The ghosts of Booroomugga

After spending time in the Cobar Museum and confronting the facts about how the traditional owners were treated in the lifetime of my grandmother, being moved off their lands under the extraordinary title of 'dispersal', we were able to get the phone number of the current owners of Booroomugga and arrange to go out there that same afternoon. It was an 40k trip back towards Nyngan and then 30K off the road into the flat red dirt country that I remembered as a child. The first cattle gird had the following sign on it which reminded us that this land was still off limits to the uninvited.

We arrived at the home paddock close to dusk when that glorious golden light coated the landscape with a sentimental glow. The Greers were very friendly and helpful, providing me with papers about the history of the property that had been prepared by a real estate agent who had done some research into its history. It stated that P J Kelly had owned a property called Burrowye on the Murray before coming to Cobar region in 1882.. The original homestead had been burned down (apparently on purpose by a previous owner) but the wool shed was still standing. It had been clad with corrugated iron but the original timber frame and boards still lined the inside. They took us over to have a look. It was a big shed with 20 stands for shearers.

As we were leaving it was suggested that we stop by the Kelly family headstone where Meg Kelly's (the last surviving family member to live on the property) ashes were buried. Then the ghosts stories came out. The Greer's believed that Meg haunted the place. They gave several examples of locked doors opening and even a car being shoved hard from the rear with no apparent explanation just when it was near the head stone. Then David Greer's daughter asked had we noticed the old wardrobe door swinging back and forth when we were in the wool shed with not a breath of wind to move it.
Somehow it didn't surprise me. I have been compelled to recreate something of this family even to the extent of constructing a replica of Isabella's dress and jewellery from an old photograph.

We returned to Cobar as the sun went down. My head was fizzing with ideas and possibilites. I felt as though I had finally come home but not to a place, rather to an idea that had been buried underneath many layers of avoidance and misdirected guilt. It is as though taking responsibility for what my people were and have done has freed me to really look at it, uncover it, discover it and own it in a way that allows me to be fully who I am. An Australian of Anglo Celtic origin, born on Wurrundjerri land. I know that this is just the beginning and there are many more skins of the onion to peel back but I am excited rather than daunted.