Way We Were: Barefoot hero rescued children in one of Qld’s worst rail disasters

Within hours of what was supposed to be a holiday of a lifetime, the Queensland rail passengers were instead fighting for their lives, writes Dot Whittington.

Ignoring the broken glass under his bare feet, Laurence Murray stood waist-deep in the floodwaters of Medway Creek desperately reaching for the children trapped inside the wreckage of the Midlander in the early hours of February 26, 1960.

He was one of three heroes awarded for courage and resourcefulness in the rescue after one of Queensland’s worst rail disasters.

The train had crashed through Medway Creek Bridge into the water below, 1.5km west of Bogantungan, between Emerald and Barcaldine. Of the 120 passengers on board, seven were killed and another 43 injured.

The Midlander train crashed through Medway Creek Bridge outside of Bogantungan, between Emerald and Barcaldine. Of the 120 passengers on board, seven were killed and another 43 injured. Picture: Supplied

The first airconditioned Midlander began operating between Rockhampton and Winton on May 4, 1953, and on February 25, 1960, it had picked up a group of 17 children in Longreach.

Piling into Car 7, with their chaperone, they were on their way to Yeppoon to see the ocean for the first time, a holiday organised by the Royal Queensland Bush Children’s Health Scheme.

Within hours excitement turned to terror.

The Midlander had to be hauled over the Drummond Range by two C17 class locomotives and was on its descent when disaster struck at 2.32am.

One of the pylons of the Medway Creek Bridge had been damaged when a 12-tonne tree, washed downstream by floodwaters, struck its piers. It gave way under the train, plunging the two steam engines and the first three carriages 7.6m into the flooded creek.

The first engine was hurled on to its side while the second tore through the bridge before coming to rest on the creek bank. The coal car crashed down on the cabin and the first three sleeper coaches and a power van followed. Three crew members were killed.

The buffet coach also broke through the bridge but came to rest on the other coaches and halted the rest of the train. Car 7 was on its side in the flooded creek.

Murray, a 43-year-old Aboriginal railway fettler from Alpha, was travelling in the last carriage with his wife, three children and infant granddaughter.

The Medway Creek crash was one of Queensland’s worst rail disasters. Picture: Supplied

He instantly scrambled down to the wrecked carriages in the creek and with Jack Bennett, 30, a fitter from the Rockhampton railway workshops who had been in Car 5, and Alan Streeter, 31, a railway fireman from Gladstone, from Car 6, began a dramatic rescue.

Wading through the raging torrent in the dark, Murray met Bennett at Car 7, where the

children were trapped.

They smashed the compartment windows as water gushed through the carriages and Bennett began passing the children to Murray, barefoot in waist-deep water, who carried them to safety on the creek bank.

In all, 15 children were rescued, but sadly it was too late for two boys aged eight and five.

Murray went through the darkened carriages searching for others, and helped four injured men and a woman to the creek bank. He then swam across the flooded creek to the Bogantungan side, and continued working until daylight, helping hand tools up to the men working on the wrecked carriages.

The crash scene was horrific. Picture: Supplied

It was hours before he arrived at Emerald hospital to have his injuries, including a sliver of glass lodged in his foot, treated.

Murray told the Board of Inquiry soon after the crash, that he had taken off his shoes and had been unable to find them in the aftermath, explaining, “that is why I am barefooted now”.

The chairman said the board would do something about getting him another pair.

Sadly, Murray did not live to receive the Queen’s Commendation for Brave Conduct along with Bennett and Streeter a year later. His medal was awarded posthumously.

Hailed as the “barefoot Aborigine hero of the Queensland train crash”, he died of a heart attack on March 20, 1960, less than a month after the tragedy.

The disaster was not the first incident on the Central Queensland line, which opened to Longreach in February 1892, when it was a journey of 19 hours from Rockhampton.

In fact, there had been trouble even before it opened. Floods brought down heavy timber and snapped off one of the piers. Dead and fallen timber was cleared for 10km up the creek to prevent a recurrence.

In August 1939, the driver and fireman of a train hauling stock wagons jumped clear when it broke through a bridge 6.5km west of Bogantungan. Railway workers had to keep full-time watch on the Drummond Range section after a storm in 1950, and in 1956, bridges over Medway Creek and Grasstree Creek just west of Bogantungan were washed away.

The Midlander was renamed the Spirit of the Outback in 1993 and now travels between Brisbane and Longreach with a bus connection to Winton.