In the lonely bush of colonial Queensland was Mrs. Collins and her remarkable tale of convicts, horse theft, indecent exposure, tragic death, and an attempt to bury and erase her from history. I told a version of this story live on Darling Downs radio 4AK.

Off the Cunningham Highway and at the end of Spicer’s Gap Road, there’s a four-wheel drive track that leads to a stone memorial to a long-lost burial ground for the dead at Spicer’s Gap.

One of those commemorated is a Mrs Collins, who the memorial records was the wife of Edward Collins, and was killed in a dray accident presumed to be in 1857.

That’s not completely correct, and there’s a lot more to the story.

The truth about the death of Mrs Collins comes from a number of newspaper articles as early as 1863. Our Mrs Collins was actually Mrs Margaret Collins who was an old resident of Toowoomba.

Her husband Edward Collins and Owen Lambert were two of the very early founders of Warwick, and as mates worked as carriers between Warwick and Ipswich, although Lambert had recently been convicted in Ipswich of indecent exposure.

Mrs Collins was a large woman weighing sixteen or seventeen stone. She accompanied her husband on the roads until one day in 1863 she met with a fatal accident when the bullock teams, loaded with Canning Downs wool, were passing through Spicer’s Gap. Mrs Collins was riding on the top of her husband’s load with Lambert when the wheel of the dray on which they were riding hit a rock, Mrs Collins was thrown off onto her head, and she was killed almost instantly. Surviving the accident were her four children under the age of six.

Mrs Collins was in fact a former transported convict by the name of Margaret Lane. She was from County Cork in Ireland and was transported to the rough Van Diemen’s Land colony for a term of seven years having been convicted of stealing money.

Margaret eventually got married in Sydney to Edward Collins. Edward was himself also a former transported convict from Worcester in England and was transported initially to Sydney for a term of seven years for horse theft. He was then convicted of assault and as a repeat offender was re-transported north to the Moreton Bay penal colony. He must have liked it up there, which would become modern Queensland, because after he and Margaret were married, they moved there and settled in the district which became Warwick.

Edward and Margaret had four children. Within a month of Margaret’s awful death at Spicer’s Gap, Edward married again. The four existing children’s births were registered showing his second wife as the mother, while Edward and his second wife proceeded to have a further eight children of their own.

One of that second batch David Collins had a run-in with the law when he was arrested in Warwick and convicted in Goondiwindi for horse stealing, which followed precisely in the footsteps of his convict father.

And among Margaret’s children in the first batch, one spectacularly followed in his father’s footsteps, and for two others, like their mother, their lives ended in tragedy.

Margaret’s oldest child was named Edward Collins Junior and was six-years-old at the time of her death. Edward Junior, who was raised by his step-grandfather, was actually convicted of stealing his father’s horse and sentenced to twelve months hard labour in Brisbane Gaol. Therefore, Edward Junior, like his half-brother David, also followed in the horse-stealing footsteps of his transported convict father, and was actually convicted his father’s evidence.

Margaret’s youngest child was Joseph Collins and he was only one-year-old at the time of her death. In 1890 there was a horse accident at Hendon on the Southern Downs and Joseph, then aged twenty-seven, was killed instantly. His horse which was hung up against a fence had broken away, and so he borrowed another to go after it. On getting into the saddle the second horse began to buck furiously, and Collins was thrown. He fell to the ground and broke his neck, death was almost instantaneous, and in an end very similar to his mother’s.

Another one of Margaret’s children was Lucy who was just three when Margaret died. Lucy at one time lived at 82 Taylor Street in Toowoomba, and the house is still there. But sadly Lucy lived out her life at Toowoomba’s Willowburn Mental Hospital.

Now Edward Collins and his second wife are supposedly buried at Allora, but of course our Mrs Margaret Collins is buried in Spicer’s Gap in a lost grave somewhere near that memorial.

So the convict past of Mrs Collins, her tragic death, lost grave, erased from the lives of her children, three of whom lived tragedies themselves, all add up to an amazing existence on the Darling Downs. Her grave may be lost, but she won’t be forgotten.

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

Photo credits:
Enormous load of wool being pulled by a bullock team Charleville district, 1902-1904 – State Library of Queensland.
Memorial, Spicer’s Gap, Boonah Shire – Spicer’s Gap Memorial Inscriptions Kerry Raymond and David Horton.
Record load, thirty-two bullocks in a team, 14 tons, Charleville district, 1902-1904 – State Library of Queensland.
Lucy Duggan nee Collins home, 82 Taylor Street, Toowoomba, 2009 – realestate.com website.