After passing through Dalby on the Western Downs recently, I was inspired to tell the story of the Dalby alderman who was convicted of vagrancy. I told a version of this story on Darling Dawns radio 4AK.

In 1914 there was a furore in the Dalby council chambers caused by the mayor Mr. Walter Hunter. He came from Tasmania, and he was an architect, pastoralist and auctioneer. Hunter would serve two terms as Dalby mayor during sixteen continuous years on council.

They mayor was doing all he could to throw Alderman Joe McKeon off council. McKeon had been the first valuer appointed by the Railway Commissioner in the Dalby-Cattle Creek or Bell district. Twice he was elected as auditor of the Wambo council, twice as valuer for Dalby Municipal Council, and ultimately would be elected an alderman on the Dalby council three or four times.

McKeon’s brother Austin became an alderman on the Wambo council after pulling out of a state election complaining that his party was in a shambles. He would later escape criminal charges of false pretences but lose a related civil case.

Stirring up all the trouble in council was a man with the suspiciously German-sounding name of Ludwig Walter Kachel. He was born in Gatton and was one of at least eleven children born to the even more German-sounding parents Wilhelmine and Gottlieb. Being German was not a good situation in 1914 on the cusp of the First World War with Germany. 

Anyway, young Kachel was just twenty-three years old and was willing to stand up and take on the Dalby councillor. Kachel took McKeon to the Dalby Police Court alleging that McKeon had fraudulently represented that he would lodge an application for a block of land on Kachel’s behalf. The lodgement never happened but McKeown still took the young man’s money.

The amazing part is that the charge that McKeon faced was under the Vagrancy Act. Roars of laughter emanated from the public gallery when Kachel said that he regarded McKeon as a rogue and a vagabond, and a “no good fellow” which was the meaning of the word vagrant, which justified the vagrancy charge.

McKeon was convicted of being a rogue and a vagrant and was fined the tidy sum of £17 and 15 shillings.

The Dalby mayor then set about getting the convicted rogue McKeon kicked off council, even while McKeon took his appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. But that was to no avail because the appeal was rejected and the vagrancy conviction stood.

Not long after, young Kachel enlisted in the Australian Army and fought his German cousins on the front line in France at the major battlefields of Amiens, Morlancourt, Villers-Bretonneux,  Hamel, St Quentin Canal, and was wounded in action when gassed during the Hundred Days Offensive that helped bring about the end of the war.

Kachel returned home and in 1920 finally got his land that McKeon’s inaction had denied, when he was granted a land selection of 320 acres.

Meanwhile, Dalby’s alderman McKeon managed to be re-elected to council one or two more times, but he remains to this day probably the only alderman in Australian history to have been kicked off council after being convicted of vagrancy.

And it can’t ever happen again because vagrancy stopped being a crime in Queensland in 2005. So there you go, Dalby has an Australian record that can never be beaten.

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

Photo credits:
Dalby’s Record Rogue Alderman – Harold Peacock with Copilot.
Mayor Walter Robertson Hunter, Dalby Town Council 1912-1913 – Western Downs Regional Council.
Joseph McKeon – Harold Peacock with Copilot composite of unclear 1913 photographs Darling Downs Gazette and Brisbane Courier.
Ludwig Walter Kachel memorial – Virtual War Memorial website.