Mysteries and Hauntings: NSW & ACT

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However, I discovered one piece of evidence to support the rumour, a small mention in the Queanbeyan Age on September 4th, the day before three bodies were reportedly found in Canberra's Lake Burley Griffin.

"Reports circulating late yesterday that the lid of a coffin had been found in the west basin of Lake Burley Griffin, near the Australian National University were confirmed today," the article reads.

Let’s check out Lake Burley Griffin, 12 km away.



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"I have planned a city that is not like any other in the world. I have planned it not in a way that I expected any government authorities in the world would accept. I have planned an ideal city – a city that meets my ideal of the city of the future." Walter Burley Griffin 1876 – 1937

The Lake Burley Griffin is an artificial lake named after Walter Burley Griffin, who was the architect of Canberra city. Due to the political disagreements and financial crisis spurred by Great Depression and World War II, the construction of the lake didn’t take off for nearly 50 years. But once its construction began, the large lake was finally completed within 4 years on 17th October, 1964.

It is hard to imagine Canberra without the sparkling centrepiece of Lake Burley Griffin.

But have you ever wondered what was there before the lake?



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Following the arrival of Commonwealth surveyors in 1909, Acton Settlement was to become Canberra's first ‘suburb'. It remained the administrative and social centre of the city for the next forty years.

The area included farmland, two golf clubs, a racecourse, fifteen workers cottages, a riding school, a swimming hole, a riverside tourist park, sports fields and playgrounds, a plant nursery, and most importantly, a close-knit and vibrant community. With the creation of Lake Burley Griffin after the Molonglo River was dammed, much of this early history was lost.

Here’s a map to get a better idea.

http://www.sunkenstories.com/places-map.htm

However, I found some interesting reports of a possible cemetery still beneath Lake Burley Griffin.



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The anonymous “Old Identity” writing to the Queanbeyan Age in the early 1930s mentions a burial ground at Acton, with at least in the 1870s "the outline of five graves plain to see along with a few posts remaining. The old Canberry Homestead, later known as Acton House was at one time used as a bank.

Another later letter to the newspaper details a burial plot containing "dozens of people" not far from the Molonglo Bridge but having had its fence destroyed in the late 1860s. It is possible that this Molonglo Bridge Cemetery is the same as the Acton Cemetery since the bridge over the river at Acton near Lennox Crossing was called Molonglo Bridge. The nearby Commonwealth Avenue Bridge has now replaced the Molonglo Bridge. Today there is no trace of the Acton/Molonglo Bridge cemetery whose location is most probably under the water of Lake Burley Griffin.

I also discovered Canberra’s first ghost sighting, which I personally believe is linked to Acton Cemetery.



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CANBERRA'S FIRST GHOST APPARITION SEEN BY CITIZENS

Canberra, September 5, 1930:— With the political crisis transferred to Melbourne, Canberra's only excitement today was its first ghost story. While crossing Commonwealth Bridge across the Molonglo River, two residents were horrified to hear unearthly noises from the river bank 25 feet below, and presently they saw dimly in the moonlight a dark, unearthly shape rising as if from the stream, it peered at them eerily, and then vanished.

The story of this apparition having been seen by two reputable citizens, who, however, have not been identified, has caused quite a sensation. When the police received the report they brutally suggested that the spectre was simply a startled horse, which had lain down on the bank in repletion after a meal from the succulent grass on the river flats.



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Here’s another clue from a reliable source.

“Over the years the ACT Government has hauled a range of strange things out of the Lake Burley Griffin, such as cash registers, cars, wallets, concrete slabs and even coffins,” says Constable LeLievre who worked for many years with the Police Diving Squad.

Were the coffins found by the Police Diving Squad from Riverside Cemetery or the alleged Acton Cemetery?

The mystery remains unsolved, however, there’s been many reports of a strange “beast” lurking in Lake Burley Griffin.



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The ACT Government refuses to accept or even consider that there is a beast in the lake and has turned down requests by several local fishing enthusiasts to place a bounty on the capture of an 'unidentified beast in the lake'.

Since it was built in the early 1960s, many Canberrans have speculated at what may lurk in the murky waters of Lake Burley Griffin.

'Its wake was 30 foot long and almost half a foot wide,' says 47-year-old English tourist Mark Dalton. Mark, a London-based sales executive, saw the wake of a large unidentified creature in the lake in April 2000.

‘What could make a wake that big it sent a shiver down my spine,' recalls Mark. 'Upon seeing it, I turned to my mate Nigel to see if he was seeing it too - nothing usually phases him, but he looked totally freaked out.



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In fact Nigel Lambert, a 50-year-old Canberra carpenter is still coming to terms with what he and his mate saw while walking around a walking path near the National Art Gallery.

At about 10.30 am on Sunday morning, 16 April 2000, Nigel claims that there was a strange 'phew' noise that made him look towards the middle of the lake. 'The lake was flat, it was like a mirror, and then all of a sudden this freaky wake started forming about 70 metres offshore"

Nigel says there was no logical explanation for what he saw: "There were no boats in the area and no fish in the lake could make a wake that big. It's changed my life. I have never seen something that is so inexplicable.'

This unusual encounter was not the first reported sighting of a strange water monster in Lake Burley Griffin.



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In 1886, some horsemen came across a strange creature while fording the Molonglo River frightening it away with a chower of stones; and in 1927 a Queanbeyan resident saw an animal like a big cow basking on the side of the river before it slithered into the water. He noted its 'rear end had fins, but no feet.'



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In the months after the sighting by Dalton and Lambert, there were five more independent reports of similar creatures lurking in the depths of the lake. Probably the best sighting was experienced by Emma Hodge and her mother Mary Murray, who were walking their dog Remul around the lake's foreshore early one winter's Saturday morning in the late 1990s.

‘This loud splash came from the water; when we looked out we saw an eel-like creature about the width of a telegraph pole gliding on the surface - it was about two metres long,' Mary recalls.

'Remul went crazy and barked uncontrollably for almost five minutes. Something strange was definitely in the lake that morning,' the normally sceptical Emma, who was only 21 years old at the time of the sighting, confesses. Although Emma and Mary believe they may have witnessed the famed 'Burley Beast'.



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Local identity Eric Christo has been fishing Lake Burley Griffin for several decades. While fishing for carp one afternoon in mid-August in the late 1990s, he got what he thought was a big bite. He let the line go loose and then tight and then it really heaved the line', almost pulling him into the water. Eric's 50 pound breaking strain line then snapped and there was a 'humungous' splash in the water.

'It was too big a splash to be made by a carp; I reckon it was the Burley Beast,' says Eric. 'The lake is bigger than most people realise, Lake Burley Griffin in fact covers 664 hectares, has 40 kilometres of foreshore and is 18 metres deep at its deepest point,' says Eric.

Eric believes that construction work at the time of his sighting on the remote eastern Lake Foreshore may have flushed something out of the reeds. 'Twelve years ago people used to say there was a monster in there, I laughed it off as mistaken identity of a big fish. But after my experience I'm not sure anymore. You've really got to wonder what is out there.'

However, Lake Burley Griffin has one more mystery.



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Canberra is a prime suspect for subterranean spooks. There are many stories of a tunnel running beneath Lake Burley Griffin from Old Parliament House to the Department Defence.

When Lisa Styles was 17, someone told her about a hidden tunnel that ran beneath Lake Burley Griffin to the Department of Defence. "They told me they had been in it, in a little cart that ran along a train track," she said. "They'd been blindfolded and taken from Old Parliament House to the Department Defence, but I'm not sure I believe them." While she had her doubts, the Belconnen teacher has wondered about the tunnel for over 30 years.

Is there any evidence of a tunnel beneath Lake Butler Griffin?

Indeed there is.



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But it is a service tunnel used for sending messages in metal evlinders whooshed through pipes by compressed air. These Lamson tubes were also connected to the General Post Office and what was then the Government Printing Office in Kingston.

Since we’re close to the Old Parliament House, let’s go there.



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A famous old building right in the middle of town, which served as Australia's Parliament House for over 60 years, is Old Parliament House (OPH).

In 1988, it was made redundant when a shiny new slab of concrete and marble engulfing the hill directly behind it was opened by the Queen. Ever since then the expansive monolith that is New Parliament House has cast a shadow over its predecessor, with a sparkling silver flagpole holding up a flag the size of a couple of buses, thrust so high up into the air you can see it from just about anywhere in Canberra.

Like many of Canberra's older government buildings, OPH is an imposing stately construction. It stares down with its stern façade, demanding respect and looking like a massive headstone for a grave full of secrets. Some of those secrets are regularly made public as the National Archives of Australia releases batches of documents that have passed their 30-year embargo, but there are other secrets - supernatural forces - lurking in OPH.



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Today OPH serves partly as the Museum of Australian Democracy, with various galleries occupying some of the old parliamentary rooms. During the day, you could walk through the museum and see plenty of well-known faces, but after dark, the faces staring back at you might not be so familiar. Most reports of ghostly goings on in OPH come from those who work there during the witching hours - security guards and cleaners.



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