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Monday, 28th January 2008 (2778 views)

An intriguing story of greed, robbery and murder in the gold fields of Australia in 1867 is the subject of a new exhibition at the Queensland Police Museum, the Brisbane Times reports.

Greed and Gold tells the story of Thomas Griffin, a police officer who was commissioner for the gold fields in Clermont, Queensland, in 1863, a period of prolific discoveries in the region.

He was entrusted with 252 lbs of gold by Chinese prospectors but after banking it, gambled away the cash. He devised a plan to join a party escorting an 8,000-lb haul to a bank in Rockhampton and steal back the value of the cash he had lost.

However, he bungled the robbery, stealing 4,000 lbs of gold, poisoning four fellow officers and shooting two dead.

After his capture and trial, Thomas Griffin was hanged and his body was buried in Rockhampton.

In a mysterious twist, however, his grave was robbed and the head was removed from the corpse. The Times reports it is still rumoured to be buried somewhere in Rockhampton today.

Rockhampton is located about 26 miles from Australia's Capricorn coast, roughly 395 miles north of Brisbane.

 

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