The Devil’s River
IN SUMMER, the Victorian High Country hosts a seasonal explosion of visitors. The lucky few are privy to a secret little swimming hole on the Delatite River close to Goughs Bay. It’s beautiful there, the sun glinting off the water, the little rapids proving a delight for children on tyre-tubes. Sharp blackberry canes and majestic stringybark soldiers guard a bigger secret on the high eastern bank. The majority of bathers splashing about are oblivious to the 150-year-old murder scene hidden behind this tangled screen of wild scrub.
In the 1860s this river was once known as Devil’s River. One of the local legends describes early settlers, finding the country bordering on the river so rough, wild looking and difficult of access, christened it the ‘Devil’s own place’. Whatever its origins, the Devil’s River holds true to its name.
Hosting drownings and murders, the river’s reputation didn’t deter hardy colonials who chose to make its banks their home. Among these settlers were Robert ‘Bob’ Scott and his wife, pretty 21-year-old Elizabeth, running an illegal sly-grog shanty.
Until the late 1960s, the shanty was still standing. Rumours circulated the Mansfield community of a woman murdering her husband at the shanty. My mum regaled me with tales about the proverbial ‘haunted house’ that she and her friends were so scared of.
Raised in the bush and afraid of nothing, riding home from school they crossed to the other side of the lane to avoid the derelict shanty.
Intrigued, further enquiries led me
