The Night Dragon

by Matthew Condon

  The Empire wrote: ‘Unfortunately those by the Sabrina have suffered much by sickness during the passage, ten deaths have occurred (six adults, four children); and as there were three cases of typhus still on board, the vessel has been placed in quarantine.’

  British parliamentary papers would later put on record that eight had died – three adult men, three adult women, and two female children under 14 years of age. The ship was released from quarantine in mid-January 1856. In the meantime, James and Johanna’s child was born in the Brisbane Immigration Depot. James decided to settle in Warwick, south-west of Brisbane.

  After spending some months in Brisbane, the O’Dempseys travelled by steamer up the Bremer River to Ipswich, then by dray to Warwick. The family’s odyssey was recorded by Thomas Hall in The Early History of Warwick District and Pioneers of the Darling Downs.

  In wet weather the O’Dempseys would have travelled for many weeks over the Great Dividing Range and through Spicers Gap. The track had a reputation for being dangerous and hard to climb … bridges in the district were still things of the future, and to cross a muddy creek, the bullock driver had to secure the creek bed with saplings and branches, before the team could pass over.

  James O’Dempsey became one of Warwick’s first settlers, and he farmed for a while on the Warwick Agricultural Reserve before moving to nearby Upper Freestone. It would become the O’Dempsey family seat. Aside from farming, he would also work policing the region from Ipswich to Stanthorpe. The separation of Queensland from New South Wales did not occur until 1859, but a special Police Act 1855 allowed police, magistrates and justices power to appoint special constables. (The Queensland Police Force, as a singular unit, did not operate until 1863.)

  By 1869 James was working hard on the farm in Upper Freestone that abutted a spur of the Great Dividing Range. As Manfield wrote: ‘Legend says that J.P. cleared, fenced and cultivated the scrub on the back of the mountain range using simple hand tools like picks, crosscut saws, axes, grubbers, shovels, carpenters and fencing tools. He probably had single-furrow iron mould board plough, a set of wooden harrows, harness and saddles.’

  James also agitated long and hard for a school in the Upper Freestone area, primarily for the children of the Irish families in the district. He wrote to Mr R. McDonald of the Queensland Board of Education on 26 July 1874:

  Dear Sir,

  I beg to inform you that there is at present residing on this Portion of the Reserve 17 children aged from 12 to 5 years and 9 from 5 years downwards. The distance from the nearest school is from 5 to 7 miles. I take this opportunity of writing ... requesting information if there is any aid to be got from the board, and on what terms. Also what description buildings have we to erect? Wishing you a safe passage and speedy return to us.

  I remain Dear Sir, Your obedient servant.

  J.P. O’Dempsey.

  It is assumed that a favourable reply was received as a provisional school for the district was officially opened on 19 October 1874 after a construction period of 18 weeks.

  James O’Dempsey, clearly intelligent, also liked to share his farming knowledge with his fellow man and regularly wrote to the The Queensland Agriculturalist. He also maintained the family tradition of expert animal husbandry, a talent that would be passed through generations to his great-grandson Vincent O’Dempsey. At the Swan and Freestone Creek Agricultural Show of 1885, James would win a ‘special prize’ in the poultry section for best ‘Turkey Cock and two Hens’.

  Vince O’Dempsey’s sister, Inagh, would later write of James’s attempts to ‘fight the authorities on paper’ to establish a school for the Irish settlers:

  He was highly educated you see and they couldn’t down him. I think the word proud could definitely be applied to him. The British authorities used to refer to him as ‘that troublesome Irishman’. But he got his school. And a private cemetery for the family. It’s not used any more of course – no room – and sits all forlorn in the middle of a farm now owned by someone else. I always used to feel ridiculously proud that we had our own exclusive cemetery.

  Interestingly, many of James’s sons didn’t marry. Inagh added in her vignette on the family history:

  They were rather wild in their youth though, one in particular – with the ladies. There was many a time they say when he had to jump out a bedroom window to avoid being caught. He was actually shot once by an irate husband. When a woman asked a neighbour later where he’d been hit, she was given the reply: ‘Missus, if you’d been shot where Billy O’Dempsey was shot, you wouldn’t have been shot at all’.

  The O’Dempseys were a close-knit clan, bound by their history, heritage and faith, and the land of the Warwick district. The family crest featured a lion framed by two long swords and was adorned at the top with a clutch of seven battleaxes. They even had their own family prayer:

  O, Almighty Father, in your great wisdom you led James and Johanna O’Dempsey from Ireland to these shores in 1855.

  Through their faith in You and their labours, they prospered and were the forebears of many succeeding generations. Please grant them, and those descendants who have gone to join them, Eternal Repose.

  We beseech You, in Your great mercy, to extend a Guiding Hand to we, the living descendants of James and Johanna, and future generations, so that we may avoid the evils and temptations of this World to enjoy the reward of Eternal Life in the Kingdom of God.

  On 10 May 1870, one of their ten children, Thomas Joseph, was born in the family home on the Upper Freestone farm. Thomas (who was also known as Duffy) loved music and joined a local band. According to Manfield’s history, ‘it was common knowledge amongst his family that he had constructed his own traditional bush violin.’

  In turn, Thomas Joseph would have a son named Thomas. Like the men before him Thomas spent his younger days farming the land in Freestone, close to Glengallan Valley. He would go on to wed Mary McConville at the local St Mary’s Catholic Church in Warwick in 1930. After he married, Tom would move his family into town and become a stock and real estate auctioneer. During the Second World War he even opened a café that became famous for its fish and chips.

  It was possible, from the new O’Dempsey home in Stewart Avenue, to hear the bells of St Mary’s Catholic Church, just around the corner at 163 Palmerin Street. Here was a daily reminder of your faith in God. And the church was virtually a second home for the O’Dempsey family who were well respected in town. Decades later people would still refer to Vince’s mother as ‘Mrs O’Dempsey’.

  ‘They must have been horrified,’ says one family friend of the behaviour of their son Vincent. ‘His parents were the loveliest, mildest, sweetest people you’d ever want to meet. And his mother was the sweetest. She never missed a church outing. On a Sunday they’d go to Mass two or three times in a single day.’

  Daughter Inagh remembered her father, Tom: ‘… Dad had the gift of the gab like you wouldn’t believe. I loved to hear him talk. Even when he swore it sounded musical. To me, he always smelled like soap, cigarettes and love. [He] carried me everywhere after I … got polio. Used to wrap me up under his overcoat and dance gently with me out under the stars at night while he sang with his lovely tenor voice all the old Irish ballads.’

  Apart from Inagh and Vincent, there were other siblings; Noel, Keith, Ron, Darcy, Marcelene, Valerie, Patricia and Damien. Several of them would go on to have distinguished careers in banking, politics, nursing, teaching and the church. Damien would become a Christian Brother, only to be imprisoned for paedophilia.

  As for Vincent, he would dabble in animal husbandry, property, house painting and labouring, but his more primitive interests would exclude a straight life. The quiet and intelligent boy fascinated by books on history and the human mind would soon become obsessed with guns, weapons and explosives, and would turn his back on the Catholic Church, urinating in the holy water at St Mary’s where his parents had married, and claimi
ng the six-pointed hexagram on the Pope’s mitre represented 666 – the numbers of the Devil.

  An Ancient Knight

  On 28 May 1942, when young Vince would have been three and a half years old, the Warwick Daily News exposed a long-standing mystery behind the naming of the local streets in town.

  The amusing story, appearing on page two, would no doubt have entertained the good folk of Warwick, who could have used some levity. There had been no Warwick Rodeo since Australia had entered the Second World War and their town now featured a brutal military detention barracks that would punish, and in one instance murder, troublesome Diggers.

  But on this Thursday morning, an article written by F.S. Burnell was headlined, ‘WARWICK’S STREET NAMES. UNEXPECTED LINKS WITH ANCIENT LEGENDS’:

  Probably there are few visitors to the charming little city of Warwick (Q.) who have not been puzzled as to who christened it by that name and why … the country round bears no kind of resemblance to the leafy country [Warwickshire] of Shakespeare’s birth, while the position of the town, set as it is in a wide plain, is the exact reverse of its English namesake … Perhaps some local antiquary may be able to solve the mystery.

  Burnell’s quaint investigation centred on the meaning, if any, of many of the names of that grid of streets of old central Warwick, south of the squiggly Condamine River, particularly those that ran north-south across the Cunningham Highway. There was Palmerin Street, Guy Street, Dragon Street, Wantley Street, and others.

  ‘However it may be,’ Burnell continued, ‘a further link with the original may be seen in the name of Guy Street – an unmistakable reference to the extremely ancient English romance of Guy of Warwick.’ Could it be that a myth that started in the 13th century, and continued to amuse, enthral and appal over hundreds of years, was laid over that small thatch of streets in a country town like Warwick, Queensland?

  The newspaper said of Guy of Warwick: ‘This legendary hero, son of a steward of the Earl of Warwick in the days of King Athelstan, is said to have ended his days as an obscure hermit by way of atonement for a life spent in war-like adventure.’

  As the tale goes, Guy was a page in the Earl of Warwick’s court when he fell in love with the Earl’s daughter, Felice, but given his lowly status it was decided he was not worthy of her hand in marriage. In an attempt to prove himself, the knight-in-waiting proceeded to slay a Dun Cow – a giant, aggressive cow owned by a giant – who was terrorising families.

  Guy’s heroic gesture, however, was not enough to win him Felice. So, Guy of Warwick travelled to Europe and went on a killing spree, beheading giants and slaying dragons. He competed in tournaments and killed dukes and princes. With three other knights, he journeyed to Byzantium where they supposedly destroyed three Turkish ships and laid waste to 50,000 Turks. According to one version of the legend, ‘Danes and Saracens, as well as dragons, giants and other monsters alike succumbed to his devouring sword …’

  At one point, Guy of Warwick saved the life of a lion that was being attacked by a dragon. When he returned to England, having proved his worth, he married Felice and was crowned the Earl of Warwick. Yet, cursed by the thoughts of his murderous past, Guy went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, ultimately returning home to live as a hermit in a cave. It was only on the brink of death that he sent his wedding ring back to his wife, Felice, who rushed to his side. There are varying versions of the myth that say Felice buried him in his cave, and in others she was so grief-stricken she threw herself into the river below the cave and drowned.

  Ten years before the Warwick Daily News story on Warwick street names, in 1932, the same newspaper published a similar article about the origin of the town’s thoroughfares. A local resident told the paper:

  The wide mile-long streets of Warwick can boast such names as Wantley, Guy, Dragon, and Palmerin. They owe their origin to the legend of old Warwick, which tells how Guy, a Knight of the Palmerins, fought and slew the dragon of Wantley.

  Palmerin. Guy. Dragon. Wantley. At the time of the second article, in the thoroughfare directly parallel to Palmerin Street – Stewart Avenue – young Vincent O’Dempsey was growing up in a large, sprawling Queenslander with generous yards and large iron gates out the back. As a boy he would become obsessed with the ancient myth of Guy of Warwick, a story that crossed centuries, about an impossibly brave knight who slaughtered for love – the killer who shed blood across England and continental Europe – lionised in poetry, song and art.

  As an old man, O’Dempsey would regale friends and criminal associates with the story of Guy of Warwick. In time, a description of O’Dempsey was given to police by a witness who claimed he had a large tattoo of ‘St George and the Dragon on his chest, on his back and both legs’. But the eyewitness had his history confused. The illustration inked into Vincent O’Dempsey’s skin was more likely to be Guy of Warwick, slaying the great Dragon of Wantley, the dragon that used to eat children.

  A Troubled Child

  A famous story about O’Dempsey as a schoolboy still floats about Warwick. Attending St Joseph’s Christian Brothers College he was at first seen as a quiet boy who never looked for trouble. As the rumour goes, he cut a hole in one of his trouser pockets so he could tug at his penis in class without detection. One day, one of the Christian Brothers did notice, and insisted on knowing what was in O’Dempsey’s pocket.

  ‘What have you got in your pocket?’ the teacher demanded, shoving his hand into it, only to find O’Dempsey’s genitals.

  One fellow student claimed that whenever O’Dempsey was caned by the Christian Brothers, he never flinched or said a word, and was often seen smiling at the punishment that was meted out to him. ‘He was a bit of a rebel at school,’ says his older brother, Darcy O’Dempsey.

  In the late 1940s, when O’Dempsey would have been nine or ten years old, one local said that, under the cover of night, young Vincent and some of his mates would scale the roofs of homes and buildings around Warwick and ‘remove the lead nails off the rooves and sell the lead’. O’Dempsey also reportedly used to stick a finger in a pencil sharpener and turn it, oblivious to the pain.

  As a teenager O’Dempsey would go on to earn a name for himself in the boxing ring. Training out of the Warwick Athletics Club and the old wooden and tin-roofed gym at the western end of Albert Street, he won numerous regional bouts.

  One friend at the time recalls: ‘He had about ten fights. He knew how to let them go. He was fit and strong. One of his trainers told me that the harder they’d go in training, the better O’Dempsey liked it.’

  Many of the O’Dempsey boys had spent time in the boxing ring, however Darcy O’Dempsey says of his younger brother Vincent: ‘He wasn’t a boxer, he was a fighter.’

  Vincent was also a keen footballer and in 1954, as a 15-year-old, he played for the Warwick Eastern Suburbs junior side. The Warwick Daily News was enthusiastic about the newly formed club.

  Stars of the programme will be the junior minor sides. Since the commencement of this junior football these sides have stolen the show each Sunday, and their keenness, together with the practical use given to the skilful coaching they have received, they have provided spectators with the thrill of keen, clean football.

  Three O’Dempsey brothers, including Vince, were part of the team. One local said O’Dempsey bet on himself to create havoc on the field. ‘He’d back himself to score tries and hurt people,’ he said. ‘He loved the hard tackles.’

  Like his great-grandfather James, Vincent’s other interests included breeding hard-feather bantam chickens. At Warwick’s 87th annual show in 1954, he won second prize in the black Pekin bantam category, and first place in the hen or pullet section. A year or two later, however, Vincent developed some even more concerning behavioural irregularities. According to a police officer who would later investigate O’Dempsey, Vincent would bag stray cats around town and knife them to death ‘through the bag’. By his late-teens, O’Dempsey
presented as a peculiar, dichotomous, multifaceted and complex character. A fastidious breeder of prize-winning poultry. A boxer. A big thinker who was fond of quoting the Bible. And a young man who had developed a liking for sudden and extreme violence.

  As a member of such a law-abiding, God-fearing family, he had also become obsessed with the police and authority figures. One friend says: ‘For some reason he got it into his head that the coppers were scared of the dark. He called them squiggly tails.’

  Friends and relatives say it was the cruelty of the Christian Brothers towards O’Dempsey at school that tipped the balance in his personality. ‘He was like two people in one body,’ says one of O’Dempsey’s relatives. ‘The brothers turned him bad. They were always flogging him. He was intelligent at school. He didn’t have to go to school he was that smart. When he was 14, 15 years old, the teachers were bashing him. It turned him nasty.’

  Like many Warwick teenagers, O’Dempsey used to occasionally hang out in the ruins of the old Glengallan Homestead a short drive out of town. The kids used to party, drink, keep warm by lighting fires in the old fireplaces and scribble their names on the ruined walls. It was the perfect place for a bit of late-night mischief. The nearest farmhouse was the Diggles dairy down on Diggles Road, across Glengallan Creek and far enough away from the homestead not to be a problem. ‘Everyone went out there and put their names all over the walls,’ one of O’Dempsey’s friends says. ‘You’d go out there to drink piss. It was a big, spooky building. The Sparksman farm was not far away across the paddock.’

  Another regular visitor to Glengallan says: ‘That’s definitely right. Vince and his mates used to go out there.’