Way We Were: Red-light district history erased when notorious pub came down

It was finally bulldozed in 2004 and now many locals would be unaware of the seedy events that were a regular occurence at this Queensland pub.

Causeway Hotel regular Wally Roberts downs his last drink at the pub's final session in 2004. Picture: Evan Morgan

Torrential rain was belting down and the night sky was pitch black when shots rang out in the Townsville suburb of Hermit Park in the early hours of March 2, 1928.

The next morning, 38-year-old Alexander Bower was found shot dead on the outside stairway of the Causeway Hotel.

Gambling saloons and houses of ill repute flourished in Hermit Park in 1928, and the Causeway Hotel backed on to Heraud Street, the heart of the red light district. All agreed that it wasn’t unusual to hear gunshots as the girls often had to scare off troublesome clients.

In fact, the Causeway Hotel publican Andy Coventon told the Bower murder inquiry that shots being fired in the area late at night was a common occurrence and that if he rang the police every time a shot or two was heard, the police would be there all the time.

As it was, the Causeway Hotel was well known to police. In 1916, two policemen had been shot at while trying to arrest two men on a charge of obscene language.

Two years later, Jack Gleeson went into the backyard of the Causeway Hotel late at night.

A man spoke to him, he heard a shot and was stabbed in the chest and arm without seeing his assailant.

In 1919, a 28-year-old Russian died of gunshot wounds in his room at the hotel.

It was later found he had taken his own life over a love affair gone wrong.

The Causeway Hotel and Heraud Street were well-known to Townsville police.

There was a stir at the rear of the hotel one Thursday morning in 1924 when two young women were arrested for shooting another woman. Elizabeth O’Dea alias O’Brien, alias Stewart, alias Johnson, and Thelma Grant, alias McInerney, alias Gammell, alias Imilda May Fugisula, had fired two shots from a revolver.

Dolly Franks suffered a non-life threatening bullet wound to her thumb and breast.

Mundingburra Constable C. J. Smith, said that at about 8.30am he went to the Causeway Hotel and said to O’Dea: “Did you shoot her?” and she replied “Yes, I shot her.”

He then arrested Thelma Grant for drunkenness in Heraud Street, and she also wanted to make a statement: “I bloody well shot her.”

O’Dea had stolen the American revolver from another Heraud Street resident, Amy Harris.

In September 1938, Peggy Moore, 31, admitted shooting Douglas Johnstone, a naval rating on the warship HMAS Canberra. The sailors had been drinking at the Causeway Hotel before crossing into Heraud Street.

Moore, who was perfectly sober, claimed the drunken sailors were carrying on dreadfully and she feared for her life.

It was the first time she had used a revolver and she hadn’t meant to shoot him in the head.

Sailors from the HMAS Sydney had caused trouble in Heraud Street earlier in the week, prompting one of the girls to go aboard and complain to the commanding officer.

Townsville in the 1920s.

The women lived in a line of wooden worker’s cottages on Heraud Street, named for Edwin Heraud, a general merchant in the 1880s.

Business was brisk during World War II, with many American and Australian servicemen arriving in Townsville, so much so that in 1942, the recreational facilities of the Causeway Hotel and the nine houses in Heraud Street were placed out of bounds to all troops.

Today, there’s nothing to show of the area’s colourful past.

At least two houses burnt down in 1945 and another was washed away in the 1946 flood. Townsville City Council purchased and removed remaining properties in 1969 to clean up the area’s reputation.

The infamous Heraud Street is now Ford Street.

And as for Alexander Bower, the case was closed at the end of June 1928, without any charges being laid.

Dozens of witnesses were interviewed but police had only circumstantial evidence.

The case remained unsolved, despite having all the elements of a thriller.

The Causeway Hotel during the 1998 floods. Picture: Scott Radford Chisholm

Among those giving evidence of Bower’s last movements were “the Frenchie” Simone d’Montfort; Maisie Elliott, better known as “Irish Kitty” and Isaac Roy “Dick” Bates who was known to have revenge on his mind after a savage fight with Bower over a gambling debt a year earlier.

Bower lived in fear of Bates, telling his mother, “If he doesn’t shoot me now, he will shoot me when I get on the plains.”

He worked as a cattle driver at Ross River.

As a cold case mystery in 1932, it was speculated that perhaps one day when it was too late for the law to take its course, the murderer of Alexander Bower might confess to his crime. That day never came, and the Causeway Hotel was demolished in 2004.