The Ghost of Goya River

The Ghost of Goya River
by Jim O’Brien,

This series of reminiscences has been gathered in years of roamin’ around, and stowed deep down in my old memory box are scenes and sounds of other days. And, though life’s road grows rougher, so to speak, and the grades are steeper for many of us “old ‘uns” as the years go by, nevertheless many milestones, incidents, humorous and tragic, we still can visualise which came our way as we perambulated along life’s battle trails. I don’t aim to build up a romantic fiction thriller but to set out in verbiage easily understood by all those scattered around o’er an area-wide.

A quiet life

The incident which I am about to relate is a spooky episode true in every detail which befell my mate, Trooper Dan Rogan “Plash Dan” and myself away back in the years that are dead. Glory be! Strange but credible, it has been brought to my mind firstly by an article somewhat similar, appearing recently in the Western Mail under the pen of my old-time trooper cobber, “Economic”, whose memory is still young. Secondly, an inquiry that came by post, caused no doubt by my story “How Trails Have Crossed” in the issue of December 23. I take this opportunity to thank, with sincere appreciation, Mr Bailey, J.P., Kalgoorlie, for so kindly writing me of the passing, at that town eight years ago, of my old-time Queensland policeman mate, Oliver Page, a 6ft fine specimen of a man – R.I.P.

The inquiry I alluded to came from Sandstone, WA., signed P.P., asking whether I was ever in Springsure, Central Queensland, the writer also mentioned that his mate is expecting to hear me recount some of the humorous incidents, true and otherwise, mostly otherwise, credited to Tom Doyle, first Mayor of Kanowna. It’s a far cry from Tom Doyle’s old pub in Kanowna, or from his once rich leader, the Gentle Polly mine, to the rich blue-grass valleys surrounding Springsure, and though the oldest inland township in Central Queensland, it was a one horse place of straggling shacks when I was there as a dandy young copper, wearing the nose line cognomen of “Dandy Jim.”

Was it Smiler Hales or “Moondine Joe” who said: “Destiny is every life’s pilot.”

How true, don’t you think? When our minds wander back o’er vanished years to the tragic ending of many lives, and to the social and financial uplifts of others less deserving, we must recognise ‘Old Fates’ rulings.” In December 1885, ‘Flash Dan’ and I were on patrol and were making it across from Springsure to Policeman Creek, which became a rich sapphire field in later years. We camped the first night at Upper Springsure Crossing on the old road, which then connected Anakie sapphire field with the township of Springsure. Anakie is now practically abandoned, I understand. There were only about 18 inches of water at the Crossing, owing to the dry spell then prevailing in the southern districts of Central Queensland.

Projecting up above the water in a zigzag course were a number of boulders that served as stepping stones for any odd pedestrian who might chance that way, although I never encountered any hobo of the boot on that outback road. It was too far off the beaten track of the dingbat army of nosebag sundowners that in those days was in perpetual circulating motion in order to live. Now, thanks to the humane act of the old-age pensions, it is possible for the out beyond flotsam of over 65 to rest in some river-bend haven where fish are biting, rescued in their closing years from their continuous round to get the necessities of life.

Just across the creek at the Crossing, was a wayside groggery kept by an ex- shearer’s cook, appropriately labelled ‘Dirty Grady’s’. My mate Dan liked his drop at times, it was his one little failing, so while I made camp he went across the stepping stones as jaunty as a jumping bullfrog, but, he would step less true on his homeward way.

“I’ll have but the one,” Flash Dan had said.

as he combed out his bushy bright red whiskers, shining like a beacon light, prior to his departure for the old bush shanty light that lured him on. However, like Noah’s raven, when Dan got a taste he was in no hurry to return.

The two essentials for a horseman’s night camp being grass and water, we thought ourselves home and dried when close to nightfall on the following day we struck an ideal camping spot, about an acre of the greenest grass I had ever seen, showing up vividly in contrast with the parched brown aspect of the neighbourhood. I remember pondering the problem of why no stock was feeding there, considering the grassless plains we that day had traversed. This Eden-like spot was only about 300 paces up the brae from the wooded banks of the river Goya, which like all of Queensland inland rivers teem with edible fish. And, as all bushmen travelling through the Northern State carry hook and line, I baited mine with a small grass frog and heaved it out.

Our horses had eagerly dipped into that grass of such vivid green which was knee-high. There we unsaddled, watered and hobbled out. For weeks we had been riding a wide patrol and with the next day being Christmas, when mankind rejoices, we decided to remain there a day, the great open spaces would be our thanksgiving chapel. Our horses fed greedily for a few minutes, then suddenly jerked up their heads, and wheeled around with one accord, facing the river, which by now was being blanketed in an eerie gloom by the gloaming shadows. With ears cocked forward and heads held erect the horses were steadfastly gazing towards the river, striving, apparently, to pierce the gum-tree shadows below our camp. They had grown highly nervous and were seemingly scared of something lurking in the closing night.

“What th’ devil is wrong with the nags?” exclaimed Dan.

“Oh,” I said, “there must be someone coming”. We could see nothing. We listened but nothing could we hear apart from the thousand voices of a bushland night. Horses, however, see much beyond the gift of man. Then, as though by telepathy controlled, they wheeled about as if on parade, and started to walk away, looking back towards the river every few yards.

While the billy boiled we drove them back, and though they were hungry they were too highly strung to feed again. At last, when they could stand the strain no longer, they bolted right away from the vicinity and must have gone a mile or more before the jingling of the galloping bells had eased to normal.

Boil the Billy – Image SLWA

Close to where we had made our fire was lying a sap-rotted log which I noted had been felled by human agency long years before. But why, so far from habitation, I couldn’t think. Just on the opposite side of the log to where I had spread my rug, Flash Dan made his doss.

The horses must have transferred to me some of their fears that all around us demons lurked. I had set my line but I was taking no chances in going down the eerie shadows to land a breakfast cod. If Dan was feeling anything unusual he made no sign. In fact, he had hardly spoken a word in our day’s ride because of the reactions of the night before. He was whipping the cat! When at last I did turn in sleep refused to come, so I just lay there beneath the outback stars puzzling the problem of our horses’ strange behaviour, conjuring up visions of the old home farm down the wattle glade by Kelly’s bridge, where I used to meet in the springtime twilight little Mary Kelly in the friendly shadows.

Ay, and sure I would give the world to live those old time days again.

A year ago I visited the old farmstead by Kelly’s bridge near the little shingled roofed school at the bush crossroads, which all were beckoning fingers calling back the olden days when warm, true friendship filled the hearts of our river people. Much water since then has passed beneath Kelly’s old bridge, which still spans the “crick,” though changes have come to the wattle glade in the cycling years, and most of my old chums,  including little Mary, have passed to their rest in the little old churchyard along the ridge.

And as I lay there, my saddle for a pillow, wakefully dreaming love’s old young dream, a queer sensation that I can’t explain gripped me, causing a prickly shiver to slither along my spine. Mind you, I had not for a moment closed my eyes in sleep, and when some supernatural compelling force against which I had no resistance, noiselessly turned my head in the direction of the river, believe it or not, as you will, what I saw there was no hallucination. Within a couple of paces of my shakedown was a spirit apparition from some world beyond.

When I first turned my head and saw the ghostly apparition it was a shadowy form seated upon the old decaying log which I previously mentioned. An eerie stillness lay all around, not even a leaf quivered. The surrounding country looked as though it had fallen into an enchanted sleep. A sense of unreality pervaded the camp in the silence which now prevailed. Countless stars rode high on a blue dark background, while down by the river where in the cooing twilight of that same evening a thousand voices of birds and insects had filled the air with Nature’s charm, the little day birds roosting now in their leafy bowers snuggled up closer, wondering and afraid of something in that midnight hour when a day is born.

And as there I lay, held in the super-natural fetters of a power unknown, I pondered the contrast to a year-old night when I had camped on a desert tableland in Central Australia and had for the first time heard the mysterious booming of the so-called barisal guns or desert sounds which are only heard on star-lit nights.

Gradually the spirit was growing more distinct in outline. From where I lay I could clearly see the thing silhouetted against the starry skyline, taking full development of mortal man’s shape. Then when suddenly I gained sweet release from the mysterious bonds which had held me captive, I silently cursed my childish stupidity, for surely the man there seated upon the log could be none other than comrade Dan.

He was fully dressed and seated with his back towards me, perfectly motionless, gazing towards the river seemingly in a listening attitude, his whole attention centred upon something which I, though wide awake, could neither see nor hear. I was undecided whether to rise or to question him from my saddle pillow, then a brain wave struck me, and I grinned at the thought of the start I would give Flash Dan presently. Quietly I sat up on my rug and reaching out groped all around my saddle until I found the little horsehair pad, no bigger than a stuffed sock, which I had made to go under a part of the pack saddle.

With this, I took aim at Dan broad back and threw. But, Holy Mike, it wasn’t Dan who got the big fright, but his mate, “Dandy Jim,” for I declare to you on the word of an old-timer that the pad which I had thrown passed right through that something in human form sitting close by in the starlight. For a few minutes. longer, quite undisturbed, that which I knew now in my heart to be a spirit returned from the world beyond, continued to sit there gazing into the deep shadows below, and then before my startled eyes it slowly dissolved into the thin night air.

After I had recovered somewhat I investigated and found Dan sleeping peacefully beyond the log. Close to ten paces distant from where it had landed I found the next morning the hair-stuffed pad. I returned to my blanket and I looked at my watch and found it the hour of midnight when graveyards yawn. Just try my friends, to realise those nerve-shocked moments. And when I did succumb to sleep, the master of youth, I slept until Dan’s cheery singing around the breakfast fire awoke me to another Christmas Day, one among the many I since have spent away from the old nest, wafted by the cross-winds of wanderlust o’er pathways wide.

Flash Dan was his good-natured self again, and in the bright clear sun rays of that Christmas morn 52 years ago, I felt courageous enough to go down for a swim and to pull in my line, I was surprised to find floating on the water the head of a large rock cod it had hooked, then had been bitten clean off just at the gills, by a giant brother of the finny tribe.

We didn’t spend Christmas day in that eerie camp but hit the breeze for Policeman Creek. Months afterwards I camped one night at Anikie with two old sapphire battlers, ‘Silent Harry’, and ‘Freddie the Warbler’, and was given an explanation of the strange affair. The scene of this acre of vivid grass in a drought-stricken area whereon no starving stock would feed was:

“Aunted, isn’t it, ‘Arry?” appealed the Warbler to his silent mate. “Betcher life,” confirmed Harry,

“An’ yer can find traces of the hut I where the stockman wus murdered 50 years ago, can’t yer, A’rry?” “Betcher life,” again confirmed Silent Harry. Well, it may have been so. At the time I tried to persuade myself that it was only a trick of fancy by some mystic shadow cast. However, after having heard the explanation given by those two old battlers, contrasts in the extreme, I have with other old memories stowed it away, and rightly or wrongly tagged that man shape, which I still can plainly see.

“The Ghost of Goya River.”

No doubt changes have come to Spring-sure and Central Queensland generally since I rode a Government moke across these wide blue-grass lands of rich splendour-