The film-makers from Geerlings Digital Moments have completed their short film on notorious local bushranger Thomas Witton.
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The film gives a definitive account of Witton's murderous movements in 1840 as well as postulating a possible final resting place for the villain underneath the courthouse laneway.
This is done by cleverly superimposing the layout of the former jail walls onto the current site.
The film called The Ghost of the Goulburn Courthouse, can be viewed on Youtube at https://www.geerlingsdigitalmoments.com.au/videos
Whitton was part of a gang of bushrangers called 'The Bathurst Mob' who terrorised the district in the 1830s, holding up stores, raiding homesteads and having wild shootouts with farmers and police.
Whitton was captured and hanged in Goulburn in 1840.
His body was originally buried beside the gallows in the courthouse grounds, but it was relocated when a new jail was built on the site in the 1850s.
They found his remains and interred him inside the walls of the new jail. This jail was demolished in the 1880s to make way for the current courthouse and Post Office.
By super-imposing maps of the old jail onto the current site, the Geerlings postulate that the laneway behind the courthouse appears to be a likely sport for the final resting place of Whitton.
The Geerlings team travel around Australia researching interesting moments in our history, especially in rural or regional areas, and capturing it on film. A favourite subject of theirs is bushrangers, and they have made films on Frank Gardiner and Ben Hall.
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