Bob Katter reveals possible family role in 1932 Cloncurry bank heist

It turned out to be a perfect crime, pulled off 90 years ago in a tiny Queensland’s Outback town – and now as film makers arrive to tell the story, the state’s most recognisable federal politician admits the role his own family probably played.

It has to rate as Australia’s perfect crime and 90 years after “The Great Cloncurry Bank Robbery,’’ a Queensland federal politician admits his own family probably gave the crooks the perfect alibi.

The story of the bank robbery on the night of the 1932 Queensland elections has been rattling skeletons in family closets across the state’s north west for generations, and is about to get a new lease of life as a movie.

“The Bank Manager,’’ by Quamby Studios’ Luke and Madeleine Chaplan, is a short film based on the legendary robbery which never resulted in one charge, let alone a conviction.

Filming under way around Cloncurry, in western Queensland.

The heist across two banks netted the robbers 14000 pounds which, by Australian Reserve Bank calculations, represents just over $1.4 million in today’s currency.

The Cloncurry Shire Council is 100 per cent behind the movie, leveraging the production to go after big Hollywood big game such as Steve Spielberg and Baz Luhrmann.

The Coen Brothers, with their genius for the Western genre, could use the landscape surrounding the town to effortlessly turn the yarn into a global blockbuster.

Shire Mayor Greg Campbell says the council has all the filmmaking incentive in place and is issuing an open invitation to Hollywood elites to pay a visit:

“I’ll take you for a drive – send your scouts,’’ he says.

The story itself barely needs embellishment, and incorporates the financial catastrophe of the Great Depression, the cruelty of our early 20th Century banking system and the tacit tolerance of nonviolent criminality that has been part of the Australian collective character since convict settlement.

The federal member for Kennedy, Bob Katter, who at age 77 qualifies as a living historical artefact, has more than a century of family lore to draw on to flesh out the details of the crime which were passed on to him by his father, uncles and grandfathers, townspeople and graziers.

Kennedy MP Bob Katter, 77, says his family hosted a party on the night of the heist, and may have inadvertently provided an alibi for the bandits. Picture: Brian Cassey

It was election night June 11 1932, Labor’s legendary Premier William Forgan-Smith was about to take power with a seven seat majority and the Katter family — strong ALP supporters ever since the 1891 Shearers Strike _ were holding a massive party in Cloncurry.

“When the naughty boys who did that robbery were asked where they were that night, they said they were at our party,’’ Katter says.

“Now, it was pretty much impossible to say they were not at our party because pretty much the whole bloody town was at that party.’’

Katter says in the weeks following the robbery it was clear that much of the town was involved in the conspiracy, from keys to the bank vaults being cut to stolen money being laundered to several “figures of authority’’ being quietly paid off.

Katter says one of the bandits was so unaccustomed to crime he fainted during the robbery.

His confederates had to race across the street to a pub to buy rum to revive him.

Katter says pretty much the whole town conspired to keep the names of the robbers secret, and most felt morally justified in doing so.

“These were respectable people, the sort who were in the front pews at church on Sunday.’’

Looking east along the main street of Cloncurry. File picture: David Martinelli

Australian banks during the Great Depression had no “corporate citizen’’requirement to guide them and no fear of a banking inquiry to incriminate them.

They could ruthlessly foreclose on people who were forced into bankruptcy which then met utter ruin financial and social ruin.

Katter says the wider collective Australian anger at banks was partly behind the decision by Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley, 15 year after the robbery, to attempt to nationalise Australian banks.

Katter, who has just finished a book of his own about Cloncurry childhood exploits called “Peter Anderson, Ronnie Bakhash, Carly Pearce and Me’’ says he recalls a beloved local character — “Uncle Sid’’ — once loudly proclaiming: “Those dirty banks took money from every single town in Australia during the Depression.

“Only one town stood up and got some of that money back — Cloncurry.’’