Episode 67 | What the Water Took -The Mystery of Margaret Clement and the Tullaree Swamp

Margaret Clement’s life began in extraordinary privilege. Born into a wealthy Gippsland family, she travelled the world before settling with her sister Jeannie at Tullaree — a grand homestead surrounded by thousands of acres of rich South Gippsland farmland.

But beneath that farmland was something waiting to return.

As the family fortune dwindled, the drains failed and the water crept back across Tullaree. Paddocks disappeared, roads became impassable and the sisters who had once lived with servants and chauffeurs became increasingly isolated inside their ageing homestead.

The newspapers would come to know them as the Old Ladies of the Swamp.

Then Jeannie died.

Margaret stayed.

And in May 1952, she vanished.

What followed was an enormous search, decades of suspicion and a mystery filled with strange deaths, disputed money, changing wills, possible buried gold — and a piece of evidence left inside Tullaree that makes Margaret’s disappearance particularly difficult to explain.

For this week’s episode, I presented Megan with the mystery of Margaret Clement piece by piece and asked her to approach the evidence as our completely unbiased investigator.

I, unfortunately, was not unbiased.

But we already know that about me.

Megan, however, was supposed to be our voice of reason. Calm. Objective. Evidence-based. Entirely unmoved by my increasingly suspicious tone and strategically timed reveals.

She believed me far too easily.

At several points I essentially said, “Now, I’m not saying this means anything…” while very clearly suggesting that it meant EVERYTHING, and Detective Megan dutifully added it to the imaginary crime board.

In her defence, the evidence gets pretty bloody interesting.

So this week: I bring the mystery, Megan gets the detective badge, and together we attempt to work out:

What happened to Margaret Clement?

After Jeannie died, Margaret was increasingly alone at Tullaree.

It was around this time that neighbours Stanley and Esme Livingstone became part of her life. They took Margaret shopping, invited her for meals and helped her maintain some connection with the outside world.

And when Margaret vanished in May 1952, Stanley wasn't standing on the sidelines. He reported her missing

Police, neighbours, volunteers and an aboriginal tracker descended on Tullaree, wading through the swamp, searching surrounding farmland, creeks and rivers and dragging wells on the property. The search continued for months, eventually involving hundreds of people.

And among those searchers was Stanley Livingstone — the neighbour who had befriended Margaret, helped her in her final years, and would soon find himself at the centre of the mystery surrounding her disappearance.

Because Stanley wasn't just Margaret's neighbour.

By the time she disappeared, he had a significant financial connection to Tullaree.