Farewell to ‘Golly’: City stops for former QPS commissioner

Brisbane’s inner-city streets came to a standstill on Monday as the Queensland Police Service farewelled its former leader, Steve Gollschewski, who died of cancer earlier this month, aged 67 .

Uniformed police officers lined the streets alongside citizens as funeral processions departed City Hall, the location of the former police commissioner’s final farewell, just months after his retirement from the state’s top policing job .

Gollschewski was remembered as committed, loyal, ethical, determined, selfless and strong.

But while those attributes were well-known throughout the Queensland community, particularly when he was an almost ubiquitous presence on television screens during times of disaster, those who knew him best also knew his limits.

As Gollschewski’s daughter, Amy, revealed to mourners at City Hall, her father did have weaknesses – one of which manifested in 2017 when he visited her in London.

“I took him to the top of the Shard, the tallest building in Western Europe – I thought it would be a great way for him to see London,” she said.

“He didn’t seem that keen, though. He spent the ride up the lift a bit on edge, and at the top, he stood by one of the cement supports in the middle of the room and refused to come close to the windows.

“He tried to play cool and asked me questions about different buildings and asked me to point which direction our house was in, but it was only a short time before he asked if we could go back down.

“I only realised afterwards that he’s extremely scared of heights, and he’d always downplayed it so much when we were kids that I just didn’t realise how big that fear was.

Amy’s sister, Kirsten, said children often saw their parents as invincible. For her it was no different – in her “heart of hearts” she was convinced her father would overcome cancer.

“Dad deserved so many more years to make precious memories with us and his grandchildren, that was his driving force during his fight. It’s why it’s so difficult to comprehend that he’s no longer with us.”

Standing alongside their young daughter Georgie, Gollschewski’s widow, Rebecca, said she was mourning not only her husband but the life they would have had together.

“True to form, Steve had lots of plans for after his retirement,” she said.

“The plan he was most looking forward to post-retirement was spending more time with his children and grandchildren in Brisbane, and basing ourselves in London for an extended period to be with Amy and James and Ivy and Cillian, to see more of the places we’ve loved and the ones still on our wish list.