HILLS OF TERROR

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 40015, 26 October 1929, Page 4

HILLS OF TERROR

AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY.

WEIRD AUSTRALIAN STORY

Ten miles, m> moire, from Moo to Movwell, but dreaded by Gippsland for more than 70 years. Within that distance lie the Haunted Hills—-the most notorious rises in Victoria. Once they were hills of terror.

.But the days of dread have passed. The Government visioned a town on the undeveloped brown coal fields; Sir John Monash built a towering chimney, road metal followed the coal, and the spell of Haunted Hills was ’broken when their silence was dispelled by thrf rumble and whir of great machines, Writes ‘Curtis Wilson in the “Sun News-Pictorial.”

Now a white ribbon of road through the Hills is used every year by thousands of ears; but once —•

. With eyes bloodshot and hides flecked with foam, they say that wild cattle 'one day stampeded through the rough hamlet that was Moo of the middle of last century. With their long horns waving viciously, .they slwe.pt, terror-stricken, through the township. No drover followed the animals; and wonderingly the storekeeper and barman returned to their counters.

A week" later the stampede still iceded an explanation, and several of the more adventurous farmers entered the hills to look for the missing drover. They never bargained for what they found, nor did they, or others since them, satisfactorily explain the mystery. Near what had been the last camping spot, with the blackened ashes of the drover’s fire still undisturbed, the bodies of scores of cattle were discovered. THE STORY STARTS.

‘The. missing drover —dead cattle —stampede—so started tho .story that the hills were haunted. The name stuck, and farmers spread the story that no cattle would ever stay in the hills at night, that birds were scarce and horses uneasy when ridden over theft* wooded slopes. Finally it was generally accepted that the hills were haunted, and speculation started in an attempt to explain the stampede, the missing drover, the deaths of the longhorned cattle, and the fear which the 'animals display when left in the hills.

And because every reason that has been advanced lias never been substantiated, the.mystery has become all the deeper—but is not now over likely to be solved. THING'S HAVE CHANGED. A poisoned weed, it was said by some, killed the cattle—yet no weed was found in the hills or on the route from the Tambo, from where the cattle came, that could have killed them. The drover was injured, said others —but his body was never found.

An underground river, it was said, frightened the cattle by its rumbling—but no one pointed to its source, or its mouth. .

Helped by this unsavoury background the shocking road that spanned the hills until the last few years was feared all the more. To spend a night in the Haunted Hills beside a bogged vehicle, or one damaged by potholes, was considered the w'orst misfortune that eotild befall a traveller.

But all that has changed to-day. , Workers, ‘busy with their coal; road metal laid smooth as on a suburban street, and a chimney stack tall enough to guide any traveller lost in i the gullies have all broken the_ spell of the Haunted Hills. Modern machinery and science' have laid the ghosts.