Join other amateur sleuths this Sunday (18 th ) on the trail of the crime that has intrigued
people on the far south coast for over 140 years – the 'Bermagui Mystery'.
Members of Narooma and Bermagui Historical Societies and Montreal Goldfield
Management Committee will retrace this mystery from Bermagui to Mystery Bay, a total
of five stops.
Five men disappeared from Bermagui on Sunday 10 October 1880. Their bodies were
never found, only their small boat deliberately wrecked near the area now known as
Mystery Bay.
They were Government Geological Surveyor Lamont Young, sent to check out the new
Montreal goldfields and other gold finds in the area, his assistant Max Schneider, and
three men from Batemans Bay – Tom Towers, owner of the boat, William Lloyd
and Daniel Casey. Their disappearance quickly became known as ‘the Bermagui
Mystery’.
This expedition starts at the headland overlooking Bermagui River promptly at 10am
Sunday 18 September ending at Mystery Bay picnic shelter about 1pm . Bring lunch; car sharing is recommended. Maps will be issued.
“This will be the fifth time we have held this event and amazingly often we have something new to consider,” said Narooma Historical Society President Laurelle Pacey.
“There was some confusion, even contradiction in the original records about where the boat was actually wrecked. Just what happened and who was responsible for their disappearance remains a mystery.”
Bermagui Historical Society Archivist Dave Cotton said the police investigation at the time was a shambles. “Initially it was thought they had drowned so police made no attempt to secure the wreck site which was visited by many people over the following days, compromising the site,” he said.
Above: Thomas Towers’ small green fishing boat was found on a rock shelf near Mystery Bay on Sunday afternoon, 10 October 1880. It was the only evidence for one of the south coast’s most curious unsolved crimes, the disappearance of Government surveyor Lamont Young and four others from Bermagui. Town and Country Journal, 21 April 1883.