KATE Gibson was found with her throat slashed open from ear to ear.
Two days earlier, the 49-year-old had strolled out of her family’s cottage at Bustard Head, on Queensland’s central coast, and disappeared.
That was back in 1887. There was nothing at Bustard Head except a lighthouse, and the nearest settlement was 15km away. So when Kate didn’t come back, her four daughters launched a desperate search.
One of the girls, a 19-year-old called Annie, made the gruesome discovery. Kate was lying in a pool of dried blood, with an arm folded across her chest and that horrible, gaping wound across her neck.
Her husband Nils, who returned from a trip to the northwest to learn of his wife’s disappearance, realised one of his razors was missing from the family’s cottage. Days later, it was found under a tree root at the site of the body, covered in blood.
Kate’s death was ruled a suicide, and she was buried in the cemetery at Bustard Head. There is no lack of company for her in that graveyard. Few have lived at the lightstation — the site which includes the lighthouse and keeper’s home — but a disturbingly high number of people have died there.
Bustard Head has always been marked by tragedy. Its first victim was a workman, who suffered a blow to his head during the lighthouse’s construction and died the next day.
His passing was followed by shipwrecks, drownings, an abduction, a murder, Kate Gibson’s suicide and several other freak deaths.
The entire harrowing history of the lightstation was chronicled by author Stuart Buchanan in his book Lighthouse of Tragedy, published in 1999. With his help, we’ve picked out some of the more disturbing incidents.
1. THE TRIPLE DROWNING
Almost two years after Kate’s death, Nils, his 20-year-old daughter Mary, assistant lightkeeper John Wilkinson, his wife Elizabeth and a repairman named Alfred Power set off from Bustard Head on a sailboat. They didn’t make it far.
As the boat powered 450m clear of the shore, it capsized, throwing everyone into the water. Alfred, Elizabeth and Mary all drowned. Nils, who managed to make it back to land, never found his daughter’s body.
2. THE SCALDING
In 1898, a one-year-old girl called Milly Waye was scalded with boiling water by accident. The infant suffered “excruciating pain” for nine hours before she finally died.
Milly had been born at the lightstation. She never had the chance to leave it.
3. THE MURDER/ABDUCTION
An 18-year-old boy called George Daniels was accused of murder and kidnapping in 1912.
George had become entangled in a love triangle with Edith Anderson, the Bustard Head lightkeeper’s daughter, and Arthur Cozgell, a 32-year-old man whose father owned a nearby cattle station.
Arthur and Edith were riding towards Bustard Head together on Sunday, February 11 when someone attacked them. The assailant shot Arthur and abducted Edith.
Before he died, Arthur identified the attacker as “that black bugger ... George”. Other evidence, including a series of “goodbye” letters written by George himself, confirmed Arthur’s account.
The authorities launched a long and well-resourced search for George and Edith (it was the most expensive police search in Queensland’s history at the time), but they were never found.
4. BIZARRE MEDICAL PROBLEMS
Several weeks after Edith was abducted, another of the lightkeeper’s daughters, 21-year-old Ethel, died after suffering an epileptic fit.
Nils Gibson was killed by cirrhosis of the liver six years after losing his daughter, Mary.
And another infant, seven-month-old Henry Phillips, died from “constitutional weakness” ... whatever that means.
5. THE GIBSON SUICIDE
You already know about Kate Gibson’s death. In the aftermath, her daughters wrote this heart-wrenching epitaph, which appeared in the Gladstone Observer newspaper.
“We cooeed our best at dead of night
The dread it could not hear us
The children cry ‘Oh Mother dear’
What keeps you from us
With weary anxious eyes we search
O’er sand, ridge, scrub and bush
But the warm heart was cold in death
Of her who gave us birth”
There were other tragedies as well. In the station’s early days, at least three ships were wrecked nearby. More boats capsized, leading to the deaths of workers en route to the lighthouse.
Bustard Head’s morbid history has made it a tourist attraction for people visiting the nearby towns of Agnes Water and Seventeen Seventy.
MORE: Speaking of which ...
A business called 1770 LARC Tours, run by Neil Mergard, shuttles tourists (and some locals) 20km to the lighthouse in amphibious, Vietnam-era military vehicles called LARCs (Lighter, Amphibious Resupply, Cargo), which are essentially ships with wheels.
I tagged along on one of those tours earlier this month. The lighthouse was strangely serene. The only obvious hint of its disturbing past was a cluster of graves hidden in the bush.
If you want to know more about the Bustard Head lightstation, check out the book Lighthouse of Tragedy by Stuart Buchanan.
Sam Clench travelled as a guest of Tourism and Events Queensland.
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