Queenie the Melbourne Zoo elephant with a violent streak met a tragic end

Queenie the elephant delighted kids with rides around Melbourne Zoo, until she killed her long-time keeper in a fit of rage.

Queenie the elephant gave rides to more than 1.6 million children during her career.

After a jumbo 18-month pregnancy, Dokkoon the Asian elephant has given birth to little calf at Melbourne Zoo.

Well, “little” might be stretching it. The bouncing bub probably weighs about 120kg.

A competition has been run to name the young elephant, which can expect to be raised under the careful watch of keepers in the zoo’s world class enclosures.

Such humane treatment of zoo animals is very much a modern thing.

The elephants at Melbourne Zoo in decades past were expected to give rides to dozens of children each hour, and lived in conditions not nearly as pleasant as today.

The appropriately named Queenie, an Asian elephant brought to Melbourne from Calcutta in 1901, was the Zoo’s pride exhibit for decades.

Queenie feeding at Melbourne Zoo, and a keeper with a chimp at the zoo in the 1930s. Pictures: State Library of Victoria

She gave rides to more than 1.6 million children during her 40-year stint at Melbourne Zoo, and had a renowned cheeky streak.

Queenie was known to push children she didn’t like, or drench them with water from her trunk.

But her story had a tragic end.

The elephant’s irreverent attitude turned to rage in 1944 when she deliberately killed here long-time keeper, was declared a killer by a Melbourne coroner, and met a sad death.

Queen of the kids

Having arrived at Melbourne Zoo at the age of six, Queenie was put to work.

And it wasn’t just giving rides to zoo visitors.

In 1910 she was made to plough the fields around the zoological gardens at Royal Park.

Using a specially made harness, which the elephant barely tolerated, two zookeepers would lead her by each flapping ear through the fields, creating a thrilling spectacle for passers by.

Between 1901 and the tail end of WWII, Queenie was a mainstay and a favourite among Melbourne children, who were allowed to ride on a large saddle on her back.

By some accounts she seemed to enjoy the presence of children and delighted in showing off.

But she took a disliking to some.

An Orang Utan and its keepers at Melbourne Zoo in the 1930s, while Queenie was the pride exhibit. Picture: State Library of Victoria

If any petulant child teased her with nuts or poked her trunk with pins, she was known to knock them down.

One popular story describes a group of more than a dozen children offering Queenie some snacks, but pulling them away when she got close to the edge of her enclosure.

In retaliation she strode to her bathing hole, filled her trunk and returned to the children, who continued playing the cruel game for a short while before the wily elephant soaked them with a torrent of water.

But Queenie’s cheeky personality grew into a brooding temper in the later stages of her life.

She became increasingly aggressive and disobedient.

A zoo postcard with note from Queenie and a 1944 article about her fate. Pictures: Museums Victoria, Trove

Her keeper, Wilfred Lawson, bore the brunt of her worsening temperament.

By September 1944, 68-year-old Lawson had come out of retirement to care again for Queenie due to a shortage of staff during the war.

One afternoon, towards the end of visiting hours, he tried to lead Queenie by the trunk in a certain direction.

But Queenie decided she’d had enough.

In a moment of rage she knocked Lawson down, scooped him up again in her trunk and gave him a crushing squeeze.

After throwing him down again to the dirt, she knelt on him.

By the end of the ordeal, Lawson was dead.

‘She’s a killer’

Amid the outpouring of shock from the countless Melburnians who had ridden joyfully on Queenie’s back over the decades, a coronial inquiry left no doubt about it: Queenie was a killer.

She was immediately confined to “solitary” in an enclosure away from the public and would never be allowed to give children rides again.

Newspaper articles detailing Queenie’s tragic final months. Pictures: Trove

Despite the scathing coronial ruling and the branding of Queenie as a “deliberate” killer and “dangerous”, the Zoo administration could not bring themselves to euthanise her.

She was kept in isolation for months, but her aggressive behaviour showed no sign of letting up.

Eventually the call was made to put Queenie down.

The decision was also likely due to the ongoing wartime staff shortage.

With most Melburnians engaged in the war effort, it was rare to find a zoo attendant with the experience required to care for an elephant, and even rarer to find one who was willing to work with a known killer.

Queenie, at the age of 49, was shot dead in August 1945.

It was the Zoo’s director himself, Hector Kendall, who fired the fatal shot.

So ended the illustrious, controversial career of Queenie, whose distant successors at Melbourne Zoo now enjoy a much better life.