The Warwick Incident

In January this year, I hatched a crazy idea to spend a week in Warwick to catch up with a special TI friend, Elia who was celebrating her 50^th.  Since Elia and other special TI friend, Maura left in 2005 we’ve maintained our friendship through snatched phone conversations, rushed emails and texts and the odd, too-short visit.  I’d never had a week’s holiday on my own, but a half-century was every reason for a long and relaxed catch-up where work, family, chooks and ducks must simply be put on the backburner.  It seemed a long way off, but the day rolled around.

     Maura flew in from Adelaide and arrived an hour before me.  She’d hired a car so we set off along the motorway to the Cunningham Highway which took us to Warwick … after we’d worked out why the engine was screeching when we hit 20 ks on the motorway.

     ‘It’s in M,’ I said of the automatic gear stick.  ‘Where’s D for drive?’

    ‘I’ll pull over,’ said Maura. ‘It sounds terrible.  D is next to M, but it won't go.’

     The horn of a car passing at 80 sounded as it swerved.

     ‘I’ll get the manual,’ I said.

     ‘I’ve never seen M on an automatic before,’ said Maura. ‘What do you think that means?’

     ‘No idea.’  I was flicking pages madly trying to find something related to gears.  ‘Why do these things have to be so complicated? Here’s something about transmission.  Oh, M is Manual for rally car operation when more control is necessary.’

     ‘I can’t get it into D.’

     ‘Force it.’

     And we were on our way.

     Warwick, population 14,000 is a two hour drive south-west of Brisbane.  It straddles the banks of the meandering Condomine River and the town spreads out to farms, crop and grazing. Warwick has an olde-worlde charm with its sandstone buildings, Queenslanders on large blocks and wide, quiet streets lined with trees and shrubs still golden from autumn.  Seasons! How wonderful.  An unseasonal spring fever meant the mornings and evenings were crisply cold and the days cool with baby-blue skies.  Perfection!

Catholic church

Town Hall

 

     I imagined as I wandered the streets of Warwick that not a lot had changed in the last century.  There was hardly any traffic which seemed to stick to the main drag being the conduit for the highways to Brisbane and Toowoomba in one direction and the Sydney in the other.

     Had anything extraordinary happened in Warwick?  A grizzly murder?  A devastating earthquake?  An escaped convict with a new identity living a quiet life and working in MacDonalds?

     I did a quick search and surprise!  Anna Bligh was born in Warwick.  But I was thinking of something more momentous not that Ms Bligh’s entry into the world wasn’t.

     Then I discovered The Warwick Incident in 1917 and I could understand why Warwickans have kept low, quiet profiles since.

     On 29 November, Prime Minister Billy Hughes stopped at the Warwick Railway station and addressed a crowd about the issue of conscription.  Two eggs were thrown from the crowd and one knocked off the PM’s hat.  Hughes, who was a little paranoid about issues of national security, set upon the offenders and was understandably pulled back by his minders.  When the PM resumed his address, one of the offenders started heckling him so, as you can imagine, Hughes threw himself at the offender who was then arrested.

Warwick Station

     The PM demanded the offender be charged with a federal offence.  However the state police officer refused, arguing a state offence was appropriate.  Hughes lost it again and said he’d deal with the matter, but fortunately, he did not attack the policeman.

     The PM did deal with the matter eight days later by establishing the Commonwealth Police Force.    

     Fancy that!  The origins of the Australian Federal Police lay in Warwick ... and the egg, of course.