There’s a World Record that Australia forgot, and it still stands today 137 years later. I told a version of this story live on Ipswich’s West Bremer Radio.

On Thursday the 20th of March 1930, the Ipswich-born Michael Joseph Slack died suddenly at the Redbank Meatworks, west of Brisbane. He’d eaten a hearty meal early in the morning, and appeared to be in the best of health, but while changing his clothes to start work he collapsed and died. He was just sixty-two. Slack was another member of a noted family that had done so much to put Ipswich, Queensland, and Australia on the map.

One of Slack’s uncles helped convict a murderer in Ipswich, another claimed the first cricketing century in Queensland, while Slack himself was Australasian sculling champion.

But that wasn’t Slack’s biggest claim to fame, you see he was also a world champion which is an honour that even his hometown seems to have forgotten. And his 137-year-old record still stands today.

The Intercolonial rowing regatta that brought Slack to national attention was held on Friday the 28th of May 1892. It was rowed on the Bulimba Reach of the Brisbane River, with the sculling over two and three quarters miles. It was the first Amateur Championship Sculls of Australia. In the title race, Slack put on a magnificent spurt to win by three lengths, beating the crack scullers from down south. The Victorians didn’t even show up after Slack had comprehensively beaten them on the Yarra earlier in the year. Slack’s impressive list of titles would include the sculling Amateur Championships of Queensland, Victoria, three times of Australia, and in 1895 the Amateur Championship of Australasia.

Sport was amateur back then, so Slack also follow his family’s career as a butcher. He was particularly efficient at his trade, and in 1889 at the old Ramornie Meatworks in South Grafton, he dressed a bullock in four minutes and fifty seconds. This was a world record that has never been beaten.

With regards to the bullocks themselves, in 2023 “Iceberg”, which was a North Queensland bullock processed near Clermont, was potentially Australia’s largest ever ox, dressing out to 854kg.  But Slack’s dressing world speed record set in 1889 has never been challenged.

The knife with which he performed the feat was for many years in the possession of his brother Patrick Slack. He owned a butchery at Ipswich and was the licensee of the Redbank Inn on the main Ipswich-Brisbane road. Tragically the knife was lost when the brother’s hotel burned to the ground in 1910.  He had about ten boarders, all employees at the meatworks, and they saved only what they were wearing at the time. Except, that is, for a quantity of the inn’s liquor that was rescued from the fire and deposited on the road, but it was later pilfered.

If Slack had lived another decade longer, he might have shared in the fabulous estate of Charles Tindall who was the owner and manager of the Ramornie Meatworks when Slack set his record there. Tindall’s estate was valued £142,000 or $60 million in today’s money, and he left legacies and annuities to former employees of whom Slack was by far the most famous.

Slack’s rowing exploits aren’t forgotten. At one time, while sculling in the Brisbane River, the blade of one of the sculls he was using was bitten in two by a shark, and as of 1930 it was still preserved in the Queensland Museum. I’ve made enquiries with the museum to go see it and I’m waiting to hear back now.

But today it seems that Slack’s butchering world record is forgotten. He’s buried in the South Brisbane cemetery, and there’s not even a hint that he’s still holds the record.

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

Photo credits:
Michael and his brother Patrick celebrate the world record – Harold Peacock with Copilot.
Champion sculler MJ Slack c1892 – Harold Peacock repaired colourised with Copilot from State Library of Queensland.
Remornie Meatworks South Grafton c1910 – Harold Peacock repaired colourised with Copilot from Daily Examiner, Grafton, 21st June 1937, page 2.
Record dressed bullock – Signature Onfarm Facebook page, 23rd September 2023.
Michael Joseph Slack, South Brisbane Cemetery – Keith Harrison 2022 via Find a Grave website.