History records an area west of Brisbane, Queensland, where mysterious disappearances were common in the nineteenth century. The triangle of vanishings includes the Ipswich suburbs of today Goodna and Wacol, or the area of Woogaroo as it used to be called. I told a version of this story live on West Bremer Radio.

The word Woogaroo means shady or cool. The Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum at Wacol was opened there in 1865, and the name later became Wolston Park and today is The Park Centre for Mental Health.

The first building originally housed fifty-seven patients, and just thirty years later there were four thousand patients there. It was the biggest asylum in Australia. There were four public inquiries in just its first four years. Overcrowding, prison-like conditions with gaol wardens, and people being admitted for inexplicable reasons, were commonplace. But even before the asylum, strange things happened there, and here are just a few.

It was at Woogaroo in 1850 that a woman living near Mr. Daniel Young’s house there simply disappeared. She left Ipswich to return to her home at Woogaroo, which was a trip of about nine miles, but enroute she vanished. A large party of horsemen from Ipswich went in search of her. Suspicion of foul play fell on her husband, who was apprehended and locked-up in the Ipswich watch-house. After he had been incarcerated for two days, his wife spookily re-appeared at their Woogaroo home after having been missing for eight days.

In 1854 Daniel Young himself vanished while going to Woogaroo. He was dressed in dark tweed trousers, Panama hat, and a white puffy shirt when he left Ipswich on horseback headed for home, but neither he nor his horse were ever seen again. The Brisbane mounted volunteers were unremitting in their search but without success. Young’s wife Jane went to the unusual extent of advertising a £50 reward for any information solving the mystery. But within weeks Jane herself was dead, the Brisbane-Ipswich road was redirected through their Woogaroo block, and their house and fences were in flames.

In 1857 a fourteen-year-old boy named Edward Sharp was employed onboard the steamer Brisbane that carried passengers and cargo between Ipswich and Brisbane. It was at the Woogaroo reach of the Brisbane Rover that the boy vanished from the vessel, and nothing more was ever seen of him. Master of the steamer was Captain George Patullo. A few years earlier Patullo had been the engineer aboard the Sovereign (picture top of page) when she was wrecked in Moreton Bay. Of the fifty-four crew and passengers on board, Patullo was one of only ten who survived.

On Boxing Day 1858, a German man called Peter Schick set-off from a South Brisbane hotel heading to Ipswich. He went with another man who was showing him the way. At a waterhole at Woogaroo the pair stopped for a rest, and Mr Matthew Goggs passed by coming the other way. He was the owner of the Wolston estate and had recently built one of Queensland’s few terraced houses on Brisbane Street in Ipswich. 

As Goggs approached he saw that Schick’s head was being held under water by his travelling companion, but this ceased as soon as Mr. Goggs arrived. Goggs continued on his way but grew increasingly concerned by what he’d seen, so told a young man coming the other way. When the man arrived at the spot he found Schick lying there dead. But by the time the police were called to Woogaroo, the body had vanished.

Three days later, the steamer Brisbane skippered by Captain Patullo was heading back up the river. That’s when Patullo saw a ghostly figure in a gully at Mount Ommaney, it was eerily howling and waving its arms. It was the German man Schick who had returned from the dead at Woogaroo.

Not long afterwards, Captain Patullo himself died suddenly-and-unexpectedly aboard his vessel.

The disappearances may have reduced when the asylum was built at Woogaroo, but they still went on including with the Goodna outrage of 1899. Ipswich’s own Bermuda Triangle is anything but shady and cool. It’s a very spooky place.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON WEST BREMER RADIO.

Photo credits:
The Sovereign Side Paddle Steamer moments before disaster – Tales from the Quarterdeck, courtesy North Stradbroke Island Museum.
The former Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum at Wacol – ABC 2016, supplied by Kathleen Mary Fallon.
Matthew Goggs – Wolston Farmhouse Facebook post 2017, photo from National Trust collection.