Gubberamunda Ghost

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Sunday Mail (Brisbane) (Qld. : 1926 - 1954), Sunday 5 January 1941, page 2

National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article98252371

? Ghosts of ?

Queensland-No.

1

IN spite of its bare

century of white history Queensland

admits to a number of ghost stories —

a

sprinkmg at most which can lay anyrespectable claim to rival those of less

recent communities.

?

Because, no doubt of architectural limitations

our ghosts find it difficult to comparein blood

with the restless

which go clanking their chains up and down the stairways,

or strolling headless along the moonlit midnight corridors,

of the old

Because the ghost of Gub

beramunda, of all our Queensland apparitions, provided a

certain continuty of appearanceand because a judge of the

Supreme Court once bent his

august mentality to an attempted

solution of its mysteries, we

must accord itpride of place.

On the score of alliteration aloneIt must be conceded that the Ghost

of Gubberamunda starts this series

with certainadvantages over other

.

ghosts which have haunted town

and bush In Queensland. The title

has the genuine smack of necro

mantic authenticity. The story of

the Little Old Woman to Grey

coming down to us out of the

seventies under such a delightfully

ghoulish title might have been ex

pected to survive to better-knownextent than is the case in this

generation of Queenslanders.

So evil are the days upon which

our ghosts are fallen that the

Ghost of Gubberamunda proves not

even to be known to a direct de

scendant of the Lalor family whoowned the property upon which was

the hill where the cottage stoodsthrough which the ghost prowled.

However, this member of that family

which has had an

uninterruptedownership of Gubberamunda sinceit

was taken up about 80 years ago

has forsaken the ways of the bush

these many years.

However, the Lalors who remain

on Gubberamunda to this day

know about the Uttle old Woman

in Grey, even if the spot where she

was wont to materialise is no

longer part of Gubberamunda.

Gubberamunda in the seventieswas a much larger property than it

it Is to-day. Its area then was

about 500 sauare miles and its

gates came almost to Roma. Nowa

days, what with pastoral re

sumptions, closer settlement, and.

other signs of progress, the sates

sumptions, closer settlement, and.

other signs of progress, the sates

would be about 20 miles from Roma

and the area but a fraction of its

once spreading domain.

Although suspense is the first and

most important requisite in the

telling of any ghost story it might

be as well if. without further pre

amble, a short allusion was made

to the circumstances In which

the Gubberamunda ghost mani

fested itself.

THEstory begins with an

ageing and eccentric

couple named Bonnor

who built a four-roomed

weatherboard cottage and

kitchen on the hill behind the Roma

hospital at a point just inside the

boundary fence of the farthest out

paddock of Mr. James Lalor's big

property.There is little that can be learnt

of Bonnor except that he was a

carpenter. He had followed, this

and other bush occupations and

had probably done a considerableamount of work for the Lalor

family, for they appear willingly

to have allowed him to erect his

cottage on their property.It is with Bormor's wife that the

story is principally concerned. She

attracted the attention of all. Even

in the seventies when strangely at

tired characters were more fre

ouently encountered in the bush

than to-day she was a conspicuousfigure.

Contemporaries have left on re

cord that she was never dressed

otherwise than in a grey frock of

a design and texture belonging to

a day much earlier than the

seventies. She wore over this a

grey three-cornered shawl pulledtightly about her shoulders.

Another peculiarity was that she

would neither greet nor return the

salutations of those she met in her

trips to and from the town. Her

habitual air was strangely ab

trips to and from the town.

habitual air was strangely ab

stract. Beyond these character

istics there was nothing that sug

gested the part she was to play in

the experience and legend of the

district.

THEBonnors lived in the

house on the hill for

years. Without explanation they suddenly disappeared,

and the subsequent investi

gation failed to provide a hint of

their whereabouts or a clue as to

eitherthe

manner

oftheir

leavingRoma or their intended destination.

The house on the hill stood de

serted for some time, and not even

the most imaginative or nervy resi

dent of Roma reported anythinguntoward about it. No noise save

that of the wind in the trees that

grew about the house or the flapof a loose shingle broke the still

ness of the night that wrapped the

Bonnors'. home.

Mention was made later of a grey

cat which either had been aban

doned by the Bonnors or had wan

dered to the house on the hill and

found an abiding place beneath the

flooring. Not even the most credulous, however, were able seriously

to suggest that this member of the

cat family, which has always been

such a recognised ieature of witch

craft and grisly legend, was any

thing more significant than a

domestic cat gone shy and wild.

In the course of time the cottageon Gubberamunda was occupied bya family named Johnson, the headof which was a saddler with a busi

ness in Roma. When telling of

what happened in the cottage John

son, his wife, and their survivingchildren stated that they were

never happv or comfortable duringthe time they lived there.

There was something creepy and

unnerving about the cottage on

dark nights, a strange feeling thatsomeone or something lurked,always watching, but never dis



always watching, but never dis

closed. as1 a physical presence until

the unfortunate Tilly Johnson told

of the visitation in the night.

Until that moment the onlymaterial experience of the Johnson

family in the house on the hill was

one whichj

strangely each \

member of the

family had in

turn. It was

always an indi

always an indi

vidual experience,

as it was after

wards recounted.

Sometimes when all

the others were asleep

the others were asleep

one of the Johnsons

would awaken to hear

a tank tap dripping.In ordinary circum

stances, of course, in

stances, of course, in

a country where wateris precious, anyone

hearing a tap drippingin the lonely nighthours would not as

sociate it with a

ghostly presence. He

or she would be con

cerned with the one

thought of the neces

sity of conserving the

water supply by stop

pingsuch

prodigal

Yet when on dif

ferent nights variousmembers of the Johnson family

got out of bed after havingheard the tap dripping they never

found the tap otherwise than most

securely turned off and not givingforth even an infinitesimardrop of

water.

Then Tilly, the eldest girl, becameill. Whether she had been Injuredis not disclosed, but we are told

that whatever she suffered made it

necessary for her to be bandaged,and that the bandages were de

clared by the medical man who

treated her to be necessary for her

salety.

One morning she awoke in a state

of considerable excitement, declar

ing that during the night she had

been visited by alittle woman. Her

visitor was dressed in an old

fashioned grey frock with a grey

shawl around her shoulders. She

stood at the foot of Tilly's bed and

spoke to her in a soft, persuasive

voice.

The Little Old Woman in Grey

urged Tilly t o rem ove her bandages,

assuring her that only in following

such a course could she recover.

'You will get well! You will get

well. Tilly!' is what the girl told her

family her visitor exclaimed.

Tillv had followed her advice— a

fact which her family learnt with

apprehension. Their fears were so

well grounded that Tilly died that

very day.

Despite Tilly's death, the apparition, and the dripping taps, theJohnson family continued to occupy

the cottage. There must have been

a house shortage in the Roma dis

trict in the seventies.

Since the course of true love re

quires more than ghostly legend to

deter it. to the house came a young

Roma chemist, courting the eldest

Johnson girl. One moonlight nighthe was wending a rapturous way

homeward from the house on the

hill when he felt impelled to turn.

THERE,standing in the

moonlight, was the grey

figure of a woman re

garding him with hair-raising

fixity from burning eyes. We are

assured from the scrappy records in

the Oxley Library that the young

apothecary stood not upon the order

of his going. His going, indeed, was

so precipitate that he ran into a

barbed wire fence, which served

only to accelerate his pace. The

voung apothecary reached the Roma

Hospital, as one writer has prettily

phrased it. 'faster than anv of his

prescriptions had ever done!' Hav

ing arrived there, he swooned,

which was an appropriate touch in

the seventies.



which was an appropriate touch in

the seventies.

The Johnson iamily had stood for

the apuariiiort. for the ghostly un

seen presences and the dripping

dripless taps, and the death ol a

member ol the tamily. This unpar

donable intrusion on the marriage

able prospects of it£ daughters was

too much. The Johnsons left the

house on the hill.

Again it stood empty while the

grev cat returned to its lair under

the rioor boards, and some more

shingles flapped, and the wind

sighed in the trees that grew wild

about it. and. for sure, 'an owl

hooted in the midnight hour.

Our next reference to the Ghost

of Gubb°ramunda comes from the

late Ashton Murphv. who has leit

for posterity a manuscript on the

subject in the Oxlev Library. He

was personally acquainted with the

family which next occupied it. The

house, he says, was connected witn

the kitchen bv a passage of foot

boards, and on dark, windy nights

none of the eirls would go into the

kitchen. If the evening meal was

late the dishes staved on the din

ing table in the houseitself until

daylight hours.

ONone occasion

it was dis

covered that a treacle

tart had been left in the

kitchen. One of the boys offered

to penetrate the darkness and

fetch it. A few seconds later there

was the clatter of stampeding feet

on the footboards of the passage.

The door of the dining room was

flung open and the lad arrived on

all fours on the dtning room floor,

with his face embedded in the

treacle tart. He had felt a ghostly

touch in the darkened kitchen lust

after he picked up the tart!

In the end the house on the hill

was dismantled, removed to Roma,

andre-erected, and so far as this

dwelling was concerned it ceased to

be the abiding place of the Little

Old Woman in Grey. Apparently

she continued to inhabit the hill.

Two swagmen camped there one

night. They knew nothing of the

ghostly associations of the Place.

One of them awoke to find that

someone had pulled down his blan

kets He looked up to see the figure

of a woman dressed in grey mov

ing, awav. He called his mate, and

they stood looking from the top of

the hill into clear moonlight. No

figure could be discerned.

The second swagman was most

annoyed with his mate for disturb

ing riim. but the next night his turn

came and the ghostly woman

chilled his blood by dragging him

from slumber.

At daybreak the swagmen rolled

up their swags and made haste to

Roma. Here among the listeners

to their storv were a number of

persons who knew of the former ap

pearance of the Little Old Woman

in Grey and Judge Paul of the

Supreme Court on circuit. The

Judge was so struck by the con

tinuity of reported experience that

he investigated the whole subject

and published his findings in a

bright little Brisbane paper of long

ago. the Figaro.

Judge Paul confessed that he

could neither prove nor disprove

the materialisations of the ghost

of the Little Old Woman in Grey

of the Little Old Woman in Grey

on the hill on Gubberamunda.

? NEXT WEEK: Logon,

Haunted and Haunter?

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Gubberamunda Ghost