In the bowels of the Bridge: a Brisbane haunting lost to progress...

Story Bridge plan in the Courier Mail, published on the 3rd May 1935, p.14.

Last week we visited Brisbane's iconic Story Bridge, inspired by an incredibly poor rendition of its history published in Haunted Brisbane: Ghosts of the River City.  In the article, we exposed numerous historic inaccuracies printed in the book, a fair critique given the self-professed "historian" status proclaimed by the author...however, we were very light on information about the ghostly heritage of the site overall.   During the week, we realised we had an opportunity to give a little factual supernatural heritage back to the residents of Brisbane, when Sean, a fan of the Haunts of Brisbane, commented on the article via our Facebook page.  Sean posed a very valid question regarding the early construction period of the Bridge - "Does anyone have any info on the houses that were moved to make way for the Story Bridge?  I live in one and it has alot of activity here."  Being aware of a known haunting in the vicinity, & with the Story Bridge's construction still in mind, I decided to dig a little deeper...

At the earliest point of European settlement, during Moreton Bay Penal Settlement's absolute infancy, the entire peninsula back past current Vulture Street was a mix of heavily forested highland surrounded by swampy lowland draining into the Brisbane River.  Suitable land was quickly cleared in the area on which the Story Bridge now rests for maize & wheat crops to feed the incarcerated souls & their overseers, increasing the yield of similar fields which sat across the river where QUT's Garden Point Campus now resides (hence the name Garden Point).  At the same time, the Kangaroo Point cliffs (which are also iconic in Brisbane) were quarried for stone, in order to build the fledgling colony.  Quickly after the Colony was opened for free settlement, huts sprang up around Kangaroo Point - the murder of cedar getter Robert Cox, which has taken on folkloric status in the history of Brisbane, occurred where the Story Bridge now resides in 1848 - a story which will play a cameo in next week's Haunts of Brisbane article.

By the 1880's, Kangaroo Point was littered with stately homes, the preceding 20 years having seen massive economic expansion in Brisbane due to the influx of immigrants from England & Sydney with money to burn - those of political power & social note took advantage of the land placed on offer, & constructed what literally would have been mansions to the many less fortunate residents across the river in the steadily growing city.  Gilbert Elliott, first Speaker of the Queensland Legislative Assembly, had owned a house here....in time, ownership of the property passed to Captain John Mackay, the explorer who discovered the area on which the city of Mackay now stands.  Next door stood the house of Robert Porter, Brisbane alderman & one-time Mayor,  responsible for the construction of the original Victoria Bridge sadly destroyed in the floods of 1893.  James Warner had also lived here, the colonial surveyor who mapped Brisbane & its surrounds - early in Brisbane's history, he had cleared a mountain on Brisbane's outskirts of all but one tree for a trigonometrical station...that mountain became known as One Tree Hill, & in turn Mt Coot-tha.  Nearby lived Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior (Member of the Upper House & Queensland Postmaster-General), William Thornton (Member of the Queensland Legislative Council & Collector of Customs), William Henry George Marshall (long-standing Brisbane Town Clerk)...the list goes on.

However, by the 1930's, many of these stately homes had already been demolished in the name of progress - those that still stood had been enveloped by cottages & boarding houses as the population of Brisbane expanded rapidly.   In the early stages of the Story Bridge's planning, it was apparent that property resumptions would be required along the Kangaroo Point peninsula - by May 1935, properties standing in the way of the bridge had been resumed, & all were placed under the control of the Bureau of Industry who held the responsibility of considering compensation claims.  In addition, the Bureau also held the task of auctioning the resumed properties for removal or demolition & salvage - these auctions took place in batches between the 8th & the 29th of June.  Most residences, given their nature of construction (stone, brick & concrete), were demolished on-site & salvaged for materials...however a few were removed for relocation.  On the 27th of June, a crowd gathered along Main Street to watch a large weatherboard house being towed up the street for relocation - the spectacle was reported in the Courier Mail the next morning, noting that many of the Chestnut & Bauhinia trees lining the road required considerable lopping in order to let the house pass.  This may well be Sean's current house, although without further in-depth research it is difficult to say.

However, another important event took place in Main Street the day before on the 26th of June -  the auction of the mansion Nunnington.  Built in the early 1850's by Frederick Orme Darvall, who went on to become the Registrar-General of the Supreme Court of Queensland, the residence was named after Nunnington Hall in his wife's home town of North Yorkshire in England.  In the late 1870's the mansion changed hands, bought by renowned pastoralist William Barker for his family...25 years later, the building would be sold again to Arthur John Carter, Member of the Queensland Legislative Council & Consular Agent to France & Norway - by the early 1930's, Arthur's son Major Hubert Reginald Carter, Boer War & Gallipoli veteran & also Consular Agent to France like his father, shared the property with his wife & family...& one other house guest that was a little less tangiable.  By the 1930's, three members of the family, including Major Carter, claimed to have witnessed an apparition they called the 'Grey Lady' within Nunnington.  Furthermore, the Carters also claimed to be in possession of a family photo taken on the front lawn, in which a spectral figure was plainly visible that had not been seen at the time the photo was taken...incredibly sadly, both mansion & photograph have since been lost to the progression of time, but we can still examine the likely origin of the Nunnington spectre.

In it's day, Nunnington was a social hub in Brisbane - it played host to parties frequented by Brisbane's elite, it played host to foreign dignitaries, it witnessed its fair share of births & especially marriages...however it also witnessed a number of deaths:  Ernest White on the 10th of December 1884, William Barker on the 22nd of December 1886, Arthur John Carter on the 4th of November 1917, & Lieutenant-Colonel Hubert Reginald Carter on the 14th of July 1934...however, only 1 woman is recorded as having passed away in the house.  On the 5th of July 1900, Elizabeth Barker & wife of Nunnington's second owner, passed away after a short malady surrounded by her sons in the same house her husband had breathed his last 14 years earlier.  Whilst it is always folly guessing at the true identity of a ghost, especially given the number of people both resident & visitor that crossed the threshold of Nunnington during its existence, Elizabeth is a candidate...unfortunately, we will never know.  However, one big question still remains, regardless of the ghost's identity...does the Nunnington spectre still inhabit the area below the Story Bridge where its residence once stood on Main Street, or did the apparition climb aboard one of the houses moving past on their way to greener pastures, in turn dodging the demolisher's hammer??

Brisbane's Story Bridge: There's far more to the actual "storey"...

Recently, whilst flicking through the book, "Haunted Brisbane: Ghosts of the River City," the final chapter immediately caught my eye.  Chapter 13, entitled "THE STOREY BRIDGE,"  stood out like a sore thumb for one very glaring reason - the name of one of Brisbane's most iconic landmarks is spelt incorrectly!  After some further flipping, most ironically given the chapter number, I discovered that the Story Bridge's name had been misspelt not once, but 13 times throughout the book...not once had the correct spelling been used.  Most surprisingly, the error was located in the 3rd Reprint Edition of the book, meaning this error has been perpetuated for 6 years since first published in 2005, through 3 separate print runs - obviously, given that the self-professed "historian" author could not even get the landmark's name correct, I was very keen to read over the chapter to see what other historic facts had been horribly bungled.

Firstly though, a little actual history...throughout its construction, the Story Bridge was atually known as the Jubilee Bridge, in honour of George V...it was not until the opening of the bridge on the 6th of July 1940 that the name Story Bridge was bestowed, after Public Service Commissioner and member of the Bridge Board, John Douglas Story.  At the time, a further bridge across the Brisbane River was little required, however the project was championed on the grounds of generating employement at a time of interwar depression. Designed to emulate the Jacques Cartier Bridge across the Saint Lawrence River in Montreal, Canada, the contract fell to Evans Deakin-Hornibrook Constructions Pty Ltd to undertake the mammoth task - construction began on the 24th of May 1935.

Now, back to the book...

Hoping the bridge's repeatedly misspelt name would be the only error in the chapter, I was quickly disappointed as further ridiculously basic errors arose.  Barely into the chapter (which only manages 2 pages), the first glaring error arose - a detail any resident of Brisbane, familiar with the Story Bridge, could deduce after a little thought.  According to the book, "Boxing for the concrete foundations of the bridge had to be laid on the bottom of the Brisbane River.  Special pressurised chambers were built deep under the water in which men worked."  As anyone looking out over the Brisbane River can easily observe, the Story Bridge rests upon three pillars - one at the northern Fortitude Valley approach, & two at the southern Kangaroo Point approach...not one of these pillars are sunk into the bottom of the Brisbane River.  The northern pillar is built on dry land adjacent to the old Water Police Barracks, with the bridge anchored to the overlying cliff, while the southern pillar is also built on dry land in Captain Burke Park with the anchor pillar further up the slope adjacent to the Story Bridge Hotel - anyone who has taken an "adventure climb" on the Story Bridge will know this.

The only truth in this statement lies in the use of pneumatic, pressurised chambers during the initial stages of the bridge's construction.  The piers for the bridge were constructed first, through the closing months of 1935 into the middle of 1936.  In order to support the massive 12,000 tonnes of steel framework that would eventually rest atop them, it was necessary to set the foundations for the southern piers 40 metres below ground level - which clearly posed a major dilemma especially where the Captain Burke Park pier was concerned.  Given the portion of land on which the pier would sit was not far above water level, the Brisbane River running only a stone's throw away, digging down 40 metres through alluvium & well below water level would only end in a flooded pit.  So, a sealed, pneumatic chamber called a caisson, an engineering feat utilised for building piers below water at depth, was constructed - men dressed in deep-dive suits worked at pressures 4 times that of normal surface pressure, & dozens of bends cases required treatment in an on-site decompression hospital...as a diver who has suffered from decompression sickness, I can only appreciate the hardships these men faced every day!

We now move on to the next remarkable statement in the chapter - "Legend persists to this day that the victims of several unsolved Brisbane murders were disposed of in the building of the Storey Bridge.  The most famous of these was the mysterious disappearance of Majorie Norval, personal assistant to the Premier of Queensland, who vanished in sensational circumstances in 1938.  Her body has never been found; local legend maintains her corpse was cemented into the foundations of the bridge by her killer or killers so it would never be found."

So...let's pull this statement apart, without going into too much detail on the Marjorie Norval case - for those interested in further reading, Murder & Misadventure: Terrifying True Tales from Australia's Past will give you a far better rendition of the case than "Jack" Sim's Bloody Brisbane Crime & Murder Tour ever will.  For a start, similarly to our 13 "Storey Bridge" spelling errors, Marjorie Norval's name is spelt incorrectly (spelt Majorie in the "extensively researched" book, as per the direct quote above).  Secondly, Marjorie Norval was not the personal assistant to Queensland Premier William Forgan Smith, but was in actual fact the social secretary to William's wife Euphemia.  Thirdly, all pier work had been completed on the Story Bridge by mid 1936...the approaches on both the northern & southern sides had been completed by late 1937, & the steel superstructure for the bridge was well underway by mid 1938.  Marjorie Norval disappeared on the 11th of November 1938 from Central Station in Brisbane...if "Jack" Sim's "local legend" is to be believed, whereby she was interred within the bridge's construction, her body could only have been sealed into the deck of the bridge which was not laid until the steel framework had been completed in October 1939...almost 12 months after Marjorie had disappeared.

Finally, we reach the ghostly section of the chapter, which contains a very vague reference to a grey apparition apparently seen atop the bridge & a very generic mention of the Water Police who served in the quarters below the bridge.  In nearly 14 years of researching ghosts throughout South-east Queensland, I admit that I have never come across a single story of ghosts on the Story Bridge...which is not to say folklore doesn't exist.  That being said, I have spoken to many Water Police during my lifetime who served below the Story Bridge - their stories tell of suicides, bodies in the river & other countless tragedies that were relayed to me in confidence & should not be publicised for some time coming - thus is the respect any historian should show when publishing their research.  That said, not one of them believed in ghosts or ever experienced ghost phenomena from the Story Bridge as a result of their occupation.

As a final note, I discovered an amazingly ironic statement in the introduction to Haunted Brisbane: Ghosts of the River City, signed off by no other than "Jack" Sim the "dark historian" himself - "The stories and tales in this book do not come from Google, internet searches or from imagination."  Imagination aside, it's an absolute shame you didn't utilise Google or internet searches when writing your book, "Jack"...if you had, then perhaps your tale of the Stor[e]y Bridge would have been accurate, & you could have saved yourself further embarrassment by ensuring your poor research & bogus history didn't need to be corrected yet again...