More lost treasures
By Jackal
The hills of South Gippsland have been attracting treasure hunters for more than a century, with the coastline and countryside around the small town of Inverloch the focal point. First there was the search for thousands of gold sovereigns stolen by Martin Weiberg (also Wiberg) from the S.S. Avoca in 1877 and believed by many to still lie hidden in dense scrub close to the town. Weiberg, the ship’s carpenter, stole 5,000 coins from the strongroom then left the sea shortly after and settled on the Tarwin River near Inverloch. When a young girl employed by Weiberg found a large number of sovereigns hidden in bars of soap, she notified the police who had been suspicious of Weiberg but lacked proof Weiberg was arrested and after volunteering to show where he had hidden about 1,700 of the coins, escaped into the bush and remained at large for about five months before being recaptured in May 1879. He was tried and sentenced to five year’s imprisonment. Weiberg was released on the 4th of June, 1883, and from this point his movements are shrouded in mystery. One story claims he was drowned while attempting to row out to a yacht anchored in Waratah Bay; another says he escaped to Europe with the remaining sovereigns and finished his days as a successful businessman. The search for his treasure has attracted a great deal of publicity over the years but an even more valuable hoard supposedly smuggled out of China by opium trader John Nicholson, has escaped notice.
Nicholson’s grandson, Donald, started searching for the treasure, reputedly gold and jewels, at Screw Creek on the outskirts of the town in 1939, and the early in 1940, the Australian Army supplied 12 men to help him survey and dig into the hillside. A vault with an armed guard had even been prepared at the Commonwealth Bank at Melbourne to take the treasure, however the Army withdrew its men, which probably had something to do with the Second World War getting underway! Donald Nicholson remained on the banks of Screw Creek, which winds through dense scrub to the sea at Andersons Inlet, and when he died in 1954, the search was continued by his widow and two other elderly women. When asked why his grandfather didn’t pass on the exact location of the treasure, which grew over the years from 10,000 sovereigns to gold and jewels worth £200 million, Nicholson claimed he was a Presbyterian lay preacher in his younger days but when he changed his faith and joined the Seventh Day Adventists, the family disowned him.
Subsequently he returned to the Presbyterian Church and his father, who apparently had been shown the site, was on his way to Inverloch from Western Australia in 1940 when he dropped dead. Although Donald Nicholson never discovered the secret site, he firmly believed the story of the vast fortune right to the end. And the story was this: John Nicholson was a wealthy shipper in the late 1800s. He and three other Australians smuggled food to China during an internal struggle for power there and were paid in gold. When the Chinese ran out of sovereigns, they began paying with jewels looted from temples.
An illustration of Martin Weiberg’s escape from police. (State Library of Victoria)
When the food running ceased, the fortune was locked in a steel vault buried in the hill at Inverloch. One by one the partners died, finally leaving John Nicholson as the sole guardian of the fortune. Before he died, John Nicholson told his son the money was not to be touched until young Don, then only a lad, reached 21. If the father died before Don’s 21st birthday, the money was his. When Don Nicholson was 20, he quarrelled with his father who told him to find the treasure himself. Since the 1950s, several syndicates have continued the search, all without success. Stories of hidden treasure near Inverloch do not end there. In 1984 a few local enthusiasts conducted a clandestine hunt for bullion supposedly buried on Townsend Bluff, the headland overlooking Anderson Inlet. They were so confident of success that representatives were sent to Melbourne to negotiate a deal over its ownership with the State Government. Nothing ever came of the venture, at least nothing that was made public.