Beyond the most northerly tip of Australia, exploring the inner and outer islands of the remote Torres Strait, I discovered a remarkable historical trail that led to billionaires. I told a version of this story live in West Bremer Radio.

In 1896 Lieutenant Uvedale Parry-Okeden departed Brisbane in charge of a relief party of nineteen men to join the garrison at Green Hill Fort on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait.

Parry-Okeden’s military service had begun in 1892 when he joined the Queensland Mounted Infantry and then the Permanent Artillery. He served for two years at the fort on Thursday Island, where he was second in command, before transferring to the reserves in 1899.

I’ve just come back from the Torres Strait researching the Thursday Island fort and raising money for the 174-year-old charity Drug ARM (you can still donate until end of October.) The fort was built in the early 1890s to defend against invasion by the Russians. Although it never fired a shot in anger – unless you count a shot fired over the bows of a ship in 1914 – it is steeped in history, including an unexpected connection to the south-east Queensland town of Ipswich.

That surprise connection is through the fort second-in-command Uvedale Parry-Okeden. His father was William Parry-Okeden who was the Queensland Under-Colonial Secretary and then the Commissioner of the Queensland Police.

One of Uvedale Parry-Okeden nephews would be later be awarded a Distinguished Service Order and be Mentioned in Despatches during the Second World War. Another nephew was killed when his Liberator bomber ditched into the sea off the Kimberleys in Western Australia. His body was never recovered because it was eaten by crocodiles.

Regards Uvedale Parry-Okeden, in the 1880s he travelled across North America’s wild west before returning to Australia and joining the colonial Queensland defence force. It was after transferring to the reserves that he began spending a lot of time in Ipswich. For years he lived on-and-off at the old North Australian Hotel in Nicholas Street which is where the Ipswich City Council buildings are now.

Although Uvedale came from the illustrious Parry-Okeden family descended from British peerage, in 1905 in Ipswich he got into a bit of trouble.

Four serious incidents occurred in rapid succession, all of them the result of bouts of drinking during which he did things that he would deny the next day. First there was an alleged assault of a man at the Hotel Daniell in Brisbane. There were also disturbing reports involving aboriginals at Mount Morris north of Charleville.

Then there was a brutal assault of a young lad named Edward Kelly who worked as the groom and boot-cleaner at Ipswich’s North Australian Hotel. Parry-Okeden arrived back in Ipswich late one night and the lad did not show him to the room that he usually occupied. This made Parry-Okeden angry and so he laid his boot into the diminutive boot boy, for which Parry-Okeden was convicted and fined.

In the supreme court just a week later, Parry-Okeden provided the sad and sorry spectacle of the son of the former Commissioner of Police standing trial on a charge of stealing.  He had travelled from Ipswich to the Sovereign Hotel on Elizabeth Street in Brisbane and stole £10 from an upstairs bedroom. He was convicted and sentenced to three years imprisonment. But unusually the whole sentence was suspended after Parry-Okeden promised never to drink again.

His promise may have lasted – at least for a while – because after again enlisting in the army in 1914 for the First World War, he served with distinction at Gallipoli in 1915. He was officer in charge of ammunition from July through to the evacuation in December, and the officer in charge of bomb making during the last days of the evacuation. He was even Mentioned in Despatches and awarded the Military Cross for gallantry.

However, in Egypt in 1916 with the rank of captain, Parry-Okeden faced a general court martial. He was cleared of language prejudicial to good order, allegedly saying, “Get inside your tents you XXX or I will fight or XXX anyone of you,” or words of that effect.  But he was convicted of drunkenness. Parry-Okeden claimed that it was a conspiracy by some of the men in his command. The result was that Parry-Okeden wasn’t wanted by the army anymore and so was sent back to Australia and discharged.

The following year he re-enlisted as a private and went to serve with a training battalion in England. Unfortunately he broke his arm when he fell into a training trench.

Uvedale Parry-Okeden passed away in 1961, just weeks short of his eighty-seventh birthday, at the Repatriation General Hospital now the Private Hospital in Greenslopes, Brisbane. He entertained whoever would listen with tales of working in the American wild west, and meeting lawmen Wyatt Earp and the gun fighter Bat Masterson.

If you think that the name Parry-Okeden is familiar, that’s because in 2016 Forbes magazine named Blair Parry-Okeden as the richest person in Australia. Her fortune was estimated to be almost ten billion dollars. She was married to the grand-nephew of our Uvedale Parry-Okeden.

I only found out about Ipswich’s Uvedale Parry-Okeden and the family billions thanks to visiting the tiny Thursday Island where I comfortably trekked its ten-kilometre circumference. There’s history out there everywhere you go.

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

Photo credits:
Green Hill Fort, Thursday Island, 2023 – Harold Peacock P8120360.
Lieutenant UE Parry-Okeden, Queensland Permanent Artillery – Anzac Biographies.
Green Hill Fort, Thursday Island, 2023 – Harold Peacock P8120351.
William E. Parry-Okeden, 1895-1905, Commissioner of Police – Queensland Police Museum.
Uvedale Parry-Okeden fined for assault – Truth Brisbane. 9th July 1905, page 5.
Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Chauvel decorates Captain U.E. Parry-Okeden MC – The Queenslander Pictorial supplement, The Queenslander, 20th December 1919, page 23.