All Fall Down (6 page)

‘And I said, “Hang on, the Premier didn’t appoint me, I believe that Llew Edwards appointed me.”

‘“Oh,” he said.’

The Flower Farmer of Amity Point

For years, former assistant commissioner of police, Tony Murphy, had been dropping over to the fishing village of Amity Point on North Stradbroke Island, and piecing together a house. He had gone to the island in the mid-1960s with his and Terry Lewis’s good mate, Barry Maxwell, proprietor of the Belfast Hotel in Queen Street, and bought at auction two adjacent blocks of land right down the eastern end of Gonzales Street, on the corner of Tosh Street. Maxwell bought a parcel at the corner of Tosh Street and Sovereign Road.

According to Murphy’s family, he built a besser brick garage on one of the blocks, complete with a small kitchen and bathroom. The family spent holidays there, enjoying the island life. The three blocks of land overlooked four hectares of Crown Land that, upon his retirement just before Christmas 1982, Murphy leased. He planned to grow a small farm of Geraldton Wax –
Chamelaucium uncinatum
– the hardy, flowering shrub common in Western Australia. The plant, with white, pink and mauve flowers, lasted generously after cutting and was popular with florists.

Murphy first built a besser brick home on one of his blocks and, after a long and colourful career as one of Queensland’s most astute and tough detectives, knuckled down to work as a flower farmer. Replacing his suit, he was often seen on his ‘farm’ at the end of Gonzales Street dressed in khaki dungarees. He cleared much of the acreage and built a small generator, housed in a pale brick shed, to pump water to his bushes. The land was sandy, ideal for growing Geraldton Wax, and he soon had a tractor to help cultivate the block.

Murphy’s activities caught the attention of the tight Amity community. Here was a place sparsely populated with holidaymakers, generational fishermen and misfits. People kept to their own business. In a travel story on Amity Point, published in
The Queenslander
in 1899, the author wrote: ‘The pure air of Amity was breathed by many a man whose life, so to put it, was his own – many a man who, perhaps embittered and cast aside, lived with no care for the future, with no pleasant thought of the past.’

Murphy may or may not have had pleasant thoughts of the past, but his transition from big city detective to island hamlet flower farmer, was a substantial one. ‘We’d made a different life for ourselves down there, growing flowers,’ says Murphy’s wife, Maureen. ‘He was always in the yard to take his mind off things. [It was] hard, hard work.

‘He loved it there. Lying in bed and hearing the sound of the birds, the koalas. He wanted to get away from everything. We never made anything off the farm either. Everything was run at a loss.’

Another Murphy family member said: ‘He never had any enemies at Stradbroke.’

Still, growing flowers in the village and eventually carting them back to the mainland to sell to florists and at markets was not something that happened every day at Amity. ‘We didn’t know what that bloke was doing there,’ says one long-time resident. ‘It was something strange. The island is a long way removed from Brisbane. It’s out of the limelight. It may as well be on the other side of the world.’

Murphy’s near neighbours in Tosh Street say he was an excellent neighbour and always willing to lend a helping hand. ‘He was the best neighbour you could ever wish to have,’ they said. ‘Maureen and all the kids were lovely. The house was nothing ostentatious. Tony was a good family man. They drove a Black Chrysler; they did not have flash cars.’

Murphy soon joined the newly established Amity Point Community Club, a place for locals to meet and have a social drink. The club convened in an old wooden hall at the end of Gonzales Street, on Ballow Street. Maureen attended a ‘cocktail night’ with some of the local women once a month. Another local remembers Murphy from the club bar and also the Point Lookout Hotel. ‘He stood and drank on his own,’ he says. ‘He’d look at you, he’d look at everyone that walked in the door and he’d check out who you were. You could tell he was a policeman.’

Author Peter James, who in 1974 published his explosive book,
In Place of Justice: An Analysis of a Royal Commission 1963–1964
– a damning indictment on a young Murphy and Glen Patrick Hallahan at the time of the National Hotel inquiry – remembers coming across Murphy in the hotel at Point Lookout.

James’ book had caused controversy on publication, and at one point James was in fear for his life. He received an anonymous threat, and the company that printed the book was mysteriously burned down not long after it was released. In addition, word got back to James that copies of the book suddenly disappeared from Brisbane libraries, even the State Parliamentary Library.

At the hotel, James says he was drinking with friends when Murphy walked in. ‘I thought, Oh God, it’s Tony Murphy,’ says James. ‘He looked at everyone in the bar, scanned their faces, but he passed over mine and didn’t recognise me.’

By all accounts, a once frenetically busy Murphy settled into quiet village life. He rarely fished, and neighbours reported few visitors. One, however, stood out. ‘Terry Lewis did come over once,’ a neighbour says. ‘I remember Maureen saying, “Mr Lewis is coming”.’

The Breslin Cup

One of the most conspicuous and impressive characters who began appearing regularly at the Police Club in the city was a man called Paul John Breslin. He was born and raised in Gladstone where his father, John Edward Breslin, ran a local funeral parlour and was involved in other businesses.

Paul Breslin was a promising student. ‘I was very, very good at English … social studies, ancient and modern history and English, and I was particularly good at logic – top five in Australia for Year 12,’ Breslin says. ‘It was my own fault because I was lazy. I was pretty good at the more florid subjects, as they say.’

He was also something of a budding entrepreneur. ‘I used to run cabarets at the Queens Hotel, which was, believe it or not, above my father’s office, simply because the block of land was owned by Castlemaine Perkins,’ Breslin recalls. ‘On weekends, on a Friday night, I’d run a disco for underage people … no grog … and we always had one or two uniformed police officers on the door to ensure there was no alcohol and that undesirables didn’t go in.’

Then life changed for the Breslin family – on Sunday 21 April 1974, Breslin Senior committed suicide with a Sterling .22 rifle at the family’s home at 11 Bayne Street, Gladstone. He left behind his wife Margaret (known as Peg) and seven children. Paul was the oldest.

‘He was an alcoholic,’ Breslin says. ‘A severely depressed alcoholic. His father killed himself as did his father … about five fathers in a row. The whole family left after that incident. It was very depressing to go to the graveyard and see all the Breslins.’

(According to the Rockhampton
Morning Bulletin
, John Breslin’s father – Edward Matthew Breslin, a respected local businessman and former mayor of Gladstone – died in hospital in 1944 after a short illness. John’s great uncle, C.C. Breslin, a merchant, was charged in the Gladstone Police Court in November 1886 with attempting to commit suicide with a razor. The prisoner said he had been unconscious from alcohol on the night in question and ‘had not the slightest idea what he was doing’.)

After the tragedy, Paul moved south to the big smoke, Brisbane, and initially settled in the inner-city suburb of New Farm, then a predominantly working-class suburb crammed with wooden cottages bordering Fortitude Valley. He worked as a sales executive for the Ford Motor Company, where he excelled. Breslin displayed an almost obsessive fascination with police – its hierarchy, its work, its uniforms and badges, cars and weapons. If he could have had an alternative career, he would have been a policeman.

Instead, he spent many nights surrounded by them at the Police Club – on the fourth floor of the old Egg Board building in Makerston Street – an initiative that had been shut down during former Commissioner Frank Bischof’s era (in the days of the wet bar at the old Roma Street police station near Turbot Street), but revived by Ray Whitrod. The troops, Whitrod believed, needed a place to talk and relax, and Commissioner Lewis had kept the doors open. The club itself was immensely popular for its conviviality and its food. Indeed, a contingency of police used to fly up from Sydney specifically for the crab pot lunches.

The Police Club president at the time, John Cummins, vividly recalls Paul Breslin. ‘Breslin was brought to the Police Club, I don’t know by whom,’ he says. ‘Police had to bring guests. We had plenty of journalists. He [Breslin] represented himself as the used car manager for the Ford Motor Company. He was a likeable sort of fellow.’

Cummins remembers discussing potential business with Breslin. ‘He said Ford would like to do something with the police – put up a mirror wall in the club at his expense,’ says Cummins. ‘He did that. And he donated a cup – The Breslin Cup – to the footballers. They used to play the fire brigade and the ambulance [for the cup honours]. He sort of came out of the forest into the place. He wanted to impress everybody all of the time. He was a bit of a mystery man. It was as though Breslin had been sent from outer space to help [the club].’

A Ford colleague remembers a bright young man with a stellar future. ‘He would come to a dealership and he would report to Ford the appearance of the dealership and in turn the whole layout, how the business was operating, and he would take orders on behalf of Ford Motor Company from you, for supply,’ he remembers. ‘As a rep he went as far as Coffs Harbour, he did Lismore, Grafton and all those and back to the Gold Coast, and he in turn would inspect police cars for Ford somewhere along the line, and so he was always fraternising with the police …

‘[Breslin was] a big fella. Could have passed for a copper. Six foot and probably 16 or 17 stone. He was well educated and well spoken.’

It was at the Police Club, at least on one occasion, that Breslin met Police Commissioner Terry Lewis. ‘I think I met the man once at the Police Club at a Ford do,’ Breslin recalls. ‘Ford was introducing a new model, I think it was at the Royal Show, because I’m a life member of the RNA, and I think we put on free drinks at the Police Club which used to be on top of the CIB at North Quay, and I met him there once. Ron Redmond introduced him.’

It was where Breslin claims he also met, for the first time, the popular local television personality and police public relations maestro, Constable Dave Moore. ‘Strangely enough, Terry Lewis introduced me to David Moore at the Queensland Police Club,’ says Breslin. ‘If the Commissioner introduces you to someone socially, you obviously think they must be important. Lewis called Moore over and said, “David, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

‘He [Lewis] promulgated me far above my level. At that stage I didn’t know of his [Moore’s] TV show. It wouldn’t be something I’d have been at home to watch.’

(Breslin would later claim a strong acquaintance with senior police officer and future acting commissioner Ron Redmond. In a statement made to lawyer Chris Nyst years later, Breslin said he had met Redmond and other detectives at the Police Club for drinks and the case of the infamous Whiskey Au Go Go case came up in conversation. Breslin said in his statement: ‘He [Redmond] said a number of things about the case and suggested that [John Andrew] Stuart was right for the Whiskey Au Go Go fire. He said words to the effect that [James] Finch was a mate of Stuart’s and that he was such an animal that they had to get him off the streets, so they “bricked” him. Redmond repeated a couple of times his assertion that he had “bricked” Finch. None of the other officers there seemed particularly surprised.’)

By early 1983, however, Breslin himself had already been the object of an undercover police operation, resulting in a raid on his Alice Street apartment, overlooking the old Botanic Gardens in Brisbane city. There, police found photographs of Constable Dave Moore cavorting with young men and dressed in a South East Queensland Electricity Board workers uniform.

Moore, the public face of the Queensland police, was subsequently questioned by his superiors and the incident was deemed ‘nothing offensive’. He was warned off associating with Breslin.

Breslin claims he was at the end of a police conspiracy. ‘My barrister … Pat Nolan … there was some ridiculous charge that I was remonstrating with people at a swimming pool wearing a Queensland Police uniform …’ says Breslin. ‘One day when I was at Metro Ford, I clearly remember this, I put my Fairlane in for service. I walked back to my unit. By the time I got there it was about an hour, [I] talked to a couple of people on the way, there were about five detectives in there planting stuff. I burst the door open and said, “What the fuck’s going on?” They had all these search warrants.’

Breslin says he was told that Ron Redmond had organised the raid. ‘I’m saying that I certainly didn’t do any of the things that I’m alleged to have done,’ he says. ‘I’m not coming out and telling you that I haven’t walked on both sides of the fence, I certainly don’t get involved in that sort of rubbish.’

Police Club president John Cummins was alerted to the mounting Breslin situation. ‘The next thing I know about him I get a telephone call from a very senior policeman,’ he says. ‘I was told that Breslin was under investigation. I got him out of the club as quickly as I could . . . I told him I didn’t want him there anymore. He got barred.’