Romeo and Juliet in the jungle

The principal characters in this sensational tale were a nineteen-year old boy with a Chinese father and an Australian mother, and a sixteen year-old girl, daughter of an Aboriginal mother and a Spanish father, all of whom lived in Cooktown in the late 1870s. Like Romeo and Juliet these two were star-crossed lovers whose parents forbade them to marry. In desperation the pair ran away. They probably planned to walk the 150 kilometres through rugged mountains and dense rainforest to the Palmer River goldfields, where they might disappear and make a new life for themselves.

As soon as their absence was discovered the girl's father, a storekeeper, went to the police and charged the young man with abduction. The police sent out search parties and after a couple of weeks the runaways were brought back to Cooktown. Several local residents testified to the young man's character and previous good behaviour and the charge against him was dropped, but one aspect of the case baffled the police. When the young man was searched he was found to be carrying gold sovereigns and small nuggets of gold worth several hundred pounds. It was known that neither family had ever possessed such riches and no one had reported the theft of sovereigns or nuggets recently.

At first the young man was reluctant to explain how he had come by them but, when he realised he would be charged with stealing if he did not, he told a remarkable story. The girl corroborated every word and the police, unable to disprove the story, accepted it and recorded it in their official files. The press picked up the tale and it was reported in newspapers as far afield as China.

The young man told how he and his girlfriend set out from Cooktown, avoiding the main tracks, living off the land and supplementing their meagre diet with damper made from a small bag of flour the girl had brought with her. One afternoon they wandered into Limestone, a little shanty town about 100 kilometres south-west of Cooktown near the headwaters of the Palmer River. Limestone had grown up around a goldfield that had since run out. The prospectors and townspeople had drifted away and the town was completely deserted. There were a few huts with doors and windows standing open, a one-room hotel and a small cemetery in which stood a tiny Chinese joss-house, all rapidly disappearing under the encroaching jungle.

The boy and girl explored the little joss-house. Its walls, once gaily painted red and yellow, were peeling; a faint smell of incense lingered inside and scraps of paper with Chinese characters hung from the roof The young man noticed a small porcelain urn used for storing ashes of the dead standing amid the dust and litter, apparently forgotten when the building was abandoned. He knew the purpose of such urns but gave it an irreverent kick anyway.

In an overgrown garden they found some dry little oranges on a stunted tree and had these for their supper, then bedded down for the night in one of the disused huts. The night was hot and sultry. Swarms of mosquitoes plagued them but eventually they fell asleep in each other's arms.

In the middle of the night something woke the young man. He looked towards the doorway of the hut and to his amazement saw the vaguely outlined figure of a man standing there. At first he thought it was a policeman or black-tracker and that the authorities had caught up with them but, as he watched, the figure became clearer and he could make out its face and clothing, both of which were oriental. The figure began to glow with an unearthly light and stared back at the terrified youth with smouldering eyes. The spectre raised one of its arms and made a beckoning movement three times- then vanished.

The young man woke his sleeping companion and told her what he had seen. She tried to convince him he had been dreaming and went back to sleep, but he sat up for the rest of the night watching the door until dawn came and the sun dispelled his fear. As soon as the girl woke up the young couple made ready to leave, but just as they emerged from the hut they heard the sound of approaching horses. They hurried back into the hut and watched as a group of prospectors, travelling down from the goldfields, came riding up. They were a tough and rowdy group and one of them fired off a shot to see if the sound raised anyone in the town. When no one appeared they laughed and dismounted outside the ruins of the little hotel. The young couple watched as the men went inside and tore the place apart in the hope of finding some forgotten grog, then settled themselves down on the broken verandah of the hotel to rest. They remained there most of the day, smoking, swapping yarns and sleeping. Finally, in the late afternoon, they remounted and rode away, oblivious to the two pairs of eyes that had been watching them, nervously, all day.

It was then too late for the young couple to leave on foot so they decided, reluctantly, to spend another night in the hut. For several hours all was quiet then, at around midnight, the spectre appeared again in the doorway. Both the lovers were awake and they clung to each other in terror as the figure loomed over them. It began to beckon again, more earnestly this time, and seemed intent on making them follow it. Shaking with fear and clasping each other's hands the boy and girl followed the ghost down the straggling street until they reached the cemetery. The ghost kept looking over its shoulder with those smouldering eyes to make sure the young couple were there. When it reached the joss-house the ghost pointed to the overturned urn, hovered above it with a sad expression on its pallid face then disappeared, just as suddenly as it had the night before. The young couple came to their senses and ran as fast as they could back to the relative safety of the hut, jamming the broken door across the entrance. They sat huddled together for the rest of the night, waiting to flee at first light.

The sun again dispelled the young man's fears and he persuaded the girl to go with him back to the cemetery the next morning. His curiosity had been roused and he wanted to take one last look at the urn. When they reached the joss-house he picked up the urn and read the inscription underneath, which said that it contained the ashes of a ‘Son of the Celestial Kingdom', Fen Cheng Loo. The boy removed the stopper and upended the urn so the contents spilled out onto his hand. Instantly his hand was covered in fine white ash. The wind caught some of it and blew it into his face. Horrified, he dropped the ashes and the urn, which hit the hard ground with a loud crash and shattered. The boy and girl gasped and stared in amazement. The urn had a false bottom and among the broken shards of pottery a fortune in golden sovereigns and small gold nuggets shone in the bright sunshine.

With thanks to http://www.queenslandhistory.com/ghosts1.htm