Over eight thousand kilometres from home and I discovered a ghost that brought me straight back to Australia. I told a version of this story on radio 4WK.

I was in in Beijing staying in a brand-new hotel called the Skytel Hotel. It’s just twenty minutes from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. I found that room 612 was haunted.

Selina from Parkinson in Brisbane swore that at night a lamp in the room would turn itself on, and a smoking smell would then waft through the space. The second night it happened again, and she couldn’t sleep, too scared to even open her eyes.

In her travelling group was a retired Queensland prison governor who would be considered a reliable source. The governor also believed the room to be haunted and said that it needed to be “saged” which is the burning of sage to cleanse the place of unwanted spirits.

In the same group of friends was Liang from Blue Mountain Heights in Toowoomba, Queensland. I shared a rickshaw with him.

Liang is a doctor at the Toowoomba Hospital. The very first person he certified as dead, he checked the body for signs of life, there was nothing, no life at all. Then suddenly the corpse took a deep breath and expelled a foul-smelling odour. Liang jumped as the body gave its last dying breath.

Where Liang works at Toowoomba Hospital is one of the most historic locations on the Darling Downs. Building of the hospital began in the 1870s based on designs by Queensland’s colonial architect Francis Stanley. Stanley’s younger brother Captain Henry Stanley served in the Queensland Volunteer Artillery and was subject of an inquiry relating his persecution of band members the Jeffcoat brothers and their trombones.

Liang said that he’s been told by a number of nurses that the former nurses’ quarters, now called Cossart House, is haunted. But there’s a whole lot more to the history of the building than that.

Cossart House is named after an early matron Ethel Cossart whose ghost would probably have plenty to complain about.

Ethel’s family had been suffering bad luck for years. Back in the 1870s when the Toowoomba Hospital was being planned, her cousin Henry Cossart was squashed and killed by a tree two miles from the Highfields sawmill. Co-incidentally, this happened very close to where Liang lives today.

At thirty-six years of age Ethel married a rotter called Norman Smalley. He’d been convicted a number of times for things like illegal betting and stealing whiskey. This was his second marriage after the first time he’d twice been seen committing “misconduct” by a neighbour peeking through the curtains.

In 1894 Ethel’s uncle, another Henry Cossart who had been successfully sued for child maintenance, was found guilty of the serious crime of perjury and imprisoned for four months.

And then there Ethel’s father George Cossart. Mr Cossart was the well-known Toowoomba saddler in Russell Street, and chairman of the Toowoomba Hospital board. He collapsed and died during a meal at home, and nurse Ethel could do nothing other than watch her father take his last dying breath, and possibly expel a foul-smelling odour.

So even though I was over eight thousand kilometres away in China, what I found was a ghost story and Australian history that shows there’s always a lot more behind places like Toowoomba Hospital than meets the eye.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON RADIO 4WK.

Photo credits:
Sister Steinhart and Nurse Cossart Ipswich General Hospital 1940s – Picture Ipswich.
Liang meets Harold in Beijing, 2024 – Harold Peacock.
Colonial Architect Francis Drummond Greville Stanley – State Library of Queensland.
Nurse Ethel Cossart Ipswich General Hospital, 1940s – Picture Ipswich.
Cossart House former Nurses home at Toowoomba Hospital, 1976 – Richard Stringer State Library of Queensland.
George Cossart – Toowoomba Chronicle and Darling Downs Gazette, 7th June 1930, page 4.