Two and the Mystery of the Glowing Cross

Two and the Mystery of the Glowing Cross
To Louth.
By visiting the pub/shop we find a great free camping spot on the Darling River in Louth. Only one other set of campers and they are metres away - perfect. In the pub, while D chatted to anyone and everyone, I was drawn to a newspaper article on the wall. I read about the founder of Louth and the monument he built for (to?) his wife when she died. Apparently just as the sun goes down, the cross on the plinth of the monument sends out a glow/shaft of light. On the anniversary of her death (18 August 1868), this light lands on the house where she lived. It hits a different part of the town every day. This info was too good not to investigate further.
The next evening we decided to go in search of ‘the light’. At the cemetery we see the monument consists of a tall column with a cross on top. The epitaph describes name as "… a virtuous wife and indulgent mother". Interesting word, indulgent. In 1848 it was OK to call a mother indulgent, however nowadays is it not frowned on to be too indulgent? On the other hand indulgence then and now, I am sure, are two very different things…
She was 42 when she died. My age. Her husband founded Louth on the Darling River, and named it after County Louth, Ireland. It became a major port for the cotton going down river to the Murray. What a life she would have experienced.
Anyway, back to the hunt for ‘The Glow’. We waited as the sun started to reach the horizon – but no glow or beam of light appeared. I felt like Indiana Jones waiting for the beam of light to land on the map room, to show the Ark’s hiding place. Needless to say, unlike the film, nothing happened. Starting to feel a little foolish we tried to estimate how the angle of the cross and the direction of the sun would reflect light. After 10 minutes or so, we decided to drive up and down a dirt track in front of the cemetery, to see if we could catch the light. Clearly geometry was not our best subject, because, to our consternation, the sun was getting alarmingly low in the sky, with no hint of a glow, spark of light – just granite.
The sun set…
I felt like a bit of a banana standing with Darren in the middle of a dusty paddock, with the mossies at sunset, willing a piece of granite to glow, while curtains twitched in the couple of houses nearby.
"Pub?" I asked. "Pub" confirmed Darren.