MEGAscene • Issue 5 - 2016
SA PARANORMAL
Words and Photos by Allen Tiller Highercombe Hotel Museum Every year I have the pleasure of visiting locations haunted locations around Australia. 2015 was no different, with investigations at the Boggo Road Gaol in Queensland, Geelong Gaol, Beechworth Lunatic Asylum in Victoria and a return to Woodford Academy in New South Wales. In South Australia, the journey has taken in Old Adelaide Gaol, The Cornucopia Hotel in Wallaroo, investigations in Willunga, Kapunda, Gladstone and Edinburgh, but one of the more interesting locations for me this year has been a small scale investigation in a historic location, the Highercombe Hotel Museum in Tea Tree Gully.
Highercombe Hotel Museum
In 1853 when the Highercombe Hotel was built in the town of “Steventon”, now known as Tea Tree Gully, the population was of a reasonable size, but not one big enough to support the Highercombe Hotel and the Tea Tree Gully Inn which stood across the road. The Highercombe Hotel had a short lived existence as a local pub, closing its doors as a hotel only 24 years after opening. The Tea Tree Gully Hotel became a major stopping point for stage coaches and horse riders after the main road in the area was diverted right past its front door. The northern side of the Highercombe Hotel building served as the local post office and postmasters residence from 1879 until 1963. From 1875 until 1934 the southern side of the building was lived in by the head teacher of the Tea Tree Gully Public School. After this, Highercombe Hotel dining room for 20 years from 1930, the southern side was rented to the Hughes family as a private In 2015 the site has been renamed “The residence. Tea Tree Gully Heritage Museum” and is run entirely by volunteers. For a small period in the 1960’s the building served as the library and office for the Tea Whilst I have found no deaths in my current Tre Gully Council, until it was bequeathed to research on the building that could lend the National Trust in 1967, when it’s life as a credence to a possible haunting, the building museum was imagined. 54