A huge alligator owned by boxing tent promoter Fred Brophy's grandfather once sparked a hilarious and terrifying mystery – but another tent-fighting maestro's mascot was even more bizarre.
Fred Brophy's Boxing Troupe is the last remaining spectacle of its kind anywhere in the world, but it wasn't too long ago that roving tents of itinerant fighters were dotted all over Australia.
One of those belonged to Harry Paulsen – a Norwegian sailor who got in a blue with the bosun, jumped overboard and swam ashore to Hobart in 1928 with one-and-six in his pocket and not a word of English.
He worked odd labouring jobs, learned the lingo and wound up having a short boxing career on tour with Jimmy Sharman's and Alf Hanson's boxing troupe.
In 1936, he returned to Tasmania and used what he had learned on tour to create his own boxing tent.
It would last for about four decades.
A croc in the bathtub
Harry's son Peter Paulsen says growing up on the road seemed normal at the time.
"Within the showgrounds – not only the boxing show but all the other sideshows – everyone looked after one another," he says.
"It was just like a mobile village … and you certainly couldn't get in too much trouble because someone was always watching you.
"It wasn't until we got a house that I realised that I'd had a different life up to that point."
The purchase of that house would become crucial to the survival of what became the boxing tent's long-term mascot – a "giant" saltwater crocodile that Harry Paulsen somehow managed to import from Queensland.
"It wasn't quite as big as the banner depicted, but still, it was alive," Peter says.
"We used to keep that in the bath at home between shows, which was always entertaining for visitors if they needed to use the bathroom."
Tasmanian winters are not particularly conducive to keeping saltwater crocodiles alive, but the Paulsens had an ingenious method to ensure its longevity.
"We'd just turn the hot tap on … keep him warm in the bath," Peter explains.
'Jump on his back, Freddy'
Harry Paulsen was not alone in swerving down the reptile route to get bums on seats.
Fred Brophy is famous as the namesake and promoter for the only surviving boxing tent in the world.
The fourth-generation showman recalls his grandfather securing the services of a 17-foot-long alligator named Mickey from the Okefenoke Swamps of Florida – because crocodiles were too aggressive.
"It was a huge thing," Brophy says.
"He'd put a tent peg in and just put a bit of straw down, and he used to lie there all day and never done nothing – just slept.
"Everyone who'd come in would think it was dead. Then I'd come in and me grandfather would say, 'Jump on his back, Freddy'.
"I'd jump on his back and he'd tap him on his nose, and he'd open his mouth, he'd turn around to the crowd and he'd roar and they'd s**t themselves."
The young Brophy was just six at the time.
Mickey the gator gets stuffed
Mickey wound up meeting his maker when he fell off the back of a truck at the Cairns Show.
Brophy's grandmother lined up the Queensland Museum to get the corpse stuffed – the first time an autopsy had been conducted on an alligator in Australia.
The Brophys took the taxidermied cadaver on tour for another five years or so.
Eventually, it started looking crook and wound up in storage in a shed at the family property in Perth.
"It was in there for about another five or six years … and [my grandfather] decided to clear it out," Brophy says.
"He was down there and he backed his truck in and old Mickey, all the rats and mice had got to him, and sawdust was all over the place.
"There was nothing much of his skin left so he just put it in the back of the truck with all the other rubbish."
The Lake Monger mystery
The next chapter of Mickey the alligator's afterlife would spark one of the most bizarre mysteries in West Australian history.
Brophy's grandfather took the mouse-eaten carcass out to Lake Monger where the rubbish tip was at the time.
"On the other side they had all the barbecue areas right up the lake," Brophy says.
"Where they put all the rubbish in, he just threw it in and old Mickey started to float away.
"About a week later, we were reading the Picture magazine or the Post or something and me mother said, 'Have a look at this'.
"It had a photo of Mickey floating across."
Brophy could not believe his eyes.
"It floated across the other side of the lake until it got to where all the people were picnicking, and they all s**t themselves and they took photographs of it, and the coppers come down," he laughs.
"Anyway, they made a big story about it – the Lake Monger mystery, the alligator in Lake Monger."
Tattooed pigs and snake charmers
Big cold-blooded predators were not the only attractions the showmen used to get punters through the door.
"I've had strip tease shows, I've had illusions, I've had the tattooed pig," Brophy says.
It was a similar story for the Paulsens.
Peter's mother Sylvia was a particularly good skilled dancer and would often be tasked with putting her skills to work.
"Harry sort of took advantage of the fact that she was a good dancer," Peter says.
Sylvia later appeared as Delilah the snake charmer as part of a double-act with Harry as the Miracle Man from Cairo.
"He got away with murder, they were just simple tricks but he was a good salesman," Peter says.
Scandal strikes in Tasmania
They were a formidable duo, but their marriage in 1948 was a major scandal.
Harry Paulsen was 38 at the time and Sylvia was just 19, and the rules were very different in those days.
The age of majority – when someone becomes a legal adult – was not lowered from 21 to 18 until 1974.
The boxing tent impresario wound up being sentenced to four months' jail for marrying a minor without her father's consent.
His young bride received a three-month sentence for making a false declaration on a marriage certificate, but was immediately released on a good behaviour bond.
A newspaper article from the time notes Sylvia met Harry in Melbourne two years prior and asked her to marry him.
"She told him that her father would not give consent to her marrying him although she had little to do with her father," it continues.
"He was a Roman Catholic, and she had been brought up in that faith.
"The couple were married in the Anglican Church without asking for her father's consent.
"Now the sorry person of the three was the father, who had since given his consent.
"The parties had been living happily since their marriage six weeks ago."
Endangered species' last charge
These days, Fred Brophy is the last white rhino of Australian tent boxing – and when he goes, those big shoes will likely remain empty.
"Me son's not interested in it, and you know, none of me family is," Fred says.
"It'll be a sad occasion, but I'm going to keep it going as long as I can, and I've got a few more years up me sleeve.
"I can get up and down that ladder pretty good … and the council at Birdsville said if I can't, they're gonna use a forklift and get me up there on a pallet, so I'll be right."
And while Harry Paulsen, his crocodile bathtub and his rambling prize-fighters are now just memories, the legacy lives on.
"You can do anything you like if you want to have a go – that's always been a catch-cry for the whole family," Peter says.
"He proved that in spades.
"For a young man who turned up in Tassie, having jumped ship, no means of support, he finally worked his way into being one of the best-known Tasmanians around for over 40 years.
"That was just a matter of being tenacious and determined."
