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<\/a><\/p>\nTravellers reported that their horses would become restless as they approached the bridge, then the figure of a young woman dressed entirely in black would suddenly appear in front of them. Some reported that her long, dark hair streamed out in the wind and that her arms were raised in a suppliant gesture. Some said that her eyes shone in the dark like a tiger\u2019s and a few said that she was headless. As suddenly as she appeared the spectre would disappear, leaving travellers anxious to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the scene of their harrowing experience.<\/p>\n
History can put a name to this ghost. She was born Caroline James, and at the time of her death she was Mrs William Collits. Caroline married into a respectable family: the Collits, proprietors of the inn at Hartley Vale.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for Caroline, the Collits who took a fancy to her, was the black sheep of the family, William, described by his father as a \u2018spendthrift idiot\u2019. William Collits and Caroline James were married in 1840, but their marriage was anything but blissful.<\/p>\n
Caroline\u2019s younger sister was married to a thug named John Walsh, who was Caroline\u2019s as well as her sister\u2019s lover before and after their marriages. When her new husband turned out to be a poor substitute for Walsh, Caroline left him and moved in with her accommodating sister and brother-in-law in a menage-a-trois.<\/p>\n
A postman delivering mail to Hartley came upon the battered body of Caroline Collits beside the road on Victoria Pass, about five kilometres from Jagger\u2019s tavern.<\/p>\n
Caroline Collitt, was about seventeen years of age and she had been married for about eighteen months.<\/p>\n
Her skull had been smashed with a large stone which lay, stained with her blood, nearby. John Walsh was arrested for her murder but pleaded innocence, accusing not William Collits as you might imagine but Joseph Jagger, the tavern keeper, of committing the heinous crime. The jury at Walsh\u2019s trial did not believe him. He was convicted and hanged at Bathurst on 3 May 1842.<\/p>\n
Caroline was destined to spend an eternity of cold and windy nights haunting the Mitchell’s viaduct, also known as the second bridge, on Victoria Pass, spooking horses and terrifying innocent travellers.<\/p>\n
Some comfort may have come to her in the 1880s when Henry Lawson and his father came to live in the nearby village of Mount Victoria and the young poet wrote a sixteen verse poem about her entitled The Ghost at the Second Bridge\u2019.<\/p>\n
Some say that Caroline Collits put a curse on the village of Mount Victoria, but its current prosperity belies that. No one has seen the Ghost of Victoria Pass for many years, which is hardly surprising.<\/p>\n