Grass Widow
Elizabeth Gold ran across the tennis court with a bullet in her breast. She was trying to escape her lover called Russell Snodgrass. This was 1897, and the period gown wasn’t helping her dash one jot.
The trouble started a year before, in the gold town of Coolgardie, when her first husband, Captain Charles Gold died of a burst appendix. Elizabeth was grief-stricken. Snodgrass, a neighbour, married to Mrs Snodgrass in fact, gave the widow succour, too much succour in hindsight, and the two became lovers.
But Snodgrass was the jealous type. He couldn’t countenance his young mistress attending a charity ball in honour of her captain’s death, so he leapt from the shrubs and blam, right in the breast.
The second shot pierced the nurse’s skull. She fell like a stone in the doubles court. Snodgrass rued his rashness immediately, and sent a bullet through his own brain. The two lay cross-like on the lawn.
A century later, the murderer and his victim lie 20 metres apart, in Coolgardie cemetery, with the explorer Ernest Giles in between. Alternatively, if you chance on this gold town on May 31, legend says you can see Mrs Gold in white, flouncing on the old hospital’s tennis court.
[Cemetery is west of town. Mrs Gold is grave C-60, down from Mr Giles, near the ornate anchor on your left. The killer is D-87.]
So what other yarns are attached to tombstones across the continent? If you happen to know a remarkable tale linked to a gravesite, drop us a deadline.