Great Australian Ghost Stories (14 page)

Logan met his own death on another expedition. He set out with his batman and five trusted convicts on 9 November 1830, to map a creek west of the outpost at Limestone Hills (Ipswich). The party was stalked for most of its journey and attacked twice by hostile Aborigines but, despite this apparent danger, Logan went off on his own on 17 October, planning to rejoin the party at a rendezvous at dusk. When he found he could not reach the spot before nightfall, Logan built a rough shelter and settled down for the night. In the early hours of the morning of the eighteenth he was attacked and killed by Aborigines or — according to some historians — by convicts.

At noon that day a party of prisoners working on the river bank at the Moreton Bay settlement spotted Captain Logan on horseback on the far side of the river, waving to them. None had any doubts about who it was. Two of them downed tools and hastily launched the punt that was used to ferry people across the river and rowed over to pick up their commandant. When they arrived on the south bank (the spot where Stimson's ghost had disappeared and the Queensland Performing Arts Complex now stands) there was no sign of Logan. He and his horse had vanished into thin air.

At that time the Fell Tyrant's battered body was growing cold in a shallow grave in the bush seventy kilometres inland.

On 12 March 1912 a severe cyclone was bearing down on the small town of Port Hedland on the north coast of Western Australia. In port that day was the 3726-tonne passenger steamer
Koombana
, pride of the Adelaide Steamship Company's fleet, scheduled to depart for Broome 500 kilometres to the north. The captain decided it would be safer to put to sea and weather the storm in deep water. The
Koombana
steamed straight into the path of the cyclone. It was never seen again and has gone down in history as the worst civilian shipping disaster in Western Australian waters. Not one of the 138 people on board survived.

Among the victims was a man named Abraham Davis, well known in Port Hedland and Broome as a successful pearl buyer (and no relation to the author, as far as I know). This was the heyday of pearling on the Western Australian coast and the rough shanty town of Broome was the pearling capital of the world. Pearls of unprecedented size, quality and lustre and tonnes of precious pearl shell were being harvested from the Timor Sea. The dangerous work was done by Japanese and
Filipino divers but the profits were made by men like Davis, some honest, others shady and most somewhere in between.

Davis had first come to Broome as manager of his brother-in-law Mark Rubin's pearling empire, comprising several ships, dozens of divers (kitted out in the company's distinctive livery when above water), an impressive office in Dampier Terrace and agents trading the company's wares as far afield as London. When his brother-in-law over-extended himself and went broke in 1908, Davis took over what remained of the enterprise and also the Rubin family home in Hamersley Street.

By local standards this building (described as a ‘bungalow') was palatial, with polished wooden floors and wide verandahs. Davis employed a team of Japanese craftsmen to further enhance it by installing ornate moulded ceilings and expansive bay windows. He also retained the most remarkable feature of the house — a German-made pipe organ that dominated an enclosed verandah on one side of the house; it had been his sister's pride and joy.

The Rubins and Davis were Jewish and after the departure of his kin, Abraham Davis became the unofficial rabbi for the Jewish community in Broome and the covered verandah (complete with organ) became their makeshift synagogue. It was said that the strains of the organ, the cantillations of the
chazzan
and the responses of the congregation could be heard wafting across Roebuck Bay every
Shabbat
— strange and incongruous sounds in a place well-accustomed to incongruities.

In 1910 Davis transferred his business to Port Hedland but retained ownership of the bungalow in Broome. At the time of his death he also owned a large stock of pearls, including the famous (or infamous) ‘Rosea', an exquisite, pink-hued gem the size of a marble and valued at almost 20,000 pounds.
The Rosea had been wrested from the sea in 1905 and passed through many hands, leaving a trail of treachery and death in its wake, before Davis acquired it. Some believed the pearl was cursed and possessed black powers that would bring bad luck and death to all who touched it. It had (believers claimed) already accounted for a drowned diver, a murdered buyer, the lives of the buyer's murderers (who had been hanged for their crime) and the suicide of a subsequent owner. The popular writer Ion Idriess eventually used the Rosea pearl's turbulent history as the basis for his novel
Forty Fathoms Deep
.

When Davis's death on the
Koombana
was reported many people blamed the curse and asked the question: what has become of the ill-fated pearl? It was not among his stock or his personal effects in Port Hedland, which meant that Davis had either been carrying it when he boarded the
Koombana
(in which case it had returned to the bottom of the sea) or he had hidden it somewhere. As the pearl had been bought in Broome, people speculated that it might be hidden in or around Davis's bungalow and the strange events that followed seemed to support that theory.

In 1914 the bungalow was bought by the Anglican Church as a residence for the first Bishop of North West Australia, the Right Reverend Gerard Trower. Bishop Trower moved into what was thereafter known as the Bishop's Palace a few months before the outbreak of World War One. Gerard Trower was an energetic, practical administrator with a fine mind and a zealous faith. He had previously been Bishop of Likoma in Nyasaland (Malawi), where he had built schools, hospitals, a theological college and a fine cathedral. No doubt his superiors hoped he would do the same in his new diocese. The Bishop wrote that the house in Broome, comfortable though it was, was of little use to him, his territory being so large and priests
so few that he spent most of his time travelling. However, when he was in residence he sometimes had a quite unexpected, late-night visitor.

Soon after he moved into the pearl buyer's former home, the Bishop was awakened one night by a strange light and an unaccountable breeze stirring the curtains in his bedroom. As he watched, mystified, a hazy figure surrounded by an aura of soft light entered the room — not through the door but through a solid wall. The Bishop thought he might be experiencing some divine revelation — the visit of an angel perhaps, to give him guidance or call him, prematurely, to his Maker — but as the figure became clearer he realised that it was a middle-aged, heavily bearded man with flabby folds of flesh the colour of bruises under his eyes, wearing the robes and prayer shawl of a Jewish rabbi.

The spectre (according to the Bishop) addressed him in perfect English and introduced himself as Abraham Davis, the former owner of the house. The Bishop asked what he wanted but the spectre gave no answer, preferring to make light conversation about the house, the weather and anything but his reason for being there. The Bishop and the Rabbi chatted amicably for ten minutes, then the latter began to look furtively around the room, slowly faded, and finally vanished, leaving the Anglican cleric rubbing his eyes in astonishment.

Davis's ghost reappeared to Bishop Trower several times, always apologising for its intrusion but clearly bent on some mysterious purpose. As the Bishop later recalled: ‘Finally, on our fourth or fifth encounter, I quizzed my spectral visitor directly on the purpose of its visits. “Are you in need of something, sir?” I asked. The spectre screwed up its face into an obsequious smile, stroked its beard with one pale and heavily-ringed hand and replied: “It is such a fine night,
my friend. Does one need a reason to be abroad on such a night?” I was determined to pin the spectre down so I pressed on. “I get the impression that you have a quest … that you are searching for something lost,” I said. The spectre bowed its head and replied: “I seek only what all men seek … wisdom and serenity.”'

Visitors to the palace also reported seeing the Rabbi wandering the garden at dusk when the Bishop was away, a substantial figure that appeared to be flesh and blood until it passed uninterrupted through thorny bushes and effortlessly through solid obstacles. Observers all commented on its rabbinical robes and its beard, which was variously reported as neat and black or long and grey. Others reported that the spectre seemed to be afflicted with a limp. None seem to have been particularly alarmed or agitated by its presence.

Despite the assumption that ghosts need no sustenance, the ghost of Rabbi Davis seems to have retained a keen interest in food. The Bishop's housekeeper reported it appearing suddenly one evening in her kitchen and inspecting the food she was cooking. ‘I had a nice leg o' mutton simmering away on the stove with a pot of potatoes and another of broad beans,' she said. ‘I watched him bend over the stove and cast a suspicious eye over the contents of the pots. I think he was checking to see if the food was kosher, and disappointed to find it was not.' On another memorable afternoon, the ghost was seen mingling with guests at a garden party hosted by the bishop; not speaking, but bestowing ecumenical smiles on everyone and, some say, stealing a plate of buttered scones!

What was it that made the ghost of the dead pearl buyer return to his bungalow so many times? Was he simply curious to see his old house and to meet the Christian priest who entertained gentiles in his former synagogue, or was he
searching for the Rosea pearl? When news of the Bishop's other-worldly visitor spread most people chose to believe the latter.

Bishop Trower departed in 1927; and if his successors ever saw the ghost they never admitted it. The building became sleeping quarters for the staff of a nearby hotel, then operated as a cheap boarding house for some years. Eventually it fell into ruin, but the legend that the ghost of Rabbi Davis haunted its crumbling walls persisted until it was finally demolished in 1980.

As far as I know the Rosea pearl has never turned up. Perhaps it lies on the seabed in the wreck of the
Koombana
(believed to be in deep water midway between Port Hedland and Broome), or maybe it's still buried where the Bishop's Palace stood, waiting for some fortunate (or unfortunate) person to stumble upon it.

Unlike those in most other state capitals, Perth's daintily odd Government House is on the edge of the central business district and overshadowed by tower blocks, but of the thousands of people who pass its gates each day few know the story of the cold-blooded murder that once occurred there and the ghostly legacy it left behind.

Beside the main block of Government House stands a ballroom, designed in 1899 by the father of Australian composer Percy Grainger. In former times this large, airy room was the centre of the city's social life. Charity balls were regularly held there and it was at one of these that the murder took place.

Imagine, if you will, the packed interior on an August night in 1925, decked out with long ropes of flowers and lit with ever-changing pastel-coloured lights. The dance floor is filled with smart young couples, some in fancy dress, the rest in chic gowns and tuxedos, strutting and gliding to the music of a jazz band. Silvery laughter, clapping and cigarette smoke fill the air and the cares of the world seem far away.

Suddenly, among the dancers, a pretty young dark-haired woman in an electric-blue dress raises her arm. As if in slow motion, a lace handkerchief slips from her hand and flutters
to the floor, revealing a small black pistol. One deafening shot rings out and a man in a tuxedo clutches his forehead. Blood begins to spurt as he falls like a stone to the floor.

Audrey Jacobs was an independent young woman used to getting what she wanted, and what she wanted was Cyril Gidley, handsome young marine engineer and notorious womaniser. They had been lovers until Cyril tired of her and moved on to fresh conquests. According to evidence at Audrey's trial the two had met unexpectedly at the ball. Audrey had then gone home to fetch her gun and visited St Mary's Cathedral on the way back before exacting a terrible revenge on her ex-lover.

Due in part to the persuasive powers of Arthur ‘Ginger' Hayes, her defence council, Audrey Jacobs was acquitted at her trial and walked free to loud cheering from the public gallery, but what really saved her was the absence of one key witness, the man standing closest to the shooting, who had disappeared in the commotion. That witness kept his identity secret for forty-six years until he published his autobiography — it was Claude Kingston, J. C. Williamson's celebrity concert manager, who had decided he could not afford to get entangled in the affair and wondered for the rest of his life whether his testimony might have altered the outcome of Audrey Jacobs's trial.

If Cyril Gidley's killer had been punished perhaps his ghost would not haunt the scene of the crime. Soft footsteps, thought by some to be a woman's and by others to be those of a man wearing dancing pumps, have been heard pacing the ballroom at Government House. Gidley was an Englishman and also an anti-Royalist and that may account for a flurry of ghostly activity in 1977 when Prince Charles was due to attend a ball there to celebrate the Queen's Silver Jubilee.

Organisers complained that furniture carefully set in place to observe royal protocols was mysteriously moved around
and crockery and glassware in the supper room rearranged at night. A portrait of the Queen was tilted to an odd angle and potted plants placed in buckets ready to be installed the next day were found dry and wilted.

The official explanation was ‘wind' and it was pointed out that the building had a reputation for being ‘draughty', but the real culprit was spotted by a security guard at dusk on the evening before the ball. A young man dressed in a tuxedo and fitting the description of Cyril Gidley at the time of his death was spotted leaning on the railing of one of the balconies, casually smoking a cigarette.

The security guard shouted a challenge and reached for his high-powered torch. The figure turned and looked down, but when the torch beam reached the spot where it had stood it was gone. The security guard rushed upstairs to find the balcony empty. Only the faint smell of cigarette smoke lingering in the air reassured him his eyes had not been playing tricks on his brain.

There were also reports of a female ghost being seen in the ballroom, but as Cyril Gidley's is the only recorded death in the building her origin is a mystery. Gidley was by all accounts a solidly built man who, even in spectral form, would be unlikely to be mistaken for a female. Could it be Audrey Jacobs? Well, after her trial she married an American and went to live first in South Africa then in the United States. Her death, presumably in the United States, went unnoticed.

 

A jealous lover was also responsible for a female ghost who haunted the grounds of Coolgardie Hospital a generation earlier. By all accounts Elizabeth Gold was an attractive young woman — attractive enough to turn the head of Captain Charles de Garburgh Gold, a distinguished soldier twenty-six
years her senior. Captain Gold was the scion of a renowned British military family and a widower with two grown-up children. His great-grandfather died at Bunkers Hill during the American War of Independence; his grandfather fought at Waterloo; and his father commanded the British troops in New Zealand at the outbreak of the Maori Wars. Captain Gold had had his charger shot out from under him, been wounded twice and awarded the Medal of Abyssinia.

Elizabeth and Captain Gold were married and somehow ended up in Coolgardie in 1896. He was by then retired from the army and may have gone there to watch over mining investments. Shortly after his fifty-seventh birthday, in May the following year, Gold suffered a ruptured appendix and was admitted to Coolgardie Hospital, where he died of peritonitis.

After the Captain's death, Elizabeth Gold moved into a house in Hunter Street where she became very friendly with her neighbours, Mr and Mrs Kenneth Snodgrass. The father of five children, Snodgrass was a respected accountant who served on the boards of several public institutions, and Mrs Snodgrass's friendship was a great comfort to the young widow.

Elizabeth was just thirty-two and found herself at a loose end. She conceived the noble idea of devoting the rest of her life to nursing. Whether the idea originated from her husband's short stay in hospital or whether nursing was an old, unfulfilled ambition is unknown but, for whatever reason, she set off for Perth and nurses' training college.

In less than a year she was back, employed as a probationary nurse at Coolgardie Hospital. Among the other trainee nurses was one of the Snodgrasses' daughters and the hospital matron was Kenneth Snodgrass's cousin. Elizabeth picked up her friendship with her neighbours where it had left off, but
Mrs Snodgrass was now spending long periods in Melbourne. In her absence the relationship between Elizabeth and Kenneth Snodgrass developed into far more than friendship. They became lovers.

Snodgrass was fifty-five, about the same age Captain Gold had been when he and Elizabeth married. A routine developed. Once a week Snodgrass would tell his children he was popping over to see Mrs Gold but, as well as making love to her, he would interrogate her about other men. Snodgrass was that most dangerous of lovers — the jealous kind.

About a year after the Captain's death it was announced that a charity ball in aid of the hospital was to be held in the local hall. Elizabeth informed Snodgrass that, like all the nurses who worked there, she was expected to attend. He could not appear in public with her and the thought of Elizabeth dancing with other men infuriated him. Snodgrass demanded she make some excuse not to go. Elizabeth refused point blank; she was going. Snodgrass badgered her for days but she would not be swayed.

The day before the ball Kenneth Snodgrass borrowed a revolver from a friend. He needed it, he said, to shoot some feral cats that were annoying his hens. Mrs Snodgrass arrived back from Melbourne the next day. Snodgrass made some excuse to leave the house that evening and waited for Elizabeth on the path behind the hospital, where he knew she would pass on her way to the ball.

At dusk, while the sky glowed lemon and purple shadows descended over the dusty bush, she appeared — a vision of loveliness in an elegant white ballgown. Snodgrass stepped out in front of her, brandishing the revolver. He begged her to change her mind and go home but she refused. The mixture of hatred and pity on her beautiful face enraged him. He raised
the gun and fired. The bullet hit Elizabeth in the breast. She staggered then recovered and began to run across a tennis court towards the hospital. She managed only a few frantic steps before he fired again. The second bullet struck her in the head and she fell. A huge patch of blood spread across the white fabric of her gown and dripped from her head onto the tennis court.

Snodgrass stood over Elizabeth's lifeless body, the smoking revolver still in his hand. Suddenly anger and passion were replaced with horror as he realised what he had done and to whom. He raised the gun again, held the end of the barrel under his chin and squeezed the trigger. The dead lovers were found lying side by side on the fault line of the tennis court.

Elizabeth Gold was buried the next day. Clouds had gathered during the night and the short service at the graveside was held under a grey and threatening sky. Just a few of the other nurses from the hospital attended. The rest of the community had grasped the truth of the situation as soon as news of the double slaying had broken. Within hours Nurse Gold had been posthumously demoted from respectable widow to Jezebel. One of the nurses placed a small cross of wild, yellow everlasting daisies on the coffin as it was lowered into the ground, then a sudden heavy rain shower washed the sand from the clergyman's hand as he was about to sprinkle it on the lid.

Snodgrass's family paid for an elaborate headstone and a wrought-iron fence around his grave. Elizabeth's remained unmarked for three quarters of a century, then a former president of the Coolgardie Council, the late Jack Tree, paid for a simple plaque to be added. Both headstone and plaque carry the same date of death: 31 May 1898.

The respectable citizens of Coolgardie might have preferred to forget Elizabeth Gold, but the lady herself gave them no
opportunity. Quite soon after her murder reports began to come in of people seeing her ghost: a wraith-like figure in a flowing white gown floating across the tennis court behind the hospital. A cook and several nurses claimed to have seen her. The cook told how she had been taking some scraps up to a rubbish bin near the tennis court one evening when she saw ‘a vague white shape, like a girl in an evening dress'. She dropped the scraps and fled. One of the nurses described the figure as appearing to be dancing — or playing tennis.

Another nurse claimed to have had a close encounter with the ghost and later told the press: ‘I knew nothing about Nurse Gold or her story when I went to work at the hospital in the 1920s and I did not believe in ghosts. At the time I also thought people who claimed to see ghosts were nutters … but I've changed my mind about that. I came off duty one evening at about six o'clock and I ducked out the back entrance planning to take a short cut past the tennis court to get back to my lodgings … I had a date with a nice young man that night.

‘On the path beside the court I saw a movement behind some bushes and I called out “Is there anyone there?” thinking someone might have been waiting to leap out at me. A woman came around from behind the bushes and walked towards me. She had long, dark hair and she was wearing an old-fashioned pearly white evening gown. My first reaction was to think to myself how beautiful she was and I was envious of her pale almost translucent skin — a rare sight in that scorching hot part of the country.

‘“Hello,” I said or something like that. The woman kept walking towards me and I got the sudden and quite alarming impression that although she was looking at me she couldn't
see
me. I stepped off the path and she passed right by me … just a few feet away. I heard the swish of her gown on the
ground and I could see she wore white satin evening slippers. Without realising what I was doing I reached out to touch her dress. My hand passed straight through the fabric and I felt nothing. Then, three or four yards down the path, she just vanished. One moment she was there; the next she was gone. I didn't stop shaking till I got to my lodgings and the next day when I commenced my shift I told the nurse I was replacing what I had seen, expecting her to tell me I was a fool. “Oh, that's Lizzie Gold … she's a ghost,” the other nurse said quite matter-of-factly. “Most of us have seen her.”'

Hospital authorities always debunked reports of Nurse Gold's ghost, suggesting witnesses must have seen bed linen flapping on the hospital laundry's clothesline. The cook was especially vocal in refuting this. She said she was quite capable of recognising a bed sheet and was adamant that the ghost existed.

Eventually the tennis court was ripped up and the area remained strewn with rubble for many years, but the sightings continued. Jack Tree was quoted as saying the apparition only appears on 31 May, the anniversary of the murder – suicide, but admitted he hadn't seen it himself. He went on to say: ‘When the hospital was operating the authorities wouldn't allow people on the grounds at night but now it's closed there's nothing to stop anybody going there on May thirty-first, any year, to see for themselves.'

If any reader thinks that sounds like an invitation they can't refuse, don't be put off by the locals when you arrive in Coolgardie. When asked by strangers about their most famous ghost, like as not they'll reply with a quip something like: ‘Listen, mate. The only way you'll find gold in this town is to dig for it!'