by John Wells
I recently wrote that I had known of a grave between the eastbound and westbound lane of the highway, just west of Darnum.
Mick Crole and Ralph Chesterfield came to my aid, and quite a story developed.
As well as their own knowledge, they directed me to a couple of other sources.
I didn't know that Dead Man's Gully is an officially-recognised name, and not just at Darnum. There is a Deadmans Gully between Boggabri and Gunnedah in New South Wales, and one at Castlemaine with a cemetery which was begun in about 1851 and closed in 1857. It is at the head of the aptly-named Golden Gully. Google tells me that site was chosen because it was not likely to have any gold under it.
There is a Deadman's Gully in Cairns. There is a Skeleton Creek near Werribee, too.
It was a large and lonely county in many places, and it still is. One of the marks of civilisation is a respect for the dead and the miners - most of the communities that will appear in these three stories were mining settlements. But it was also driven by hygiene requirements, with many of those communities a long way from established cemeteries of the few large towns, both in time and in distance.
Back to this particular story, though. The grave was visible from the original highway. It was (and is) 1700 metres west of the Darnum bridge over the road.
I remember checking up on it during the duplication of the road and was unable to see it. It has been better-tended at some times and not so much at others.
I need not have worried. The Road Traffic Authority not only avoided disturbing the grave but put a post and rail surrounding above it.
The story is that Fishburn and Morton had a contract on this part of the railway line and they were more than a little careless about safety. The company's teams had a significant casualty list in every location in Victoria where they worked.
John Molison (or Mollison) was apparently driving a shaft as part of the railway works, but I'm not sure what that means. "Driving a shaft" is normally a mining term. Perhaps he was sinking a hole for bridge supports or some such. This would almost certainly make the year of his death 1877.
Annie O'Reilly (www.oddhistory.com.au) has researched Molison's story and says "his death rated barely a mention… his death certificate lists him as being 45-years-old."
She was unable to locate a birth certificate "so he was either born overseas or working under an assumed name, which was not that uncommon."
Contracts in the bush, whether railways, roads or mining, provided a refuge for many people seeking to avoid the police, or their debtors. Change your name and go bush and you had a good chance of not ever being caught up with in those days.
The police, such as they were, did visit mining camps and the like, and they did check identities. Sometimes "persons of interest" were taken away.
There was an inquest and the story acquired another little twist because, after the inquest, the local policeman took Molison's body to where it now lies and buried it there. This was illegal and unusual because there were rules about such things.
Initially, burials, including "bush burials", were controlled under an 1854 Act of the New South Wales government. In 1864, the Victorian Cemeteries Statute became law, and required that bodies had to be buried in properly registered cemeteries and appropriate records kept.
As is so often the case, the law was well-meaning but could not really be applied in remote areas with no readily available cemeteries.
In a few cases, in the rocky gullies of the goldfields north of Walhalla, it was hard enough just to find a place where a grave could readily be dug among the rock. Nor was there always a readily available constable, or coroner.
There had to be a reason for the constable to bring him back to Dead Man's Gully, but we will probably never know what it was.
There is a grave in the Traralgon railway reserve behind the shops, but there is an easier trail to follow here because in the grave lies the young daughter of the Traralgon policeman. The gravesite is at the back of the block where the police station once stood. It is one of at least 20 isolated graves in and around Traralgon.
Why was John Molison so easily forgotten? Why did his death rate so little attention? Why was he brought back to Dead Man's Gully for burial?
He was killed at the gully but his body was taken away for the inquest. I assume the inquest would have been held in Warragul, but assumptions often trip me up. Was his name Molison or Mollison? Was it something else altogether?
There is still a great deal to find out about "Jim Molison" and his final resting place.
One of my informants was Mick Crole and he remembered the grave well.
Mick, from Darnum, living for years out on the road to Shady Creek, was helpful with the location and a few memories of the grave, now being threatened by encroaching wattles.
Mick remembered the grave as being out in the paddocks a short way when he was a little tacker, long, long before the highway duplication.
He and his dad would take the road to Yarragon often, especially in the summer, to help Frank Hamilton with his hay. His dad would point it out and it became a big part of his "childhood remembering".
When the Princes Highway was duplicated, he went back to check that the grave had not been disturbed, and he found that the VicRoads people had done the right thing. The grave was not only undisturbed but had been given a simple rail fence.
I didn't get much of Mick's story, but I learned enough to know that he was a true Gippslander, born in the old Mirboo North Bush Nursing Hospital in 1947 and lived out on the Darnum to Shady Creek Rd.
I was a little disturbed, though, that he called himself an "old bloke" when he is two years younger than me.