Bruce Highway

‘Grave Tales: Bruce Highway’ will give forgotten events, heroes and victims life again by tracing the journeys that lead to their final resting places.

Stories like how two nurses in Maryborough in 1905 gave their lives to save a town from an outbreak of pneumonic plague; the unsolved mystery of how Mollie Thompson’s body ended up in an impossibly hard to reach water reservoir; the migrant who created his dream and shared it with generations; the mother and her five children who lost their lives in the Mackay cyclone; how gold fever saved the state from going broke; why the first person to be hanged in Rockhampton goal was a bent cop; the inscription on a tree on the Sunshine Coast that reflects a tumultuous sea journey; and the 13 RAAF members who came to rest permanently in Townsville, to name a few.

‘Grave Tales’ features people who willingly or unwillingly were participants in events that made headlines. These people may have lived in the same suburbs, streets, and the same houses as exist now in the cities and towns along the Bruce Highway.

Grave Tales is researched and written by journalists, Helen Goltz and Chris Adams; between them they have years of experience in newspapers, radio and television production and reporting.