The Ghosts of Lady Elliot Island
Early Pioneer Spirits Inhabit A Coral Cay On The Great Barrier Reef
Oct 18, 2008
Living conditions in colonial Australia early this century were harsh, especially for the pioneering settlers living remote from the tiny hubs of civilisation. Many folk couldn't cope with this lifestyle and sometimes took their lives to escape the drudgery and loneliness. Susannah McKee, the wife of a lighthouse keeper on Lady Elliot Island, was one such pioneer.
Lady Elliot Island Lighthouse
Lady Elliot Island is a world-renown scuba diving location with a tourist resort.
The island was discovered in 1816 but rarely visited until 1860. Early entrepreneurs found the island covered in phosphate rich guano from seabird droppings. Miners removed this layer, and the vegetation in the process, leaving the island a desolate shelf in the surrounding ocean.
Around this time the island became a strategic navigation spot for shipping. Ships regularly came to grief on the surrounding reef so in 1872 the government built a lighthouse on the island. Later, three houses were also built for the families tending the light.
Susannah McKee and Phoebe Phillips
Thomas McKee and his wife Susannah were lighthouse keepers at the turn of the century. The island was so barren and unhospitable after the miners' devastation Susannah couldn't cope. One day in April 1907, aged 59, she walked off the small jetty and into the sea. Her body washed up on the beach and she was buried on the island she loathed in a small cemetery behind the lighthouse.
Another tragedy occurred on Lady Elliot about ten years before. Phoebe Phillips, the daughter of a lighthouse keeper, caught pneumonia in 1896 and passed away, aged 30. She shares the island cemetery with Susannah McKee, their grave’s maintained today as a legacy to the pioneering spirit of the early lighthouse keepers.
Appearance Of Ghosts
The three houses still stand on the island and have been Heritage listed. Over the years there have been reports of ghostly figures of an elderly, well-dressed lady with a sad face lurking in the shadows. Footsteps have been heard in a house and, after investigation, the house has been found deserted.
The resort uses the ghost as a tourist attraction. Apart from scuba diving and eco-tours of the island, there are "ghost tours" of the house where Susannah spent her last agonising days, pining for the mainland and its civilisation.
Mutton Birds Mistaken For Ghostly Noises
The ghost in the house may not be easily explained, but initial reports on spooks and spirits on Lady Elliot have been solved. Early sailors, visiting the island before the guano miners, were afraid to come ashore at night because of wailing and moaning from the island. The sounds were thought to be ghosts of long-dead sailors whose ships had ventured too close to the island's surrounding reef. Later when Chinese "coolie" labourers were forced to live on the island to mine the guano, the riddle was solved.
Many seabirds use the island as a rookery, and one of these is the mutton bird. About the size of a domestic chicken, they live in burrows around the tree roots and spend their day over the ocean looking for food. They return to their burrows at night and start a sad moaning that sounds like a new born baby crying or, as the early sailors thought, the pitiful murmuring of a long dead seaman.
Today, Lady Elliot Island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is a different island to the barren wasteland that Susannah McKee knew. The resort offers luxuries that weren't heard of during her time. However, the presence of her spirit gives island visitors a small appreciation of the hardships those early pioneers endured.
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