BUSH MYSTERY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19325, 2 June 1925, Page 10

BUSH MYSTERY

BODY IN LAGOON A STRANGE SEQUEL A drowning mystery which has still to be explained is associated with the disappearance of an elderly grazier from Balranald, New South Wales. Towards the end of January the police announced that Air Thomas Granger Thomson, a grazier, aged fiftyfour years, had been missing from his home near Balranald for three weeks With his son-in-law, Air A. A. Simpson, Air Thomson went to Melbourne on January 6 to negotiate for the purchase of 7000 acres of kind lying between his own property and Air Simpson's. The business wa.; concluded Gn following day, Air Thomson having paid u deposit and arranged for terms, and the two men left Melbourne for Bendigo that night. At Bendigo they parted, Air Thomson going by train to Swan Hill, and Air Simpson remaining at Bendigo. From Swan Hill, Air Thomson went by the mail motor car to Balranald, which, on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, Air Thomson reach ed about ten o’clock on the night of January o. People who saw him on the coach stated that he seemed rather abstracted and silent on the trpi. He was seen to letivc the coach in the town and walk up the road in the direction of the hotel at which he usually stayed. ±iom that hour until last Saturday af ternoon no one hau been known to sec Air Thomson.

On that day a phrty of three aborigrals found Air Thomson’s body at the edge of a lagoon, near the Afurrumbidgec River, about three miles from Balranald. The body was lying facedown wards, near the edge of the water having evidently floated to the side of the lagoon, and as the water receded it became exposed. The body was much decomposed. Search paities workcl this neighbourhood when Air Thomson was first reported missing, but at that time the whole of the country round the la goon w’as under water. This, drying up, has partly solved the mystery, b’it in doing so has only deepened it. Therewas apparently no reason why Air Thomson should take his own life, and efforts are now being devoted to discover if his death was the result of an attack. The mystery lifts a strange sequel. In Alelbourne there is a well-known for-tune-teller, Aladame Ghurka. who claims to have brought to the scaffold the infamous Gun Alley murderer, Colin Ross, | by relating to the police a il vision” she had of the committal of that crime. Air Thomson’s relatives had apparently consulted Aladame Ghurka in their efforts to trace the missing man and had used her reports as a spur to further search. It is now reported that Madame Ghurkft in the middle of last month informed the relatives that Air Thomson’s skeleton would be found “at the hill and downstream six miles.” This description fitted the place where the body was actually found. Madame now declares that Air Thomson was murdered by a man, who knew his hftbits, for the purpose of robbery. That part of her prophecy might never be proved correct or otherwise.