Great Australian Stories by Graham Seal

Author:Graham Seal [Name, Author]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Australiana
ISBN: 978-1-7426-9597-6
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2011-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

The ghosts of Garth

On the banks of the River Esk, near Fingal, are the ruins of Tasmania’s most haunted house: a mid-nineteenth century residence named Garth. In and around the remains of the house many claim to have heard the moans of troubled spirits, and the place has a number of well-documented, if confused, hauntings. One concerns a spurned lover, the other a terrified child.

The sad history of Garth is one of early hope, and eventual tragedy and decay. The house was constructed by Charles Peters, who had been the tenant of a small farm in Scotland of the same name. Peters arrived in Tasmania in 1823 and began to make a new life for himself. He married Susan Wilson in Launceston and in 1830 was granted 320 acres of land near Fingal. They named the property and began to build a large stone house. In 1840, the couple’s two-year-old daughter Ann died and was buried on the property, where her grave can still be seen. By 1843, Garth was a substantial landholding with eight workers and their families. In later years the property suffered a number of fires that severely damaged the house. Today, only suitably spooky ruins remain, attracting ghost hunters and tourists.

The earliest ghost is said to be that of a young settler who purchased the still-unfinished house at Garth for his intended bride waiting in England. When he returned from the antipodes to marry his fiancée he found she had jilted him for another. Desolate, the man returned to the house and hanged himself in the courtyard. Ever since then, the disappointed young man’s shade has wandered through the remains of the courtyard crying out for his inconstant love.

Some years after the settler hanged himself, a young girl died in a well near the abandoned house. The girl was in the care of a convict woman who had apparently threatened her with being thrown into the well if she misbehaved. On this occasion the girl did something wrong and, fleeing from her convict nanny in unreasoning fear of the threatened punishment, fell into the well. Trying to save her, the convict woman was drowned along with the child. Both lie buried at Garth and the cries of the girl and her would-be saviour can still be heard on dark nights.

Over the years, the details of what were different characters and separate events have twined together. What remains is a bush gothic tradition of lost love, tragedy and destruction.

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