The unfortunate Winks family arrived in Ipswich 140 years ago only to be engulfed in death and destruction ever since, and a relative end up in a sporting venue icon. I told a version of this story live on West Bremer Radio.

The children of William and Hannah Winks were mostly born at Jondaryan on the Darling Downs, Queensland. The family then came to the greater Ipswich district where they were among the very earliest settlers around Fassifern district having acquired a large area of land at Peak Crossing. They were held in the utmost respect and played a prominent part in the development of the district.

But it’s when the family came that close to Ipswich that they were beset with death and destruction.

Hector Winks was killed in 1940 by a washing machine at Harrisville and was declared dead on his way to the Ipswich Hospital. He’d been tossing and turning in his bed until he tangled with the washstand and that was the end of Hector.

The chairman of the Normanby Shire Council at their monthly meeting noted Hector’s unfortunate demise, and added that Hector would be particularly missed because he was one of the biggest payers of rates in the shire. Hector’s father-in-law Aaron Walmsley also had some notoriety, because at one time he swapped his horse for wife, and then tried to swap her back.

Hector had always been one for getting into trouble. For example, only a few years earlier he was riding a rather frisky horse home from Ipswich to Peak Crossing when he was thrown off his horse at Churchill, and that caused severe lacerations to his head and arm.

Worse still was years earlier in 1889, when Hector was just sixteen years old, he got into a scrap with the entire Porter family. One of the Porter boys nine-year-old Joseph Porter charged Hector with assault.  His father Francis Porter and two brothers charged Hector’s brother-in-law William Forsyth with using obscene language. But two of Hector’s brothers Randolf and Eden came to the rescue with contradicting testimony. The allegedly swearing brother-in-law would later die when he was shot in the head. It was all really messy.

Not long afterwards another brother-in-law George Forsyth returned from the Boer War only to die in the Ipswich hospital from, of all things, the measles.

And after all this, three more of Hector’s relatives died in rapid succession in Ipswich. His brother John Winks dropped dead outside of their mother’s home at Booval when he cranked his car to go home. A few months later their mother herself Hannah Winks died inside the home. And not all that long after, his brother Randolph Winks, who for years was a dairy inspector of the Department of Agriculture and Stock, died in an Ipswich private hospital.

Getting out of Ipswich wasn’t a safe option for the Winks family either. Hector’s grandson Kenton Winks went up north to Gordonvale to work as a canecutter, only to be killed in a motorbike accident.

And two of Hector’s nephews died overseas while serving in the army. They both went to Ipswich Grammar School. One of them Allan Winks in the First World War, he was killed in France in the same action that his sergeant earned a Victoria Cross. And the other Arthur Winks in the Second World War, he died as a prisoner of war at Sandakan in Borneo.

And just to give a different historical perspective to all of this, one of Hector’s brothers-in-law Thomas Nott was buried in the old Paddington cemetery which of course today is the famous football venue Lang Park. And naturally we know what happened there, his body was either anonymously removed or lost under the turf for all eternity.

And that really sums up the effect that Ipswich had on the unfortunate Winks family.

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