QUEENSLAND TRAGEDY

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 September 1929, Page 3

QUEENSLAND TRAGEDY

POLICE RECEIVE DETAILS

CAIRNS, September 13.

Further particulars surrounding the shooting tragedy at Abingdon Downs Station, where Mr Bob McDowall and Miss Amy Harris were found shot dead, have been received by the Cairns police.

It is stated that McDowall and Miss Harris, accompanied by a black boy and a youth named Leslie Fletcher, left the station on horseback about 9 a.m. on September 5 to visit Mt. Jack paddock, which is about two miles from the homestead. It is surmised that the party intended to shoot wild pigs. After going some distance, McDowall told the boys to ride on ahead, and he and Miss Harris would ride in the opposite direction. As the boys saw no pigs, they returned, and saw Miss Harris cantering her horse along, and McDowall cantering behind her. That was the last time McDowall and the girl were seen alive. When the bodies were found the girl was lying on her back with her arms at her thigh. She had a bullet wound on the top of her head. McDowall had been shot through the forehead.

It is thought that both died instantaneously, and that McDowall first shot the girl, then committed suicide. From the position in which the bodies were found and from the position of the wound at the top of the girl’s head, it was evident that she had dismounted before being shot.

McDowall had taken a quantity of drink before leaving the homestead, and it is thought that the girl remonstrated with him, and because of this he had shot her whilst he was on horseback, and then suddenly realising what he had done, dismounted, placed his head on her thigh, and drove a bullet into his own brain.