Little Fish Are Sweet

by Matthew Condon

  The question remains – why had Lewis felt the need to completely distort his foundation story? Was it to obliterate the truth about his parents’ marriage, their subsequent divorce and his half-brother? Or did it have something to do with Fine Cotton, the fiasco that rocked Australian racing and sent men to prison?

  An Old Copper Remembers

  For years many of the people I interviewed for the Lewis books encouraged me to contact Lou Rowan, the controversial former Test cricket umpire and Queensland police officer. Sit down with Lou, they said, he has a million stories.

  When a personally inscribed copy of his self-published memoir, No Shades of Grey, arrived in the post, I decided to drop by his house out in the pretty little township of Yangan, 18 kilometres east of Warwick on the Southern Downs, where he had once been stationed as a police constable.

  When I arrived at Rowan’s family home and first caught sight of him standing at the end of a long, grassy driveway, the perfect symmetry of the scene immediately became apparent. From his property’s fence line, the driveway, which ran in a dead-straight plumb line, could easily double as a cricket pitch, although one that extended well beyond the regulation 20.12 metres by 3.03 metres. Perhaps this was some sort of field of dreams, out here in the Swanfels Valley, and at any moment bowlers from enemy England the likes of Ray Illingworth and John Snow, might send down a ball towards the hawk-eyed Rowan.

  Warnings had come in prior to my meeting with Rowan that he was a man who does not suffer fools gladly. It was said that his commitment to righteousness was beyond reproach. In his own words, people who sup with the Devil should use a long-handled spoon. When we finally shook hands I found the 90-year-old straight of bearing and tall, his eyes sharp and his countenance strictly no-nonsense. Indeed, one need only go to the introduction of his brilliantly acerbic memoir to understand his temperament.

  ‘As author, I have a right to choose my own words,’ he writes. ‘I care nought for the views of my critics who may see certain comments as didactic statements on faith and morals. My advice would be to tell someone who cares to write their own books.’

  Could our session end in a duck before it even begins?

  Inside the house, a family home that over the years has been expanded with additional wings and vestibules, Rowan, dressed immaculately in slacks and a crisply ironed shirt, lowers himself into his favourite recliner.

  To talk. And talk.

  As he stares off in thought, towards a picture of the Sydney Cricket Ground on the occasion of the Australia–England test of 16 February 1963, or left to the window and its view of Mount Sturt (there was gold found in that there ancient volcanic plug in 1903), Rowan weaves a momentary tapestry of history. He takes me back to Byron Bay and Bangalow in northern New South Wales, where he grew up, and suddenly I’m with him in the pre-dawn dark, milking dairy cows by lantern light. Or we journey to the old CIB headquarters in Brisbane in the late 1950s, when Police Commissioner Frank Bischof ruled the roost and laid the foundation for generational corruption that would later tear Queensland apart. Or to meetings with politicians, a species he describes as the lowest form of human life (except former Prime Minister and cricket tragic, John Howard).

  There are a number of things to say about the way Rowan communicates. Yes, he is forthright. Sometimes brusque. It seems as though any filter for political correctness disappeared long ago. He will emphasise particular words, the verbal equivalent of writing in capital letters, much as police officers of a certain vintage used when they were typing up witness statements. And he’s not afraid to deliver an answer to a question in an economical handful of words.

  What was a particular former policeman like? ‘Stupid.’

  Why was police corruption not addressed in the 1950s and 60s? ‘NO idea.’

  Did you feel pressure walking out onto the SCG in February 1963 to umpire your first test? ‘OH, yes.’

  Most importantly, he was a contemporary of Terry Lewis. They shared the boarding house up in the old police barracks on Petrie Terrace during their training. They ate in the same canteen. They went through the same drills. Lewis was inducted on 17 January 1949. Twenty days later, so was Rowan.

  ‘Lewis couldn’t get sworn in quick enough so he could get out into the country and get some money off those SP bookmakers,’ Rowan says. ‘That was his aim. That’s what he told me. He got there alright.’

  Rowan recalls his first memories of meeting Lewis. ‘No one took much notice of him. He was just one of a number. He didn’t take part in sport or anything like that. Then he became a bagman for Bischof.’

  Frank Bischof was head of the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB) in the early 1950s, having come up through the ranks out west in Ipswich. He was involved in all the big murder cases, including the notorious unsolved murder of Betty Shanks in Brisbane in 1952, and claimed credit for an almost perfect murder clean-up rate. Shanks’ killer was one of the only ones that got away.

  How, then, did the ineffectual young Lewis manage to inveigle himself to Bischof and enter the hallowed halls of the CIB with so little experience, outside traffic duties and a spell on a police motorcycle?

  ‘He got into the CIB through Johnno Mann,’ Rowan attests. ‘Mann was the [Parliamentary] Speaker in those days and I believe Lewis’s mother [Mona] was on very friendly terms with Johnno Mann … and those particular politicians of those days, because everything was Labor in those days. I think she was involved in the racing business. The old lady would have done that for him. But no one ever mentioned his father.’

  As Rowan talks I start to connect the dots. While researching the books, another police source has told me that the so-called ‘Rat Pack’ – Glen Hallahan, Tony Murphy and Terry Lewis – were given ‘plate jobs’ by Bischof.

  ‘Bischof would be tipped off and he’d give it to these people. Anything big,’ the source said. ‘Parliament was delayed in opening one morning. Johnno Mann and some other politicians, they’d been at a brothel the night before and left the mace in the brothel. This goes back to when Terry first came to the CIB.’

  Rowan is firm on his view of Lewis. ‘He was useless … as a detective. He shot to fame in the days of Bischof.’

  I remind Rowan of the famous incident in bayside Brisbane in 1959 when the gallant Lewis and Hallahan arrived on the scene following a call that a crazed gunman was threatening to kill his wife. That was the case of Gunther Bahnemann and his prostitute wife, Ada.

  Two Wynnum constables had kept Bahnemann – a former sniper for Rommel in the German Army – calm and at bay until the snappily dressed detectives arrived. The four men surrounded the armed Bahnemann in his bedroom before jumping him. The rifle went off and a bullet brushed Hallahan’s trouser leg. Bahnemann was charged with attempted murder, found guilty and gaoled for several years.

  Lewis and Hallahan, meanwhile, were awarded the George Medal for Bravery, the Queensland police force’s highest honour.

  ‘It didn’t happen,’ remembers Rohan. ‘The big worry in those days was – were the uniform police going to stick with them at the trial? A [brothel] madam wanted her [Ada] out of the game, and they [Lewis and Hallahan] didn’t want her to leave … terrible, terrible days they were, terrible,’ Rowan adds.

  ‘You had to ignore it all. You knew it was there. Some of those blokes had enormous sums of money, you know. There was an inspector in Rockhampton, he wouldn’t even go on leave because all his cash was in the police safe at headquarters there in Rocky, bagfuls of money, huge sums of money. We all knew that, it was common knowledge, but what could you do about it? Nothing.’

  Rowan reserved a particular enmity for Frank Bischof. ‘He was the epitome of evil,’ says Rowan. ‘I never, ever struck anyone his equal … he could be quite a presentable bloke, old Frank, but he was an evil man.

  ‘He was a crook, he lived off prostitutes, he made no attempt to disguise what he was doing. There was no way around
it. You did your job, go on the tram and go home, and try and put it all away, and the next day you’re back in [at work] and it’s on again. There were some crooks among them.’

  As a young officer Rowan was relieving in Yangan when Constable Glen Hallahan was in charge at Tara, 300 kilometres west of Brisbane. In December 1954, the town hosted a farewell dinner for Hallahan at the local golf club. Hallahan had been transferred back to headquarters in Brisbane as a detective constable. The Dalby Herald reported: ‘The whole community was very sorry to see Con. Hallahan leave Tara, as he had done such a wonderful job in keeping the town free of unsavoury characters. If a “wanted” man happened to appear in Tara, it was not long before he [Hallahan] had recognised him and acted accordingly.’

  Rowan has a different view. ‘He was a maggot,’ Rowan says bluntly. ‘You wouldn’t believe daylight from him.

  ‘I don’t know there’s anyone more ruthless than Hallahan … [He] executed the former manager of the National Hotel [Jack Cooper, shot dead in Stafford in 1971], he arranged that with the fruit cases all over the road, he had to stop, when he stopped, bang – ta-da.

  ‘I don’t know what was behind it, but everyone knew Hallahan was in it up to his eyeballs.’

  ‘So Hallahan was capable of murder?’ I asked. I had heard many rumours along the same lines.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ says Rowan. ‘No risk at all.’

  Then there was Tony Murphy.

  ‘Murphy was the brains of the outfit. I’d put nothing past Murphy,’ Rowan says. ‘I remember one time I saw him driving around in a Zephyr. We’re at Elizabeth Street there, the backyard entrance to [police] headquarters in George Street. I said, “What the hell’s going on here?” He said the car belonged to one of the madams, from one of the brothels. He’d been taking his kids to school in it. Convent school of course.

  ‘He had a lot of natural ability, and a lot of determination. It’s a pity he went bad.’

  Rowan, and many of his contemporaries, were amused and suspicious when Commissioner Bischof established the Juvenile Aid Bureau (JAB) in 1963 and installed, at its helm, Terence Murray Lewis.

  What was its purpose, this unit? To lecture naughty children and return them to the straight and narrow? To catch and nip in the bud potential future criminals?

  ‘Bischof found a special job for Lewis,’ says Rowan. ‘The child-minding centre. It was always known to us as the child-minding centre. The JAB office was next to Bischof’s office, so he could have his bagman on tap. There was never any doubt what they were doing. It was such a confusing time. There were some good people there. They had to work under all this; honest men.

  ‘The Country Party, they let him [Bischof] in as [Police] Commissioner … the Liberals didn’t want Bischof, they didn’t like him, because they had been confronted by the likes of Charlie Fenwick Corner.’

  Corner had been a police officer since 1938 and was incorruptible. He had been transferred across Queensland and back, and later said in a statement that he had witnessed corruption in ‘every’ police station he’d ever served in. He came across direct evidence of Bischof’s corruption when Bischof was just an inspector, and opposed his elevation to Commissioner.

  ‘Charlie was an interesting bloke,’ Rowan remembers. ‘No sense of humour, but at least you knew where you stood with him. He was only there to chase criminals. Nothing else. [The then Country Party Premier] Frank Nicklin would not have known the difference, he was a decent, honourable man with no contact with criminality. He found it difficult that something was wrong. How could it be? [But] I never found any of Charlie’s claims to be untrue.’

  Rowan and many other honest police officers – indeed, much of the Queensland public – couldn’t believe the way the National Hotel inquiry, under Justice Harry Gibbs, unfolded.

  ‘Gibbs let them get away with it,’ Rowan said. ‘Why? I don’t know. For the promise of something better? It was terrible. I knew first-hand that the inquiry wasn’t fair dinkum. I wrote out a cheque one time for the hotel, for 430 odd quid, payable to the National Hotel, and nobody ever asked me about that. [The] New South Wales police were staying there for a week. I was treasurer of the Queensland Police Credit Union. That amount of money in those days was quite substantial, but nobody bothered to ask me about it. The things they got away with.’

  With the professional burden of being straight in a crooked system, Rowan had another problem. His elevation to umpire of local Sheffield Shield cricket matches, and then international Tests, ignited the enmity of many of his police colleagues. Not the least the rotund, heavy-drinking Commissioner Frank Bischof.

  ‘When I got to Test level, oh, the petty jealousies; they hated it,’ Rowan recalls. ‘Only [fellow officer] A.B. [Abe] Duncan and others put on a bit of a morning tea with a keg of beer out at one of those parks at Toowong one day, and gave me that silver teapot – I’ve got it sitting in the cupboard over there – that was the only recognition the police gave me.’

  And Bischof’s view of Rowan’s new-found celebrity in the sporting world?

  ‘He ordered an investigation into me to have me charged for remunerative employment,’ says Rowan, still incredulous. ‘It was the first Shield match I did. [Officer] Bill Cronau gave me the warning, he said be careful, they’re after you for extra employment, don’t take that money.’

  Cronau asked Rowan what the pay from the Test would be. ‘I said, ten pounds for four days. He said, “Don’t take it. They’re looking to charge.” I went ahead and took the money and challenged them to do what they liked about it.

  ‘Jack Pizzey was a member of parliament; he’d been selected in a Shield team, never played because it rained for four days, he was on my side, I knew that. And I knew the petty jealousies of the police would not hold up to any light of day scrutiny.

  ‘So I took the money and nothing was ever heard of again.’

  At Winton Street by 8.50 a.m. Lewis takes his seat and starts to ask me questions from a list he’s compiled: ‘Does your wife work or is she at home most of the time?’

  His daughter from Stanthorpe, a sufferer of multiple sclerosis, comes out of one of the bedrooms on her walker. She is in Brisbane to see an optometrist. We exchange pleasantries.

  When I gesture to begin the interview, Lewis again comes around to sit beside me on the couch. He interrupts with more sheets of paper that he has gathered over the years. We talk about the Juvenile Aid Bureau where he worked from 1963 to 1973 at the behest of Bischof. I try to get him talking about Bischof. He simply says he was ‘always well dressed’.

  He mentions that people had said he was one of Bischof’s ‘bagmen’ and says he doesn’t know where that description came from. He then begins talking about a number of people who had it in for him, although he never explains what they had against him or how it came about. He briefly explains that much of it was related to the fact that he was promoted above them.

  Lewis talks a lot about promotion. About who got to what level on the ladder. It is close to an obsession with him, and I can imagine how the working-class boy whose mother abandoned him and who left school at 12 would become fixated on money and status, in that Depression-era child sort of way. He talks a lot about money – penny-pinching, saving every penny for a house, the taste of a one-penny cream bun.

  I press him about Bischof. Did he ever see any evidence that Bischof was corrupt in any way?

  For the first time Lewis genuinely stumbles. He jumbles his words, fails to finish the answer coherently. Was Bischof corrupt? He looks me in the eye and says, ‘No’. His eyes hesitate, shift a little, then he looks away.

  He then tries to pose an open question about the Licensing Branch. He is disparaging, hinting that they were the source of all the trouble. His dialogue is largely emotionless, except when it comes to the ‘miscarriage of justice’ against him. A couple of times he slips out of character and there is an anger there, a temper beyond the
façade. Then he pulls it back in. It is the working-class scrapper peering out from behind the knight.

  Near the end of the session, he begins talking about Whitrod: how he was at a loss as to why Whitrod had disliked him from the outset; how at a meeting of officers with Whitrod he gave a suggestion and was ‘never asked back to another meeting’; how there were questions about Whitrod’s capabilities in New Guinea. He hints that former police minister Max Hodges was a problem also.

  A second daughter arrives at the house, and the interview is over. Only about 50 minutes.

  I go away wondering if this is all a futile exercise. Could I conceivably be sitting here years hence, still trying to pick out the truth of this story? Despite the royal commission into police corruption in Queensland, with its enormous amount of resources, it had never elicited an admission of corruption from Lewis. How am I to do it, one on one, with only a pen and a notebook?

  He is immovable; a rock. His story was forged prior to the Fitzgerald Inquiry, and has simply tempered under scrutiny. Furthermore, Lewis’s stand is unequivocal. Not only is he innocent of any wrongdoing, he is innocent of all wrongdoing.

  This ceaseless denial has no grounding in logic. It’s like asking a child – did you eat the last chocolate biscuit? And seeing them answer, ‘No,’ with dark crumbs around their mouth.

  Charles Fenwick Shotton Corner States

  When it came to documents Lewis, thankfully, was a hoarder. Between our interviews, Lewis worked tirelessly on retrieving and labelling files from his vast collection. He often made small annotations to point me in a certain direction. Interestingly, there were some documents he volunteered that didn’t do his reputation any great favours. The paperwork generated, for example, by those eruptive moments in his career – the battles with officers like Kingsley Fancourt, Bob Campbell, Lorelle Saunders, Alec Jeppesen and Ross Dickson et al – was vast.