Every Sydneysider who has done the long drive down the Hume and across to Wagga has heard of it – the big two-storey house on the hill above Junee that calls itself "Australia's most haunted house". I've wanted to write up Monte Cristo for a long time, and when I sat down to do it I found the story had moved on. The house shut its doors to visitors in November 2024 after the death of Olive Ryan, and as I write this (October 2026) it's still on the market. So this post is a bit of history, a bit of folklore, and a straight answer on what you can and can't do there today.
Monte Cristo Homestead, Junee, in June 2009. Photo: Bidgee, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
The Crawleys of Junee
The man behind the house was Christopher William Crawley. His 1910 obituary calls him "the pioneer of Junee" and says he was a native of Liverpool, N.S.W., the third son of a Dr Crawley. He grew up around Tumut, worked nine years for Mr A. Watson of Adelong, then took up a selection on the Murrumbidgee before selecting land beside the little village of Junee in 1875 (the Junee Council's heritage notes put his local land purchase at January 1876, just after the railway was routed through). Christopher married Elizabeth Carr at Tumut in 1862, and they went on to raise seven children, four girls and three boys.
The railway made him. When the Great Southern line reached Junee in 1878 there wasn't much more than Crawley's hotel, George Dobbins' railway store next door and a few slab and bark huts. As the town grew, so did Crawley's money and his land. The family first lived in a small brick cottage built in 1876, and that cottage still stands behind the big house. It was later used as the kitchen and servants' quarters.
Junee Junction Railway Station, circa 1890. The railway was the making of Junee and of Christopher Crawley. Photographer unknown; original held by the Junee Broadway Museum. Public domain (PD-Australia), via Wikimedia Commons.
The House
The new house went up on the hill in 1884–85. You'll see 1884 in some sources and 1885 in others, and both are fair. Junee Council's heritage notes say "no money was spared". The bricks were fired on site and laid on a dry stone foundation, the ground-floor walls are 18 inches of solid brick and the upper walls 9 inches, and the upstairs ceilings are 12 feet high, lined with locally milled cypress pine, with lath and plaster below. The council sums it up nicely as "a late Victorian house of pleasing line and proportions" that keeps the symmetry of the earlier colonial houses, with just the plasterwork and cast iron lace adding "the necessary touch of opulence so loved by the Victorians".
It was a lively house in its day. The girls were musical (Lillian composed a schottische for a ball at Government House in 1895), the boys went to Riverview, St Joseph's and St Patrick's, Goulburn, and of the seven children one became a doctor, one a solicitor and one a schoolteacher. Christopher died at Monte Cristo on 14 December 1910, of blood poisoning, aged 69. Elizabeth stayed on for another 23 years. The story goes that she left the house only twice in all that time and turned an upstairs box room into a chapel. She died there on 12 August 1933, aged 91 or 92 depending on whose figures you trust.
Empty Years and the Ryans
The last of the Crawleys moved out in 1948. The contents were sold off, and for the next fifteen years or so the house sat empty on its hill, with only the odd caretaker, while vandals and the weather went to work on it. By the early 1960s it was in such a state that, according to the Australian Women's Weekly, the local Catholic Church turned it down as a gift.
Enter Reg Ryan, a Wagga-born tailor, who first spotted the house in 1955 and spent about eight years trying to buy it. He finally got it in 1963 and moved in with his wife Olive and their two little girls in June that year. The Women's Weekly says there was no water, no electricity and no glass in the windows, and they had two bentwood chairs and air beds for furniture. (The purchase price is quoted as £1,000 in recent local papers but £2,000 in the 1976 Women's Weekly, so take your pick.) Reg salvaged cast iron from old buildings around the district to put the verandahs back, and he matched the new wallpapers as closely as he could to the scraps left hanging on the walls. For years it doubled as an antiques showroom. By 1976 the Women's Weekly was already calling it "a museum of some renown", open for inspection every day, with four-year-old Lawrence entertaining visitors with stories of the family's ghosts ("luckily friendly"). The family's own history dates the formal museum to 1986, and the guided night ghost tours to the early 1990s (the Junee Bulletin says 1993). Reg died in 2014, aged 80. Olive died on 14 November 2024, the day before her 94th birthday, after 61 years at Monte Cristo.
The memorial to Reg Ryan at Monte Cristo, photographed in October 2020. Photo: Doug butler, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
On heritage: Monte Cristo is a locally listed heritage item, number I17 on Schedule 5 of the Junee Local Environmental Plan 2012. As far as I could find, it isn't on the State Heritage Register, whatever some websites claim.
The Stories
Now for the part that brings the crowds. I'm telling these the way they've been told over the years, by the Ryan family, on the tours and in the papers. They're folklore, and you can make of them what you like.
The Trove team points out that the haunting talk really starts with Christopher's sudden death in 1910. The cast of ghosts has grown over the years. The Junee Independent counted ten of them in 2026: Christopher himself; Elizabeth, said to be the one visitors most often feel, usually upstairs; a baby granddaughter, Ethel, said to have been dropped down the stairs by a nursemaid who claimed she was pushed (the Trove team notes a grandchild, Ethel, did die in the house at ten months old); a maid said to have fallen from the balcony; a stable boy burnt to death when his straw mattress caught fire; a housekeeper's son, injured as a child, who was said to have been kept chained in the house for years; a caretaker shot dead in 1961; and a few nameless servants, including one the tours called the "Hat Man".
The Ryans' own favourite was the night not long after they moved in. With no electricity on and only a single kerosene lamp to their name, they came home to find light streaming from every window, and it went dark as soon as they reached the gate. Craig Tansley of the Herald stayed the night in 2007 with a group of fellow journalists and admitted that he "couldn't wait to get out of that creepy place". Two of his group bolted to a motel in town before bedtime. On the other side of the ledger, the Trove team reminds us that the Crawley children went on to lead full, happy lives, which doesn't quite fit the house of horrors. As with the old-timers' yarns about Sydney, it pays to keep a pinch of salt handy.
The house has been on the telly more than once: A Big Country in 1977, Getaway in 1992, Scream Test, Ghost Hunters International and My Ghost Story. It also starred in the 2012 film Muirhouse.
Visiting Today
Visiting today – Monte Cristo Homestead, 1 Homestead Lane, Junee NSW 2663
- Daytime house tours: Not running. The official website says the homestead is "CLOSED until further notice". It has been closed since Olive Ryan's death in November 2024. Before then it was open for self-guided tours on Saturdays, Sundays and NSW public holidays, 10am–3pm, with no booking needed. I couldn't find adult, child or family entry prices published anywhere.
- Ghost tours / night tours: Not running. The last price I could find on the official site (2023) was $195 per person for the Saturday night Dinner, Ghost Tour, Bed & Breakfast, starting at 6pm, with a $50 non-refundable deposit. A booking website still shows "Adult $195" but has no dates listed. Treat that as out of date.
- Overnight stays: None on offer. The overnight stay only ever came as part of the ghost-tour package, and that has stopped. I found no current B&B rooms or packages advertised.
- The future: The property has been for sale through Ray White Junee since November 2025, now at $1.9 million, and was still listed when I checked. The Monte Cristo name and the ghost tours are trademarked by Lawrence Ryan, who isn't selling with the house, so whether tours ever come back depends on who buys it.
- How to check: Look at montecristo.com.au and the Monte Cristo Facebook page for any reopening news. It's a private property, so please don't wander in.
Checked October 2026. Things may change if the house sells, so confirm before you go.
Junee is still worth the trip. The town's other old buildings are well worth a look too, starting with the 1883 railway station, the refreshment rooms, the roundhouse and the grand old pubs. And you can still see Monte Cristo up on its hill above the town, keeping an eye on things, just as Christopher Crawley intended.
Junee, circa 1910, the year Christopher Crawley died. Photographer unknown; original held by the Junee Broadway Museum. Public domain (PD-Australia), via Wikimedia Commons.
Sources
- Monte Cristo Homestead official website (current, seen 1 Oct 2026) – montecristo.com.au; archived versions: 10 June 2023, 9 October 2024
- Junee Shire Council, "Junee's Heritage Items" (archived 2007) – web.archive.org
- Junee Local Environmental Plan 2012, Schedule 5 – AustLII
- "Splendid restoration", The Australian Women's Weekly, 29 September 1976 – Trove
- "The Pioneers of Junee Junction – The late Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Crawley", Daily Advertiser (Wagga Wagga), 28 September 1936 – Trove
- Trove blog, "Tales of Australia's haunted buildings", 4 October 2024 – trove.nla.gov.au
- Christopher William Crawley memorial with transcribed 1910 obituaries – Find a Grave; family details – WikiTree
- The Monte Cristo Documentary, "The House" – montecristodoc.com
- Monte Cristo Homestead – Wikipedia
- Craig Tansley, "Daunted and perhaps even haunted", Sydney Morning Herald, 20 May 2007 – smh.com.au
- "Junee mourns as Monte Cristo matriarch, Olive Ryan, dies at 93", Junee Bulletin, 21 November 2024 – juneebulletin.com.au
- "End of an era: 'Monte Cristo' homestead listed for sale", Junee Bulletin, 6 November 2025 – juneebulletin.com.au
- "Monte Cristo Homestead listed for $1.9m after EOI ends", Junee Bulletin, 19 December 2025 – juneebulletin.com.au
- "Could ghost tours ever return to the famous Junee 'haunted' house?", Region Riverina, 20 November 2025 – regionriverina.com.au
- "Australia's Most Haunted House Remains on the Market", Junee Independent, 27 February 2026 – juneeindependent.com.au
- Sale listing, 1 Homestead Lane, Junee (Ray White Junee) – REIP portal
- Images: Wikimedia Commons – Category: Monte Cristo Homestead
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