The historic Kuranda railway prompted my investigation into a strange propensity for people to fall off trains. I told a version of this story on radio 4WK.

On a Sunday afternoon in 1947, a young girl was found next to the railway on the Kuranda Range in far north Queensland. She was unable to recall her name, where she lived, or how she got there. However, police determined that her description was identical with that of a girl who had left the Cairns Railway Hotel for a train ride up the range. Her name was Betty Dorrington of Toowoomba, and she had fallen off the train as it rounded a corner.

Her father Arthur and uncle Oscar had earlier got into some trouble with Toowoomba police. Uncle Oscar got fined £10 for an unlicensed revolver, but protested that he took the gun away from his brother for his own protection, gave him a hiding for it, and this was all the thanks he got.

While I was researching Betty falling off the Kuranda train (pictured above), I discovered it wasn’t only her taking a tumble, but that Toowoomba people had been falling off Queensland trains for years.

In 1898 Toowoomba’s Dr. William Armstrong, who was number one on the first Queensland Medical Register, fell off a train from Toowoomba as it was rounding a bend near Spring Bluff. This train-falling thing could happen to anyone, because Doctor Armstrong’s son was the speaker of Queensland Parliament, a grandson was the 5th Baron Huntingfield and the first Australian-born governor of any state, and a great-grandson was a Lord Mayor of London.

In 1914, Susan Croton was living at the Forest Inn Hotel in Toowoomba when she fell out of the Toowoomba to Brisbane train near Helidon. Her father and grandfather were the bailiffs of the Toowoomba small debts court. The train stopped, picked her up, and put her into first class for the rest of the trip.

In 1923, eleven-year-old Charles Turich was on his way to back to school at Scots College in Warwick when he fell off the train between Wolston and Goodna. His sister who was also on the train didn’t even miss him. Young Charles just got up and walked to the next station. Charles’s family had a survival streak because come the Second World War, his brother Ken would survive three and a half years in the Japanese prisoner of war camp at Changi.

In 1926 a young man fell off the Toowoomba to Ipswich train on his way to watch a football match. The train stopped, and his friends were delighted when they found him and continued onto the game.  Someone else fell off the train on the way back to Toowoomba after the match.

In 1930 John Nicholson, a piano tuner, was making himself comfortable against the door of the Toowoomba train when it flew open and he too fell out. They found him near Brinsop siding, he reboarded the train and continued his journey to Charleville.

In 1939 Mr. H. E. Wilson who was the chairman of the Toowoomba Fire Brigade Board, he fell off the train between Channing and Yeluba. The train stopped, picked him up again, and continued onto Miles.

That’s the thing, so many people were falling off around Toowoomba that the trains just stopped and picked them up again.

Even just the realisation of going to Toowoomba had people falling off. In 1912, a Mr. Watkins from Toowong caught the Brisbane to Toowoomba train. He fell off as it rounded a bend just after Toowong. They went back and found him but he simply dusted himself off and proceeded to walk home. The train he was on wasn’t even due to stop at Toowong.

So the initial mystery of Toowoomba’s Betty Dorrington falling off the train up here in Kuranda led me to whole new world of train-falling which Toowoomba people have done a lot of over the years.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON RADIO 4WK.

Photo credits:
Kuranda Railway, 2024 – Harol Peacock P5071016.
Lord Huntingfield, Governor of Victoria – National Library of Australia.
Kenneth John Turich, WW2 enlistment photos – National Archives of Australia.