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A ghostly light on the hill


Benedict House, Queanbeyan. The Victorian Gothic mansion, opened in 1882, was originally a Convent.

"We have a great objective – the light on the hill – which we aim to reach by working for the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand.”


The man, the politician, the Prime Minister who uttered these quite inspiring words was Ben Chifley. Remembered for establishing the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme and the Australian National University, Mr Chifley is also still talked about today for the suggestion he continues to walk the hallways of Hotel Kurrajong in Canberra. This was his place of residence during the period of his parliamentary career in the 1940s – and he was there at the time of his death on the 13th June, 1951 (though that was a Wednesday, not a Friday).

There are those who say they've seen a man in a grey suit apparently thought to be Ben, walking about the hotel, or near windows, pointing towards his old workplace, Parliament House.


Much less known is that Mr Chifley is also linked to what is perhaps Queanbeyan's most impressive heritage building with, reputedly, more than a few of its own strange goings-on.


Benedict House stands grandly on a corner block looking back down to the CBD, the Queanbeyan River on one side, and overlooking one of the town's first public schools (of 1877) on the other.


The two-storied, multi-roomed Victorian Gothic mansion "of vast proportions and imposing height" opened in 1882 as a Catholic convent, accommodating just four nuns. Considered the finest establishment of its kind outside Sydney, it was built through the generosity of locals, including Martin Byrne, the man responsible for the Royal Hotel – another place with a few of its own unsettling stories, and not just the drinking kind.

Sr Mary Nihill, Queanbeyan's first Mother Superior.

The Catholic mission of Queanbeyan was established by the first Catholic Archbishop, John Bede Polding in 1839. Father Heston, first appointed priest in the town in 1842, had a church by 1850. St Gregory's was constructed on the east side of the river opposite the first in the area, the Anglican Christ Church of 1844.


There was a strong call for "a community of holy women" locally for some time. In 1879, Sister Mary Lucy Nihill and three other Sisters of the Order of the Good Samaritan, arrived.


The district had been in the grip of long-standing drought, and on the very day they made their way into town "the heavens opened", and residents thought all their prayers had been answered.


Local legend has it that in the stillness of the early morning it's possible to hear footsteps echo down the upstairs corridor of Benedict House, the one, as it turns out, the nuns would walk to attend chapel at dawn each day.

It would become a school and then later, a “Higher School for Young Ladies”. One of its pupils, daughter of the town's Police Inspector, Martin Brennan (who also wrote on another ghostly experience relating to a local murder), Sarah Brennan was the first Catholic woman to receive a Masters of Arts from the University of Sydney.


For a hundred years, it was then a secondary school. Speaking with any number of former students, it's surprising just how often they reveal it was widely accepted that its hallways were home to a presence of some sort.


Lights being turned on and off in rooms in which no one's about, items being rearranged of their own volition, and perhaps most disconcertingly, a former owner in the 1990s who revealed one of the most fascinating local experiences I've come across.


One evening, his two dogs would not stop barking at the window at the end of the upstairs hallway - one of 41 contained throughout the building.


Finally deciding to find out what the problem was, as he rounded the corner, he was astonished to see what he thought, as he described it, was the bearded face a man looking back at him through the glass. He said he would have dismissed it as his imagination or a trick of the light except for the dogs reaction – they continued to stand there barking, hackles raised as if there were indeed an intruder.


He had no idea of who the figure might possibly be, or why they might remain.


It was much, much later that I uncovered some startling information. A fellow by name of Thomas McCauley, spent 13 years in finishing the construction of the building and its grounds, which originally encompassed all the land leading down to the River.


In the act of completing the front fence as the final touch, on January 5th, 1895, he collapsed on the spot and died.


Thomas McAuley, Queanbeyan builder.

I'd never seen or been able to find a photo of Mr McAuley. Only recently, I happened upon one by chance. The most impactful detail? He was indeed bearded.


So, does Tom feel his job there is still not done?


I'll leave it for you to decide.


Back to Prime Ministers then. I can't fail to mention the one that's more commonly, if controversially, associated with Benedict House - Paul Keating.


For years it was rumoured – and variously denied – that Mr Keating had purchased it with the intention of converting it to a music conservatorium. At the beginning of 2020, I came across an article in which it was finally acknowledged that he had indeed been the owner prior to his securing the top job.


Many years before that, a young Irish immigrant, Mary Anne Costigan, went to stay with the nuns at the Convent in Queanbeyan. Having endeared herself through her "cheerful helpfulness and bright company", she left mid-1884 to marry a Bathurst-based railway employee. The following year, Mary gave birth to her first child, a son.


In robes made at St Benedict's "by the loving hands of the Sisters who knew his mother so well", he was baptised Joseph Benedict Chifley.


He'd be known as Ben, and would go on to become the 16th Prime Minister of Australia.

Ben Chifley's parents, Mary & Patrick. Source: Trove.


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