Weekend flashback: Five of the Gold Coast’s quirkiest characters since the 19th century

THE Gold Coast is famous for its unusual, larger than life characters who have each helped make the Glitter Strip its unique self.

"Cheroke" Bill Mitter prays for rain at the Kirra Mower Centre. December 3, 1982.

THE Gold Coast is famous for its unusual, larger-than-life characters who have helped make the city unique. Andrew Potts looks at some of the Glitter Strip’s most notable oddballs.

“Cherokee’’ Bill Mitter

MITTLER, an American, was the son of a Spanish father and Cherokee Indian mother.

He fought in World War II as a bomber pilot for the US Army Air Corp and received the US Air Medal and Silver Star.

He came to the Coast in 1948 to operate American Indian-style tours of the Gold Coast.

He was known for wearing authentic “Red Indian’’ outfits and war paint while riding his horse around the city.

He once rode into the Surfers Paradise Hotel’s beer garden in full costume to celebrate Independence Day, ordering a bucket of beer for his horse.

Mr Mitter later appeared in a documentary on Red Indians for US television. He died in 1986.

Johnny Catcher

MR Catcher, a Canadian, arrived on the Coast in the late 1950s. He was a nightwatchman by trade and the amusing link between his name and profession made him a minor celebrity across the country.

Known as “Catcher the nightwatchman”, he worked from midnight to dawn on a stool at Bruno Friedlander’s greasy spoon hamburger bar in Surfers Paradise.

He charged five shillings a week to patrol the businesses.

Mr Catcher was known for telling less-than-credible tales of his life, including time as a film stunt man, a hobo in the US, and as a French foreign legionnaire.

Author Alexander McRobbie, in his book Gold Coast Heritage — a Multicultural Triumph, described Mr Catcher as a “burly, likeable giant and a fascinating raconteur’’ with whom “most people took his claims about his adventurous life with a grain of salt’’.

As old businesses close and new ones did not require a nightwatchman, his work dwindled and he left the Coast in 1975 and died 11 years later.

Stan Elson

Stan Elson.

MR Elson was born in the infamous New York City suburb of The Bronx in 1927, a fact he remained proud of throughout his later business success.

In fact, he proudly wore the nickname “The boy from the Bronx”.

He studied medicine in Arkansas before coming to Australia in the 1950s after meeting his wife Rebecca.

The couple initially lived in Melbourne where Mr Elson owned a funeral parlour. They moved to the Gold Coast and operated Labrador’s historic Grand Hotel for more than 15 years.

During the Elsons’ stay at the Grand, a set of traffic lights were installed to control the number of cars visiting its bottle shop, allegedly the cheapest in the country.

By the 1970s, Rebecca and Stan sold the hotel and bought a car yard.

However, it was not long before they returned to the hotel industry, buying the Gold Coast Hotel at Burleigh Heads and Cabarita Hotel in northern NSW.

Several hundred people attended his memorial on April 23, 1986, age 59. Police motorcycles were placed along the hearse’s route to his final resting place at Nerang’s Allambie Gardens to allow an uninterrupted journey.

Brian Shepherd

A perennial mayoral candidate, promoter and endless ideas man, “Shep” was a Coast icon in the 1980s and 1990s.

He launched his first mayoral campaign in 1984, more than a year before the election to give himself an edge over fellow candidates Denis Pie, Roger Cox and incumbent Denis O’Connell.

It was during this time he created his well-known catchphrase: “I’ve never seen the Gold Coast looking so bright”.

Mr Shepherd proposed several additions to the region, including bus stops shaped like pineapples, a giant “Welcome to the Gold Coast” archway to be built across the M1, pelican-shaped public rubbish bins and cans of sunshine.

He ran for mayor again in 1988 but was defeated by Lex Bell. Despite the defeats Mr Shepherd said he considered Cr Bell a good leader.

He ran a final time in 2000 against Gary Baildon before retiring. He died in 2013.

Patrick Joseph MacNamara

FOUNDER of the paper today known as the Gold Coast Bulletin, Mr MacNamara was a character in Southport during the late 19th century.

Born in 1848 in Ireland, Mr MacNamara came to the Gold Coast from Mudgee, NSW, and set up his own newspaper in a small shed in Lawson St, Southport, in March 1885.

As editor and publisher he produced 100 copies of the paper, which carried a mixture of local stories, remedies for illnesses and a lengthy series of English and Irish jokes.

He later became president of the Southport Shire Council and ran for state parliament, using the paper as his soapbox.

By 1893, however, he either sold or abandoned the paper to join an ill-fated expedition to found New Australia in Paraguay, South America.

The expedition didn’t work and he tried to leave New Australia in December 1893, only to be stuck in Buenos Aires for nine months while saving for passage home.

Mr MacNamara died in 1915 after being thrown from a horse.