When the caliph’s call was answered in blood

Julie McLean and Joy Sanderson, nieces of train attack victim Alma Cowie, will today gather with other descendants in Broken Hill. Picture: Darrin AMID the initial fervour that greeted the outbreak of war, a picnic train prepared to depart the NSW town of Broken Hill. It was New Year’s Day, 1915, and 1200 souls looked forward to a day at the river, among them young Alma Cowie.

Forty open trucks had been cleared of the ore they transported from Broken Hill’s mines to the coast, hosed down and decked out with benches. A steam locomotive pulled the procession; one train had already departed the Sulphide Street railway and this one was bound for Stephen’s Creek at Silverton, 25km out of town.

The initial plans for the Anzacs to land at Gallipolli and open up a second front in the Dardenelles had barely even begun to be drafted, and such a scheme had certainly not reached the ears of two Afghan cameleers who had made a life for themselves in Broken Hill.

But two months earlier, the ­Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V, caliph of all Muslims, had declared a holy war against Britain and her allies.

Badsha Mahomed Gool was a Afridi tribesman and devout Muslim who had travelled to Turkey to serve in the Ottoman Empire’s army before finding himself in Broken Hill, where he worked at the mines, at the outbreak of World War I. His latest enterprise was as the proprietor of an ice-cream cart, well known to locals in the town.

Mullah Abdullah was a 60-year-old former camel driver and imam who had fallen out with authorities over the halal slaughter of his sheep.

As the Broken Hill picnic train chugged up a rise on New Year’s Day 100 years ago, passengers noticed the Turkish flag flying high over Gool’s ice-cream cart. Shortly after, from a distance of just 30m, the two men, from their position hidden in the embankment at the side of the tracks, opened fire from two rifles.

Two people, 17 year-old passenger Alma Cowie and Alf Millard, who was cycling beside the train, were killed, and six injured. In the 90-minute firefight that followed the atrocity, another man, William Shaw, was slain and James Craig, who was chopping wood in his backyard as bullets flew, was hit by a stray shot and also died.

It was the first enemy attack on home soil yet the picnic train atrocity has all but faded into ­obscurity. Today, Broken Hill is doing its best to remedy that as part of its 100-year commemorations to mark the picnic train attack. “It was always there as a part of Broken Hill’s history but the older people will tell you it wasn’t talked about,” says Christine Adams, a volunteer curator at the Sulphide Street Railway and Historical Museum. “It’s an important part of our history and should be acknowledged.”

More than 45 descendants of Alma Cowie are converging on Broken Hill today, many of them meeting one another for the first time, for the commemoration. Among them are her nieces Joy Sanderson and Julie McLean. “There are people from far and wide coming here tomorrow because they feel that connection,” Ms Sanderson says.

It is not lost on her that the commemoration of the Broken Hill picnic train atrocity comes in the wake of the Sydney attack by extremist Man Haron Monis. “There it is, almost 100 years apart, and virtually without reason on both occasions,” she says.

Gool left a handwritten suicide note that was discovered after he and Abdullah were shot dead by authorities. “I hold the Sultan’s order ... I must kill your men and give my life for my faith by order of the Sultan (but) I have no enmity against anyone, nor have I consulted with anyone, nor informed anyone,” the note said.

Ms Adams does not see a necessary connection between the Broken Hill attack and the Sydney siege. “To me this was an act of two isolated, discontented, unhappy people 100 years ago,” she says.

Today in Broken Hill, a plaque will be unveiled at the Sulphide Street Railway and Historical Museum and at 10am, a crowd will reflect at White Rocks, where the attackers were slain.