HJ McCooey 1902-

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This article, one of many con tributed to "Queensland Country Life" by the talented author, has a sad surrounding. Mr. H. J. McCooey, one of the most observant of Australian naturalists, passed away at Wangarratta, N.S.W., during October. Kind hearted to a fault, the memory of him will ever be kept by those who could claim his acquaintance.

The late H. J. McCooey, the bush naturalist, told the following yarn :— "At Wilson' Crook, near Mullumbimby, there is a house in which no man, nor any number of men, can remain for a night. Some who have tried it (myself among them) have been violently struck by some thing invisible, and driven out. Even in broad daylight, heavy stools, zinc tubs, etc., have been violently dashed from one end of the room to the other by some in visible and powerful agency. I know a score of men who have repeatedly witnessed these mysterious happenings, but will not publicly say anything about the matter for fear of being rediculed. The owner—a German—has been obliged to abandon the property, and can't sell it, though it cannot be worth less than £2000. After his wife had died of shock (owing to the visitation of the ghost), while being conveyed to Lismore Hospital, the owner shut up the house, with everything in it and took employment milking for 15s per week.''

(The above is going the round of the district newpapers and we should feel obliged if any old resident of Brunswick or the district would favor us with the supposed cause of the ghostly visitation, and so get to the root of the matter as there must be a beginning to all things even to a ghost.-- Ed. RECORD).

Re the ghost-story of Brunswick Heads Mr. Marshall an old resident of the district, and who kept the first hotel at Brunswick, informs us the yarn is nothing but a canard, an invention of some winter night, over a spit-sizzling stove and through clouds of tobacco smoke. And we thought we'd found a ghost that was something better than a slice out of a fog-bank, a ghost with a don't care-who-I-hit kind of a temper.

Some one in a weekly paper, who judging by his slinging about latin zoological names of snakes, has ambition to jump the claims of our wallaby friend, the late bush naturalist, The McCooey, says that carpet snakes, being non-venomous and mice and rat-killers ought to be protected by law, and persons caught killing them heavily fined...

The late Mr. M'Cooey, who was an excellent bush naturalist and got most of his knowledge from first-hand study of wild life, used to ridicule the idea that rabbits were at all subject to hydatids. The truth is that hydatids occur, probably to a negligible extent, in many animals, although the dog would appear to be one of the chief "hosts" of the parasite....