Monte Cristo: colonial Australian manor

Junee Railway Station

opened 1878

Railway going from Sydney to Melbourne, 

via Goulburn, Junee, Wagga Wagga and Albury

Pioneer squatters settled in Jun­ee NSW in 1845 and more when the Syd­ney to Melbourne road was gaz­­etted via Junee. But still, there were only 12 residents until 1868 when gold was found at Junee Reefs to the north! Suddenly the town had 100 resid­ents, hotel, post box & butcher shop.

Junee’s heyday was in 1870 yet even then, the mines continued quite strongly in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1876 Christopher Crawley sel­ect­ed land on both sides of the upcoming railway line, the western part dir­ectly in front of the new station. So when the railway line to Wagga Wagga (see map) actually started in 1878, it by-passed the min­­es and a new town grew around the rail­way stat­ion. In 1878 he op­ened his Railway Hotel and did very well. Many new­comers wish­ed to buy land, so he sold a few blocks at hugely inflated prices. He then sold his hotel and with the proceeds was able to retire, to build his grand homestead and to lead the life of a gentle­man farmer.

Christopher and Elizabeth Crawley

Monte Cristo Homestead, Junee

The government architect designed Junee's Post Office by the railway station in 1886, opening in 1888. One storey was added in 1909 and later there were additions, now Heritage Listed. With 3 town subdivisions, railway station, Post Office and gold mines 19 kms away, the town grew rapidly.

Christopher Crawley (1841–1910) took up his first 840 acres as his pastoral est­ate. He built a home in 1876 which later became the serv­an­ts’ quarters, kitchen & dairy. A few years were fin­an­cially tough for the Crawleys but fortunes changed in 1878 when the Great Southern Railway Line open­ed.

The govern­ment took 80 acres of his land for a town, and to find an alternative business, Crawley opened the Railway Hotel by the railway. By 1884 he'd sold his successful hotel and with the boom-era money, built a grand Vic­torian 2-storey residence with cast iron lace work on the verandas.

Called Monte Cristo Homestead, the colonial, double-storey late-Victorian-style manor stands on a hill overlooking the town, a high status property. The whole town benefited enormously from the train service and the agric­ul­tural trade! Craw­ley was becoming a very rich gentleman farmer with 7 child­ren; eventually he was cal­led one of the towns foun­ders, and a major donor to his beloved Catholic Chur­ch. This generous man with a big sense of civic re­sp­onsibility was much respected. Very special.

Christopher Crawley died in 1910 from a combination of heart fail­ure and blood poison­ing from a neck carbuncle. His wife, Elizabeth Crawley, couldn’t cope with her husband’s death; she locked herself inside the house, up in the attic where she had built a small chap­el, always dressed in black. She died in 1933, from a ruptured appendix. The Crawley child­ren lived in the house until 1948. The cont­ents were sold in 1952 and the house left vacant which allowed van­dals to al­most destroy it. It was purchased with 2+ acres by Reg and Olive Ryan fam­ily in 1963 and they began the diff­icult task of a full restor­ation that finished only in the 1980s.

Lounge

library

dining room

 

In 1993 the Ryans turned the fully restored house into a museum for tours, including dolls and antiques. The story about this house seemed one of good fortune and successful families. So why does it advert­is­e itself as Austral­ia's most haunted house? When the Ryans moved into the estate, they noticed something strange. When they went up to the house with their bel­ong­ings and animals, he animals wouldn’t go into the house and fled. But that wasn’t the worst.

Apparently Monte Cristo is haunted by at least 10 ghosts. The beau­tiful C19th mansion saw heaps of tragedies that occurred on the est­ate. Christopher Crawley apparently made two of his maids pregnant. One pregnant maid committed suicide by jump­ing from the bal­c­ony and was instantly killed. Her ghost haunts the ver­anda, and blood­stains mark the spot where she fell. The other maid gave birth to a son named Harold. When Harold was young, he was hit by a coach on the premises. The child survived, but sustained head trauma which disab­led him for life. The poor lad was kept on chains and local children called him a monster because he screamed all day. He was eventually locked in an asylum and died there, but still haunts the estate by the sound of chains. No wonder Christopher Crawley’s ghost now haunts the room in which he died.

The coach house is haunted by Morris, a young stable boy. One day, Morris decided to stay in bed at the coach house but his mast­er didn’t approve and taught him a lesson. He lit the boy’s straw mattress to get Morris to work. But Morris was too ill and died in bed. His screams are still heard today.

Crawley’s infant granddaughter Ethel died in 1917, because the nursemaid dropped her on the stairs. The nursemaid claimed she was pushed by an unseen force, but she wasn’t believed. Even today children who visit the museum become upset on those stairs.

The Crawleys were said to hate animals. When the Ryans came home one night, they found all their chickens strangled to death in a poultry run. The parrot was choked to death in its cage. And a litter of kittens in on room lay brutally killed.

A recent ghost is that of Jack Simpson, a Monte Cristo care­taker, shot to death in 1960 on the porch. The killer had been watching Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho before com­mitting his crime, carving “Die Jack ha ha” on the shed door.

Visit Monte Cristo each week day, or join a ghost tour each Sat evening. Lights flicker; visitors feel over­­whel­m­ing sadness; there are disembodied whispers; see unex­plained mists in the house; and note some poltergeist activity. IF you believe in ghosts! Photo credits, Daily Mail 

one of the bedrooms