Page 82 - Tropic Magazine Issue 11

Industry
Regional History

Errol Flynn

In like Flynn

Tropic looks back to the time when a wild man of
the silver screen paid an ill-fated visit to Cairns.

E mixed up in a confused and struggling wanted to make some cash, offering 60
rrol Flynn was the original Hollywood other multi-hued nationalities were
pounds for Flynn to take the Sirocco to a
hellraiser. He drank enough booze for
several lifetimes, loved to brawl in bars mass, amid the tumult and babel of spot near Green Island and meet a ship
and had a “quite staggering appetite” for shouted curses and imprecations in called the Taiping, where he was to collect
sex, as one biographer described. And it unknown tongues. After a while the thing a package.
was during a visit to Cairns where Flynn assumed an impersonal aspect. A man Turns out the package contained a
briefly became a drug-runner. recognised an enemy simply because he massive haul of opium with a street value
It was circa 1932. Flynn was in his early happened to be nearest to him or of a of 1000 pounds, equivalent to around
20s and sailing a yacht called “Sirocco” up different colour. $160,000 in today’s dollars.
the east coast of Australia on his first The retrieval job by Flynn and his merry
swashbuckling adventure out of his home men was a success. But the drop off didn’t
state of Tasmania. He landed in Cairns go as well as they hoped. Achun paid half
when the 8000-strong population was a Flynn might've had his first the agreed amount – 30 pounds – and
heady multicultural mix of wild men real taste of swashbuckling promised to fix up the outstanding
seeking their fortune in the nation’s final misadventure in Cairns amount once the drugs were offloaded. It
frontier. never happened. So, Flynn took it upon
In his unreliable memoir Beam Ends, himself to deliver some payback.
Flynn described a massive brawl he According to newspaper reports: “Before
witnessed at a local gambling joint, A carload of police arrived on the scene sailing north to Port Moresby, Flynn
believed to be on the site where the Pacific and laid heavily and indiscriminately with decided to steal one of Achun’s expensive
International now sits. “It was their truncheons.” dinghies and in doing so left a couple of
canecutters versus Chinese,” Flynn wrote. It was during one such visit to a local his henchmen stranded in the Inlet.”
“Every moment more and more gambling den that Flynn met a “dapper, Flynn and his mates promptly departed
belligerents joined in the scrap, for no well-educated” Chinese man who went by Cairns Harbour bound for Port Moresby.
good reason other than it was anyone’s the grandiloquent moniker of Gabriel Soon after, Flynn starred in his first
fight. Chinamen rushed about shouting Aloysius Achun. According to a movie role “In the Wake of the Bounty”
and squealing in their high-pitched newspaper report, Achun befriended and went on to find fame and fortune in
voices. In the middle of the room, Flynn by wining and dining the brash Hollywood. He died age 50 and was
Chinamen, canecutters, Malays, young go-getter from down south. Late buried with six bottles of whiskey.
half-castes, dark-skinned Italians and all into the night, Achun asked Flynn if he