-security or ‘honour prisons’ employing no security measures and relying entirely on the prisoners’ honour not to abscond. They did not look like prisons and had an informal atmosphere. They generally consisted of temporary or permeable structures and made use of farm or other buildings that were already on the property. Prisoners were gainfully employed during their incarceration. Livestock was kept at the Stone River State Farm and detailed records were kept of cattle breeding, slaughtering habits, spraying for ticks, mustering, brandings, calving, etc. Entries were checked and signed monthly. It had a cane assignment and timber was logged from the property. Prisoners were entrusted with responsibility to conduct some of the work unsupervised.

This did not mean that prisoners did not continue to commit misdemeanours during their incarceration or attempt to escape. Often escapes occurred when the prisoners were inebriated on ‘moonshine’ produced on an illicit still. Prisoners did attempt to escape from the Stone River State Farm. At that farm prisoners referred to escaping as “going over the hill.” Several of the cases of escape form Stone River State Farm were forms of protest about conditions: shortage of tobacco or poor medical facilities. The two who escaped as a protest about tobacco supplies were emboldened by drinking a concoction made of “methylated spirits, water, lemon juice and sugar cane”. Most escapees were captured within days of their escape.

Stuff of local folklore is the one that got away! One of the few who were never captured was a prisoner in Stone River State Prison who never returned after going out to bring cattle in on wet-season evening in 1960. He had been a model and trusted prisoner and only had six months of a two year sentence for break and enter to serve. Another model prisoner who escaped from the Stone River State Farm in 1951 was recaptured after six and a half months. On escape he gave blood to the Red Cross in Brisbane and found work as a cattleman. He was handed in to the authorities by his employer.

Another story of absconding from Stone River State Farm is rather humorous and as the event could not be reliably corroborated from interviews with both prisoners and warders no charges were laid. Taylor describes it as “One of the more remarkable accounts”. The event occurred in May 1948.

A number of prisoners allegedly made an appearance at a dance at the Upper Stone River community hall, dressed in regulation Queensland prison service uniforms. One of the prisoners at the farm had been entrusted with the task of doing the guards’ laundry, and it was alleged that he ‘loaned’ the garments to his fellow prisoners for the purpose of attending the dance. Upon hearing about the matter, the UnderSecretary to the Attorney General, J. D. O’Hagen, wrote to his Minister, ‘one can imagine the resentment of parents in the Ingham district if they found that their daughters were dancing with prisoners from the State Farm’.

A bane for the Officers-in-charge was that they would never know how many prisoners they would have at any given time. As a result, they had to set the tasks to how many men they had rather than the other way around as you would on a regular farm where tasks determined the number of workers required. The OIC of Stone River State Farm in 1945 frequently lamented the lack of farming skills of the inmates, particularly in gardening or ploughing while he also commented that he needed a good cook as the prisoners he had available did not like cooking. Due to the poor siting of the prison farms most were relatively unproductive. The Stone River State Farm was “rocky, wet and unproductive.”

Taylor describes the difficult task of selection of suitable prisoners. It makes amusing reading:

In 1958, when a number of huts at Stone River became available for new prisoners, CGP William Kerr considered the candidates available for transfer, and the documents illustrate the difficulty of his task. A fair number of the best prospects had already been at the farm, and had either been transferred back to Townsville prison on account of some misconduct, or been released and reconvicted. Kerr had to choose from a list that included: one inmate who had been punished for fighting but was a good concreter; another was known to have an aversion to work; a ‘neurotic type’; ‘an agitator when it concerns others’; and an arsonist—‘he might be a risk on a Farm’. The list also included ‘a Bodgie type’ believed to be the ringleader of a gang of thieves, a ‘delicate type’, one ‘inclined to wander’, a ‘trouble maker’, one ‘subject to fits and blackouts’, and another who was ‘the greatest pest I have and is never out of trouble’. One prisoner was a skilled cane cutter and believed he would get the transfer as of right, based on his skills. Another wanted to go to the farm but had ‘sore feet and cannot wear boots’. The offences these inmates had committed included murder, rape, stealing, child molestation, and car theft.

Obviously as the prisoners engaged in farm work and lived in remote bush areas injuries were common but deaths on prison farms were rare. Records indicate that in the period 1913-1961 only three people died in prison farms in that period, one of those being a prisoner at Stone River in August 1956 of Leptospirosis. The dangers and hazards that State Farm prisoners faced that prisoners in regular penitentiaries did not is illustrated by this story of the Stone River State Farm:

During the wet season at Stone River State Farm in 1945, a prisoner was sent with one warder to collect meat and bread from the Ingham post office. Rising river levels forced the pair to take an alternative, mountainous route back to the farm. The route was too precipitous for their horses, so they had to be left behind to be collected later, when the waters receded. The route was so difficult, the warder reported, ‘that the prisoner narrowly escaped serious accident whilst crossing one of the flooded gorges, losing the bag of bread in the process of saving himself’.

The Stone River State Farm had an inauspicious start when it was discovered that the tents that were to house the prisoners and staff initially, lacked essential parts. Moreover, it was a difficult farm to staff. Contributing factors were the isolation, lack of accommodation for the families of married officers, lack of nearby amenities, and an OIC with a bad reputation made it very difficult to staff the farm at all. The turnover of staff was high, and replacements almost impossible to find. Its first OIC was Allan Whitney. Another officer to serve there was Bill Kearney. The first three OICs of the Stone River State farm were competent: men very suited for the work: fair, calm and able to diffuse conflict peaceably. They could even be regarded by the prisoners as friends rather than gaolers. However, the period 1949 to 1956 at Stone River State Farm illustrates what happens when staff that is employed is incompetent or unhappy in their role. The first three were followed by a cruel, mistrustful OIC who withheld appropriate medical treatment, made the prisoners work when they were ill or injured, and did not provide appropriate clothing or tools. He was also verbally abusive. He treated subordinate staff with disdain and argued with them in front of prisoners. As a result, prisoner morale plummeted. During this period, prisoners again escaped (anticipating to be recaptured) with the intent to draw attention to the conditions on the farm and the poor treatment of prisoners. The irony was that they were aided and abetted by a warder whose behaviour had transitioned from friendly to abusive and back again. He lent them his car to escape!  The number of escapes: seven between April and June in 1955 prompted the Comptroller General to investigate why there were so many escapes from the Stone River facility.

In a post WW2 period of plentiful employment opportunities, a warders’ wagers and conditions could not compete with that of other jobs available. Also, it was perceived that the personal attributes of prison staff had changed: “ before the war, ‘such was the type of man in the service … with few exceptions, they had that ingrained sense of responsibility and dedication to the job which made each man perform his duty when the going got rough.’“ Hence isolated prison farms like that at Stone River struggled to attract staff. Some of the problems for staff at Stone River were that it was so far from social amenities like hotels. The nearest school was located five miles and only accessible “through wild and snake-infested country.” In addition, the farm was too remote and too small to employ a medical officer. As a result of the changing times and conditions, and the difficulties of attracting staff to the remote Stone River State Farm site the prison was closed and de-proclaimed. Substantial structures were relocated to other properties and today it is a private cattle property.

SOURCES:

Chris Dawson,  “Stone walls do a prison make: law on the landscape,” in Queensland Historical Atlas, http://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/stone-walls-do-prison-make-law-landscape
Benedict Taylor, Prisons without walls: prison camps and penal change in Australia, c. 1913-1975. Phd thesis, University of New South Wales, 2010.

Roy Stephenson, Nor Iron Bars, 25 as quoted in Benedict Taylor, Prisons without walls: prison camps and penal change in Australia, c. 1913-1975. Phd thesis, University of New South Wales, 2010.

“No gaoler to this prison,” Herald 18 July 1936, 22.

“New prison farm to be at Upper Stone Riiver,” Townsville Daily Bulletin, 30 Oct 1944, 2.

“Investigate N.Q. prison farm,” Central Queensland Herald, 2 Jun 1955, 14.  

“Humanitarianism,” Worker, 12 April1954, 5. 

Queensland State Archives Series ID 18771.

Queensland State Archives Series ID 9109.

Bill Kearney, Boggo Road, 1941. Image source: http://www.boggoroadgaol.com.au/History%20pages/Staff%20Kearney.html

Main gate, Stone River State Farm, c.1960. Image Source: Benedict Taylor, Prisons without walls: prison camps and penal change in Australia, c. 1913-1975. Phd thesis, University of New South Wales, 2010, 245.

Owen John Oakes back to prison. Image source: “Back to prison,’ Morning Bulletin, 4 January 1952, 1.