Contact
Home
Haunted Hill, Gippsland
GIPPSLAND RAILWAY
The Argus (Melbourne, Vic.)
Date: May 28, 1866
Page Number: 5
...
Mr. Pearson naively admitted that the country "got robuster" here, whatever that may mean, and was compelled to explain that Haunted-hill, one of the many acknowledged engineering difficulties, might be avoided by a deviation. Now I will not attempt to deny this, since it is evident that a porson wishing to reach St. Kilda without crossing the Yarra might succeed by making a deviation round the source of the river. Some such deviation would be required to pass the long range of hills of which Haunted-hill is one.
...
The first mention of Haunted Hill in the newspaper archives is when discussing potential rail routes to St. Kilda:
Gippsland Times (Vic.)
Date: March 28, 1877
Page Number: 3
Thomas Nugent, a boy of five years, belonging to one of the railway labourers at Haunted Hill, middle section, died on Saturday last is supposed from diptheria. There having been no medical man in attendance, the usual inquiry was made by the police touching the necessity for an inquest, the Deputy Coroner replying in the negative.
Two people are reported to have died in the construction of the rail line through Haunted Hill:
FATAL ACCIDENT ON THE GIPPS LAND LINE.
The Argus (Melbourne, Vic.)
Date: April 13, 1877
Page Number: 5
An inquest was held yesterday on Richard Thwaites, who was killed on the railway at Haunted-hill on the 10th inst. The evidence showed that he was riding with others on a pile of rails that were unsecured to the trucks by spikes, and without the usual bolsters to rest on. The train was going at the rate of between 20 and 25 miles an hour, and had proceeded half a mile from Morwell when two of the rails and the youth Thwaites were observed to fall off simultaneously. The train stopped, and on going back 100 yards the body of deceased was found between the rails, the head lying 20 yards away from it. It is not clear whether one of the fallen rails decapitated him, or whether Thwaites fell across the line. The verdict, however, attributes death to the falling rail, and censures the management as careless.
A RUN ON THE GIPPSLAND RAILWAY.
Gippsland Times (Vic.)
Date: October 4, 1877
Page Number: 6
...
The principal cutting is on Messrs. Noonan Brothers' part of the section ; and it passes through the Haunted hill (where the ghosts disperse the cattle and perplex the stockmen), the highest point on the line, 476ft above sea level.
...
The earliest recorded mention of the folklore of Haunted Hill was in another article discussing the rail line:
Traralgon Record and Morwell, Mirboo, Toongabbie, Heyfield,Tyers and Callignee Advertiser (Traralgon, Vic.)
Date: June 18, 1885
Page Number: 2
The whiskey still found at Haunted Hill, is to be forwarded to Melbourne to be inspected and in all probability destroyed, as it is not very likely that any further steps will be taken.
Bootleggers would want to deter outsiders from poking around their business and may well have contributed to Haunted Hill's sinister preutation.
THE BROWN COAL DEPOSITS OF GIPPSLAND.
Bendigo Advertiser (Vic.)
Date: May 24, 1889
Page Number: 3
...
In 1884, Mr. J. C. Newberry furnished a report on a sample sent for analysis from the Haunted Hill seam... On the banks of the Latrobe River from Haunted Hill to the Tyers, layers of the brown coal, are here and there exposed, at some places in the bed, at others, in the banks of the river.
...
Coal found at Haunted Hill:
THE GIPPSLAND COAL MINES.
Warragul Guardian and Buln Buln and Narracan Shire Advocate (Warragul, Vic.)
Date: September 6, 1889
Page Number: 4
...
At the Haunted Hill 140ft. of coal has been passed through without bottoming the coal. This extraordinary find will shortly be floated as the Gippsland Railway Mining Co.
...
The Argus (Melbourne, Vic.)
Date: September 12, 1890
Page Number: 6
MORWELL, THURSDAY.
Allan, one of the men who were injured in the recent railway accident at Haunted Hill, died to day in the Sale Hospital.
The diamond drill is down 500ft. in brown coal, with no signs of being near the bottom.
Windsor and Richmond Gazette (NSW)
Date: June 1, 1895
Page Number: 9
Quite a large crowd assembled in Mr Jas Hall's paddock, known by the rather gruesome name of "The Haunted Hill," on Saturday last. The sport on band was a pigeon match, and there must have been over a hundred people present...
The mines were largely depleted by the mid-1890s and Haunted Hill, stripped of its mystique as well as its minerals, had turned to
pastureland. Yet a place with such a name as Haunted Hill has the tendency to inspire an unknown dread. New generations experience
new mysteries and in the early years of the 20th Century Haunted Hill would live up to its old reputation in new ways…
A small quarry on the degraded bluff bordering the Thomson River plain exposes a coarse gravel facies of the Haunted Hill Gravels.
An abandoned meander occurs on the river terrace below the bluff.
Of particular interest is the coarse gravel material which
also demonstrates that the slope is a former erosional valley side bluff rather than a depositional terrace. The abandoned channel
lies on such a terrace at a lower level hence illustrating several phases of development of the Thomson River flood plain. [source]