Victoria Pass

Your local knowledge and expertise is needed on a slightly earlier (only one insulator on the telegraph poles) State Records NSW photo -

Back in the days of carrying rifles for supervising road building......... its a great historic photo.

The Ghost of Victoria Pass
"It was not until 1813, twenty-five years after the colony was founded, that a primitive road was hacked through the dense bush and rugged sandstone ridges, opening the western plains to settlement.

Convicts laboured and lost their lives building that road, moving thousands of tonnes of rock with picks and shovels and constructing stone bridges as strong and dependable today as they were nearly 200 years ago. The steepest section of the road wound up and over Mount York, but the danger of accident was so great that an alternate route (only slightly less precipitous) was opened and Victoria Pass came into being in 1832. Modern travellers speeding along the smooth black ribbon that is the Great Western Highway give little thought to the perils, physical and otherwise, that lurked at Victoria Pass. In earlier times it was quite a feat to climb to the top and ascend the other side without mishap or delay and, if travelling at night, there was the added risk of encountering the Ghost of Victoria Pass, which haunted the second bridge on the eastern side.

Travellers reported that their horses would become restless as they approached the bridge, then the figure of a young woman dressed entirely in black would suddenly appear in front of them. Some reported that her long, dark hair streamed out in the wind and that her arms were raised in a suppliant gesture. Some said that her eyes shone in the dark like a tiger's and a few said that she was headless. As suddenly as she appeared the spectre would disappear, leaving travellers anxious to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the scene of their harrowing experience.

History can put a name to this ghost. She was born Caroline James, and at the time of her death she was Mrs William Collits. Caroline came from a shady and unstable family; her father ran a sly grog shop and her drunken mother had hanged herself. Despite this unsavoury background Caroline married into a respectable family: the Collits, proprietors of the inn at Hartley Vale. Unfortunately for Caroline, the Collits who took a fancy to her was the black sheep of the family, William, described by his father as a 'spendthrift idiot'. William Collits and Caroline James were married in 1840, but their marriage was anything but blissful. Caroline's younger sister was married to a thug named John Walsh, who was Caroline's as well as her sister's lover before and after their marriages. When her new husband turned out to be a poor substitute for Walsh, Caroline left him and moved in with her accommodating sister and brother-in-law in a menage-a-trois.

There was talk of reconciliation between Caroline and William in the New Year of 1842. They met, along with Walsh, for a drink in Joseph Jagger's tavern near Hartley, but soon after leaving the tavern Walsh attacked William. Caroline came to her husband's aid by holding Walsh's arms and screaming to William to run for his life - which he unhesitatingly did.

At about 6 am the next morning the postman delivering mail to Hartley came upon the battered body of Caroline Collits beside the road on Victoria Pass, about five kilometres from Jogger's tavern. Her skull had been smashed with a large stone which lay, stained with her blood, nearby. John Walsh was arrested for her murder but pleaded innocence, accusing not William Collits as you might imagine but Joseph Jagger, the tavern keeper, of committing the heinous crime. The jury at Walsh's trial did not believe him. He was convicted and hanged at Bathurst on 3 May 1842.

William Collits remarried seven months after Caroline's murder and lived a long and happy life. His family achieved posthumous fame in the 1930s when they and their inn became the subject (with much alteration of fact) of the first successful musical comedy entirely written and produced in Australia on an Australian subject - 'Collits Inn', starring Gladys Moncrieff and George Wallace. Needless to say, the black sheep's branch of the family and this gruesome episode do not figure in the plot.

Poor Caroline achieved fame of an entirely different kind - destined to spend an eternity of cold and windy nights haunting the bridge at Victoria Pass, spooking horses and terrifying innocent travellers. Some comfort may have come to her in the 1880s when Henry Lawson and his father came to live in the nearby village of Mount Victoria and the young poet wrote a sixteen verse poem about her entitled The Ghost at the Second Bridge'. Some say that Caroline Collits put a curse on the village of Mount Victoria, but its current prosperity belies that. No one has seen the Ghost of Victoria Pass for many years, which is hardly surprising. The road has been upgraded and widened so many times that the old bridges are barely visible, and if Caroline was still inclined to put in an appearance on the roadside at night, dressed from head to toe in black, it's doubtful if the occupants of the cars hurtling by would even notice her."

From: The Ghost Guide to Australia by Richard Davis. Bantam, 1988.

"THE MOUNT VICTORIA MURDER.

In the annals of crime, it has not been met with, nor has it ever fallen, to our lot to publish the particulars, of the diabolical and atrocious circumstances attending the perpetration of the crime of murder.

John Walsh was tried before Mr. Justice Stephen at the late Bathurst Assizes, and after a very lengthened trial, was found guilty of the willful murder of Caroline Collitt, at Mount Victoria, on the 31 of January last.

The young woman Catherine Collit, at the time of her death, was not more than 17 years of age, and was married about 18 months previous to Collitt, who was regarded as a person of a nervous and weak disposition, but possessed of a considerable number of cattle, and other property.

After she had been married about a year, in a fit of drunkenness her mother hung herself in her own house; her husband was in the house at the time, but in such a beastly state of intoxication, as to be incapable of preventing her destroying herself. Shortly after her death, he was taken up on suspicion of being concerned in her destruction, but after being confined for upwards of 6 months in gaol, he was liberated.

Some months after the mother's death, a younger sister of Caroline Collit's married the murderer Walsh, and continued to reside with him until the day of her sister's murder. It has been ascertained since the trial of the culprit, that Walsh's wife as well as Caroline Collit, were very loose and abandoned characters, which is totally borne out by the circumstances, that prior to Walsh marrying the younger sister, he was in the habit of cohabiting with the elder, and since his marriage with the younger sister, Caroline had separated from her husband Collit, and was living with Walsh and her sister in the same house. It is also a fact, that a short time before her murder, she was again on terms of intimacy with her husband, and was going to live with him again.

Walsh is a native of Ireland, from whence it is said he was transported for 7 years to this Colony in 1833, and was about 30 years of age at his late trial. It also appears that since his arrival here, he was twice tried for murder previous to his last conviction-once before the Chief Justice, but acquitted of the murder of a man named Create.

In 1839, he was again tried before Mr. Justice Stephen, for having murdered a woman and her little son. On account of the character of the principal witness against him, he was a second time acquitted. In the former case, it was established by the evidence, that the residence of the murdered woman had been robbed of some tobacco and a keg of spirits, and that she and her son had been beaten to death with a bludgeon, which was found near their murdered bodies.

Not long afterwards, Walsh took an aboriginal with him to assist him to remove the plunder, which had been concealed near the hut, telling the black that he had been told by the bushrangers where the property was secreted ; that they, the bushrangers, had committed the murder, and afterwards the robbery - adding that the bushrangers were afraid of being apprehended, if they attempted to remove the property. A quantity of clothing was afterwards found, be-splattered with blood. Walsh accounted for the dress he had on when taken, by saying that the bushrangers had forced it upon him, in order that he might assist them to disguise themselves, to make their escape out of that neighbourhood.

On his trial for the murder of Catherine Collitt, he endeavoured to show that four or five men had set upon him and the deceased, and after beating him, compelled him likewise to give them his clothes, they then murdered the woman. The culprit, Mrs Collit, and her husband had all been seen drinking together, kept by a man named Jaggers, near to Mount Victoria; here Walsh obtained, and drank two glasses of brandy, Collit drinking only one, and his wife partaking of a small quantity of lemon syrup. Soon after leaving the public house, without the slightest provocation, Walsh knocked Collitt down, using the most dreadful imprecations; his victim (Caroline) interfered with the murderer, and by seizing his arms, at the same time shouting to her husband -"run, run, he has got a stone, and will murder you," allowed him to escape. These were the last words that Catherine Collit was heard to utter, nor was she after that affray again seen alive.

Matthew Mall, a mail driver from Penrith to Hartley, was delivering mail as usual. At about 6 a.m. midway between the top of Mt. Victoria and Soldier's Perch, about three miles from Jagger's, he saw some clothes lying on the road. On further investigation he discovered a body nearby. It was established that this was Caroline, William's wife. A deep wound on the temple had penetrated the brain, which had, no doubt, been inflicted by a sharp jagged stone, which was found close by, covered with hair and blood.

John Walsh was later taken into custody. At his trial Walsh maintained his innocence and accused young Jagger and three others of following him, hitting him with a pistol and taking Caroline away from him. A report by John Jones, Sergeant of H.M. 80th Regiment in court, stated that John Walsh had come to his hut at 11 p.m. on the night of 5th January stating he had been attacked by young Jagger and four others, but Jones didn't believe him and sent him to get assistance elsewhere.

The Jury deliberated for half an hour, then returned to pronounce a verdict of guilty. The Judge stated at the trial that Jaggers and other witnesses should have been summoned and that expense and inconvenience should have been disregarded in a case such as this.
The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser Tuesday 3 May 1842