Paranormal.com.au
Paranormal and Supernatural => Supernatural Portal => Topic started by: Headless2 on June 21, 2023, 01:34:11 AM
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When an intoxicated William Clarke was killed in 1842 after being hurled from his out-of-control dray along the road to Jerrabomberra, ACT, he was literally popped into a hole in a local paddock.
The discovery of what may have been his remains in 1991 revealed something more startling than just the undignified details of his death: it brought to light the previously forgotten first public burial place on the Limestone Plains.
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The skeleton was believed to be about 150 years old and since the early 1840s it had lain unknown and
undisturbed beneath the homes, businesses and parks that grew above and around it.
When unexpectedly unearthed during a storm-water drain excavation on April 22, 1991 at Florence Street, Oaks Estate, ACT, the unidentified remains revealed the lost location of the oldest known communal burial site following the arrival of Europeans in the Queanbeyan-Canberra region from the 1820s.
More often though, hurried bush burials were the order of the day and the first Europeans to die in the town were interred along the banks of the river and in the area that's now the Showground.
The Oaks Burial Ground was an otherwise unblessed, undesignated area in today's Oaks Estate. It was used from around 1838 until the opening of the official Queanbeyan Riverside Cemetery some eight years later.
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The only surviving record detailing its use is dated 1839: “An enclosed piece of ground, adjoining our Inn, was the principal burying ground, in which, at this time, seven or eight corpses were buried.”
The “Inn” was “The Oaks”, one of the earliest substantive constructions on the Limestone Plains and still standing on the banks of the Molonglo River since 1913 on the Canberra side of the railway line signifying the new boundary between Queanbeyan and the Federal Capital Territory.
It was built by the merchant Robert Campbell of Duntroon at a similar time the dead began to be interred in its nearby paddock. Along with serving as gatekeeper of the first graveyard and being the first pub (the Elmsall Inn), the stone homestead was shortly after occupied by the town's first doctor, William Hayley.
While it might be a natural conclusion that once they were beyond his help, patients were simply turfed out the back door to find their own way to eternity, in truth it would have been a matter of convenience in a primitive setting: “Some person dies and his friends select a place to bury his remains … a coffin was seldom made for the dead.”
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Placed beneath the ground there 20 years after the Cemetery had been consecrated, is recorded only as the “Indian Juggler”, the victim of a particularly gruesome murder.
In 1863, a young station-hand saw what seemed a solitary figure leaning against a tree in an isolated spot called Sawpit Gully, “two miles and a-half” from Googong, “near Queanbeyan”. On approach, it was an old coat swinging in the wind. Less innocently, further on, a blood-splattered shirt and scattered bones, “gnawed upon by wild dogs”. There was also a damaged human skull.
Ferried to Dr Hayley, it was declared a man, “aged about 40”, and the condition pointed to foul play - the body had suffered a number of wounds, inflicted by a sharp blade or similar instrument. Disturbingly, the fatal blow to the head, penetrating deep into the brain, had apparently been struck while the deceased was still alive.
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More than 12 months earlier, a fellow attached to a travelling East-Indian juggling troupe, known for their displays with knives and swords, mysteriously vanished soon after a performance at Queanbeyan's Harp Inn (Macquoid Street, site of the Leagues Motel today).
Two fellow performers, brothers Mahomet, Cassim and Abdallah, were tracked down at Goulburn. Billed as stars with Burton's Circus, they were charged with the murder of their compatriot, potentially the manager of the troupe, a fellow referred to as “Madhoul”.
Evidence presented at the one-day trial that the third “juggler” and the skeleton were one and the same was largely circumstantial but the verdict was guilty. The standard penalty for a capital crime was meted out: they were to hang.
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While apparently there was motive enough – it seems performance takings had also disappeared – leading Sydney newspapers decried it had not be proven beyond reasonable doubt that the young men were the culprits. They could also barely speak enough English to adequately defend themselves.
In the end, Abdallah, just 20, was spared, his sentence commuted to life behind bars. However Cassim, 27, ascended the gallows of the Goulburn Gaol on May 27, 1863, his end far from rapid, a factor attributed to his “acrobatic profession”.
Consigned to historic perpetuity as only the “Indian Juggler” and considered a “heathen” for his cultural differences, the found skull and bones were interred at the Oaks Burial Ground, the identity a mystery still.
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However, investigating police were presented with documentation which indicated that 44 persons were buried in close proximity to The Oaks Homestead between 1838 and 1863. Inquiries also were conducted with Mr Gordon Walsh, of Queanbeyan City Council, and Queanbeyan and District Historical Society.
Current Oaks Estate residents may sleep easier after learning that another six bodies were similarly excavated, and, interestingly, re-interred in the Gungahlin Cemetery.
Presumably this was because the Riverside Cemetery was by then closed for burials due to the somewhat treacherous nature of a river that could flood and wash away graves.
Oaks Estate is in ACT, right on the border, only 300 metres east is Riverside Cemetery in NSW, let’s go there.
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It's the oldest official public burial site in the region and while the Queanbeyan Riverside Cemetery is the final resting place for some of the area's most prominent citizens, it's more than just where they sleep the eternal sleep.
As with any town, the cemetery is a physical chronicle of its journey as well as a monument to its people and progress. Opened in 1846, while not as extensive as Sydney's Rookwood, the largest Victorian-era necropolis in the Southern Hemisphere, there's definitely more to Riverside than meets the eye.
Often thought to contain a mere few hundred gravesites, there's actually almost 4,000, including many unmarked. Each of the headstones has their own tale to tell. Stories of injustice, murder, madness and suicide are plentiful. This includes the first victim of a capital crime in the ACT, 11 month old Charles Porter, poisoned by his father, Bertram Porter in 1932.
And then there's the mysteries, involving both the seen and the unseen.
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Regularly do visitors report significant temperature differences in the one spot; produce any number of photos with unusual lights and orbs; tell tales of gates swinging open, apparently of their own volition; and even encounter shadowy figures along the fenceline, that disappear on approach.
In the mid-1970s, it was reported that council workers were very reluctant to dig graves there, apparently having to be “urged” to do so.
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Another of its anomalies include a number of markers that, for reasons unclear, are "out of alignment".
In the Christian tradition, bodies are buried with their feet pointing eastwards in order to allow them to rise more easily come Judgement Day. Outside this is relatively rare and usually reserved for the likes of those deemed "irretrievable sinners".
Most unusually, in Riverside Cemetery there's a single one that's "backwards". It belongs to Mrs Flora Blundell Snr and her 16-year-old daughter, also Flora, said to be the ghostly resident of Blundell's Cottage on the edge of Lake Burley Griffin. Why their small monument is so positioned remains unclear.
Here is a link to Kanacki’s story on Blundell’s Cottage.
https://www.paranormal.com.au/public/index.php/topic,11251.0.html
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Numerous graves were also placed outside the fenceline of the cemetery, indicating unconsecrated bounds. As was the norm in earlier times, this generally included those of Aboriginal and Chinese heritage, unbaptised babies, murderers and as they were then known, "lunatics", thought as they were to potentially be "possessed by the devil".
The picturesque river setting for the Riverside Cemetery has long proved something of a heaven and a hell, and the floods that have affected it over the years are some of its more commonly known peculiarities.
While many know of the infamous flood of 1974 in which numerous graves were washed away, the great flood of 1925 was worse. The most devastating in the town's history, it reached almost 11 metres, destroying the graceful Suspension Bridge of 1901, and even sweeping along with it a seven-roomed house. It also took as many as 100 graves.
It's a long standing mystery, which began in the days following the devastating 1974 Queanbeyan flood.
Did corpses from the Riverside Cemetery get washed down into Lake Burley Griffin?
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When a devastating flood hit the NSW border town of Queanbeyan in 1974, it submerged the main street, inundated the local caravan park, and washed out graves at the Riverside Cemetery. A rumour quickly spread: did the flood send corpses from the cemetery down the Queanbeyan and Molonglo Rivers, over the border into the Capital City and the recently filled Lake Burley Griffin?
Glen Takkenburg, put that decades old rumour to us.
"My father told me when he was growing up in Queanbeyan, the last floods washed out bodies in the cemetery," said Mr Takkenburg.
He wanted to know if there was any truth to the rumour, as well as whether all the bodies were accounted for.
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Reports of bodies and coffins exposed by the August 28 flood came from credible sources.
"It was absolutely tragic to see, coffins and bodies afloat, and I would say not one of the graves was left untouched," read an article in the Queanbeyan Age the next day.
When the floodwaters began to recede about a week later, police began "surveilling the river" for the remains of an estimated 50 washed out graves. The Canberra Times then reported that police had recovered three bodies from the Queanbeyan Riverside Cemetery but police immediately denied they were picked up from Lake Burley Griffin.
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Max Morton was an SES worker who was at the cemetery in the days after the flood. He recounted the "nightmare at the cemetery".
"When I got there you could see where the bank had washed away, and there was the end of a coffin sticking out of the mud, and there was a body laying in the water, caught on a tree. A full body," he said.
Mr Morton saw a police officer who was preparing to be lowered into the riverbed to retrieve the body. But by the time he was ready, it had drifted away.
"There were skulls and things, there were bones, because as he walked across the mud he was pushing the bones into the mud [to] hide them from sightseers," he said. Mr Morton said the ACT Police were sent the next day, with a boat to retrieve the body, and others.
But does he remember where the bodies were found? "No. Oaks Estate I believe, but I'm not sure."
If it was Oaks Estate, that's still a winding 12 kilometres to the mouth of Lake Burley Griffin.
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Finding out whether more remains washed into the lake is difficult. The cemetery was, and still is, crowded and poorly kept. Many plots are shared, and the majority of the 5,000 burials at Riverside Cemetery are in unmarked graves.
"It is current practice to leave fallen tombstones and not to embark on a full restoration of the cemetery," reads one sign on the grounds.
A nine month effort to identify the washed out graves followed the flood. It found that around 100 of the cemetery's graves had been affected. Only about 80 of those graves were identified, and what remained in each of those following the natural disaster is a mystery.
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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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Security guards report seeing odd apparitions while doing their regular rounds. Doors attached to a security system have been seen opening by themselves. Strange musty smells float down the main stairs late at night. There is also a spot on the ground floor where several guards in the mid-1990s were overcome with the distinctive smell of cigar smoke.
There was a famous incident some years ago during which all the security guards bailed out of the building and refused to go back in, apparently because of a ghost in one of the main chambers. Another guard even quit his job there after seeing something ghostly.
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Several cleaners, whose work takes them deep into the bowels of the building long after dark, have heard the echo of a woman screaming above the hum of the vacuum cleaners. Ghosts had even been sighted in broad daylight: one guard says he was chatting away to someone in a corridor one day when a man in white overalls walked between them. When he stopped to ask 'Who was that? the other person said 'Who? I didn't see anyone.'
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In 1995, an investigation into OPH's resident spooks was launched. Due to public interest in the investigation it was broadcast live on ABC radio in Canberra.
Here is an account of what transpired during the evening:
It was a chilly night, and the vapour from our breaths trailed off into ghostly shapes as we made our way around the outside, keeping an eye out for anything unusual and searching for any particularly cold spots in the carefully pruned garden beds that surround Old Parliament House. Despite the stillness and the hush that often falls on the parliamentary zone at this time of night, we didn't notice anything strange. As dusk transposed into night, I climbed the imposing steps that lead into Kings Hall.
Once inside, we worked out a plan and picked some areas to explore. The broadcast was already underway, and we were reporting back every half hour or so to update Rod Quinn - the host of the radio show - and his listeners on where we'd gone and what we'd seen.
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First up we visited the chamber for The House of Representatives, which is a pretty scary place at the best of times. It's all dark, one of those classic old formal rooms - all dark timber and big leather benches covered in dark green leather. Huge Art Deco light fittings hang from the roof, and the pattern on the carpet is enough to make you dizzy. We sat in several locations in the almost pitch-black room, keeping still and keeping alert, and nothing happened.
We went up to the press gallery - nothing. We sat in the ornately carved speaker's chair - nothing. But then we heard a bang - our Geiger counter, which was set up on the bench in the middle of the chamber, had been lifted about five inches off the bench and dropped again. We didn't stay in there too long after that ... Already things were a bit spookier then I expected.
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We traversed Kings Hall and set up in the Senate, which is basically the same as the House of Representatives, except it's red instead of green. Once again we tried a range of locations - around the edges, in the middle of the chamber, and up in the gallery.
It was while sitting up in the gallery that the second spooky event occurred. We noticed a curtain against the wall moving, and a glow of some kind coming out from behind it. After our hearts had returned to their normal rate of beating, we ventured closer and gingerly looked behind the curtain ... Nothing. Just a solid wall.
Where had the light come from?
Needless to say, we were starting to feel a little frazzled at this point, so we asked one of the guards to accompany us on the next phase - the lower areas of the building, including the basement.
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Contrary to what I expected, the basement didn't feel as scary as the two main chambers, and despite our extra alertness, none of us saw or heard anything. There were a couple of occasions, however, when the temperature suddenly dropped almost four degrees, it was pretty strange. It would happen just in one spot, but it wouldn't last long.
We tried to follow these icy patches, but we couldn't keep up with them. One particularly cool sensation passed through us all - one at a time - while we were standing still. We couldn't speak to each other, but an involuntary shiver was enough to convey what was going on. Feeling we'd explored enough downstairs, we abandoned the basement in silence.
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Since the 1995 ghost hunt, the number of ghost reports has significantly dropped. Prior to the hunt, poltergeist and ghostly apparitions were almost a nightly occurrence; now there are only sightings once a week or so.
This decline in reports didn't stop the author leading another overnight vigil in the building in 2007 where a murmur of voices was heard chattering in the old Cabinet Room. Even to this day security guards still hurry through the buildings on their rounds and often say hello to 'Malcolm' - one of the spirits they have named - and there has also been reports of a new phantom that materialises in the form of a human waist and pair of legs scurrying through one of the back courtyards around midnight.
A short time after the 1995 ghost hunt, Canberra resident Kate Travis was driving late at night between OPH and New Parliament House when she saw a ghostly image on the side of the road. She stopped and took a photo. The photo apparently shows some ghostly shapes floating near the ramp that leads up to New Parliament House.
Let’s research this story further.
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Here’s what I found on Old Parliament House.
The Angel of Death worked overtime in Australia’s new National Capital, after the Royal opening of Parliament House in Canberra on 9 May 1927. Three dramatic deaths occurred in quick succession and all were linked in a mysterious way.
Air Force pilot, Flying Officer Francis Ewen, was the first to die when his plane crashed while participating in a fly past for the afternoon military review on opening day.
The second death occurred on 27 July 1927, the birth date of Francis Ewen, when the Clerk of the House, Mr Walter Gale died in his new chair in his new office in the new building.
Two months later on 28 September 1927, the new Clerk, Mr John McGregor, died after collapsing in the Chamber during the condolence speeches for his predecessor.
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In the case of the Clerks, was the new building jinxed?
In the case of the airman, was the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) jinxed?
In the case of all three deaths, was the Opening itself jinxed?
Or was this proof that bad luck comes in threes?
Thankfully after the grief and sorrow of the third death subsided, the business of parliament continued without further tragedy.
In a Canberra Times article there was suggestions that mysterious forces were at work and that the Royal visit itself was cursed.
Why?
Because the Royal couple, the Duke and Duchess of York, were coming to a ceremony on traditional Aboriginal land without first seeking permission or indeed the involvement of the traditional owners.
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Five airmen lost their lives during the Royal visit. Four died when their two-seater planes collided mid air at a RAAF fly past welcoming the Royal couple to Melbourne. Then three weeks later the fatal crash of Flying Officer Ewen at the historic opening of Australia’s new home of parliamentary democracy stunned the public and sent shock waves through RAAF officialdom as they ducked for cover denying anything was wrong with the plane’s mechanics.
Ironically, Ewen’s plane landed in the area of where Reconciliation Place is today in the National Capital. Maybe there is something to the theory.
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Francis Ewen was born on 27 July, 1899, in Auckland. He died aged 27 in May 1927. The Clerk Walter Gale died on Francis Ewen’s birth date 27 July, an eerie numeric synchronicity perhaps.
The crash occurred at around 3.20pm in the afternoon when the planes were out for a second time. This time the aerial display was to coincide with a military review taking place on the eastern side of Parliament House with the old Hotel Wellington visible in the distance.
The Duke received the salute from troops while seated on a magnificent black charger and the Duchess viewed proceedings from a special rotunda with other distinguished guests. Fortunately, from where they were positioned, the Royal couple didn’t see the crash.
The plane crashed on Corkhill, a small rise visible from the front of Parliament House, in the vicinity of where the National Library and Reconciliation Place are today. A history researcher in Canberra using both modern technology and historical maps has located the scene of the crash with a great deal of accuracy.
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When the plane came hurtling down there were fears for a moment that it would hit the YWCA tent in the camping ground but it missed by 50 yards crashing deep into the ground and sending up a cloud of dust and a sheet of blue flame. Nearby campers fled away in terror.
Rushing to the scene, campers and police found Ewen half buried in the wreckage with horrific injuries including a badly crushed head but still alive and strapped to his seat. His right foot was entangled in the rudder controls and his head crushed against the dashboard. He appeared to have something to say but couldn’t articulate according to a witness.
After cutting Ewen free from the wreckage and with his body covered in blood and oil he was taken to the Telopea Park School emergency military hospital. From there he was taken to Canberra hospital where he died at 7.00pm that night.
Today, the ghost of Francis Ewen is rumoured to manifest itself as a 'sweaty man smell' in the basement of the National Library.
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And, who would have thought Parliamentary Clerks would make newspaper headlines?
Mr Walter Gale and Mr John McGregor were career public servants and experts in parliamentary procedure gaining experience at the state legislative level before moving to the federal sphere after Federation in 1901.
Walter Gale died in the arms of his lifelong friend, Major C. Griffith who was visiting him in his Parliament House office, on 27 July 1927. A former athlete, Walter Gale hadn’t been in the best of health since moving to Canberra and had been experiencing shortness of breath and was having difficulty climbing stairs unaided.
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Major Griffith described the lead up to his friend’s death.
“we were sitting in Mr Gale’s room chatting. He seemed perfectly natural and rational, but suddenly he gave a shudder and a paroxysm seemed to pass over him. I cried the room is too hot for you Walter, and opened the window and turned off the heater, but when I took hold of him, he was already unconscious.”
Unfortunately, Walter Gale died before medical help arrived. He was 63 years old. His career in Parliamentary procedure spanned some 36 years, 10 years at the WA Legislative Assembly from 1891 where he was considered a ‘ rising star’ and then the Federal parliamentary sphere from 1 May 1901. He was promoted from Clerk Assistant to Clerk of the House on 1 February 1917.
The funeral service for Mr Walter Gale was held in King’s Hall, Parliament House, the second ceremony to be held in the imposing space since the opening celebrations which included the unveiling of a statue of King George V by the Duke of York.
The large cortege then moved to the graveyard at St John’s Church, where Mr Gale was interred on the southern side of Church from where Parliament House could be seen in the distance.
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On the 28 September 1927, John McGregor collapsed in dramatic circumstances at the Clerk’s table in the House of Representatives chamber soon after the first working session of the Parliament began. Moments after the Prime Minister, Mr Bruce, officially announced that Mr McGregor was the newly appointed Clerk of the House and in the midst of the condolence speeches for the late Clerk, Walter Gale, the new Clerk slumped into his papers and started sliding from his chair.
The Ministers seated nearest, Sir Neville Howse and Dr Earle Page, both medical men, rushed to his aid, catching him before he slid to the floor and with the help of others “tenderly” assisted him from the chamber.
A Melbourne ‘Herald’ Photographer took the last photograph of John McGregor moments before he collapsed in the Parliament. As the photographer was changing his slide in preparation to take another photograph, the Clerk collapsed.
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The scene in the House of Representatives at Canberra just before Mr J. R. McGregor (Clerk of the House) collapsed in his seat and was carried from the building to die. Even more shocking for members was that John McGregor collapsed during the condolence speeches for his predecessor Walter Gale, moments after handing the Speaker the papers formally announcing the death of the former Clerk.
He was taken to Canberra Hospital where he died at 7pm from a cerebral haemorrhage with Sir Neville Howse by his side. John McGregor was 53 years old and had only been married for three years to Miss Madge Lawrence who had worked in the Parliamentary offices in Melbourne.
John McGregor was not only a long term working colleague but a close friend of the late Walter Gale. He admitted to colleagues that he was anxious about taking over the burden of the chief Clerk’s job. In fact, colleagues apparently had great difficulty encouraging him to enter the Chamber for the first time as Clerk and occupy Mr Gale’s chair. He looked extremely distressed during the condolence speeches for Mr Gale.
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Within a few weeks, King’s Hall was once again the venue for a funeral. Parliament was specially adjourned for the memorial service conducted by Rev. John Walker, of the Presbyterian Church so all Members and parliamentary officers could attend. The weather reflected the sombre mood as the cortege made its way from Parliament House, in drenching rain, to the cemetery at St John’s Church, where the interment took place.
Walter Gale and John McGregor have adjoining graves in St John’s Church Cemetery. In November 1936, Sir Littleton Groom, the first Speaker of the House in Canberra joined them in a neighbouring grave. He too died in Canberra, but not in Parliament House. He was 69 when he died and after a service in King’s Hall, Parliament House, he was buried in Canberra rather than his home town of Toowoomba. He apparently had a great love of Canberra and was very confident in its destiny.
Not far away on the northern side of the Church, Flying Officer Francis Ewen lies at rest. All three individuals, Francis Ewen, Walter Gale, and John McGregor played historic roles which unfortunately ended in tragedy. Their graves at St John’s Churchyard, along with the first Speaker, are at the centre of Canberra’s history.
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Canberra is often misleadingly portrayed as sterile and full of grey-suited public servants. However, many of Canberra's major national institutions are home to paranormal activity. If you scratch the surface of Canberra you can find a hidden underbelly of ghosts, ghouls and phantoms.
Not far from the Old Parliament House and National Library is the National Gallery of Australia. In 2005, ABC Radio personality Rod Ouinn was there for a media showing of a Margaret Preston exhibition. Margaret was an Australian artist with a beautiful style - and a distinctive haircut.
Rod was standing in one of the galleries talking to a curator about the exhibition when he glanced across the room. 'In a doorway I saw a woman in white who looked just like Margaret Preston, even down to the haircut.
I turned away for a split second to remark to the curator that a woman looking just like Preston was in the room... when I looked again, she was gone!' exclaims Rod, who hypothesises that 'Margaret Preston was just popping into the room to make sure that everything was all right.'
Having died in 1963, she never visited the National Gallery of Australia, but plenty of her works are there, so maybe her spirit is too.
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Not surprisingly the War Memorial is haunted, with all sorts of ghostly accounts, including a horse that is sometimes spotted galloping through the rounds around midnight and a Japanese man who helped staff at the memorial put together a Japanese submarine that is on display.
There are many claims that the ghost of former PM Ben Chifley still hangs out at Hotel Kurrajong. The PM suffered a massive heart attack there one evening (he chose to live at the Hotel, rather than at The Lodge) and passed away. Since then, visitors have reported seeing an older man in a grey suit pointing towards Old Parliament House.
The Royal Australian Mint also is rumoured to have two resident ghosts. One appears more often than the other. Reportedly, if you go down to the basement after hours you can often hear someone whistling as they work. Staff at the Mint believe that this is a former employee that worked at the Mint for over 40 years.
However, let’s escape the city and head over to the Old Canberra Brickworks at Yarralumla, just 1km away from the Royal Australian Mint.
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The Canberra Red is the sturdy red brick which built the city of Canberra. It is a popularly known object from Canberra’s past. Historically minded Canberrans seek out the bricks for garden paths and other landscaping projects because of the brick’s historical connection with the early development of the city. People can have a piece of Canberra history in their garden without too much effort or expense.
Transforming the rural Limestone Plain into Canberra required the making of bricks and lots of them. The Yarralumla Brickworks, also known as the Old Canberra Brickworks, was the first industrial manufacturing facility within the ACT. Canberra Reds were produced from the Brickworks from 1913 until 1976.
The Yarralumla Brickworks production of Canberra Reds can help us understand the ups and downs of Canberra’s development. At the start of the 1920’s the millions of unused bricks piled up at the Brickworks were taken as a dismal sign that the ambitions for the national capital may not be realised.
However by 15 March 1927 the Daily Telegraph was reporting significant building activity and consequently unusual demand for bricks with (Old) Parliament house using 4 million bricks, Hotel Kurrajong 544,000 bricks, Hotel Acton 733,000 bricks and Secretariat (East Block and West Block) 813,000 bricks.
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From 1923 a tramway linked the works to construction sites at Parliament House, the Hotel Canberra and Civic; it was demolished in 1929. The brickworks closed during the Depression (1932-35) and part of World War II (1942-44), with only limited production in between. During the war, the National Library used one of the kilns as safe storage for valuable records.
In the 1950s, three new kilns were required to maintain production levels for a revitalised building industry, but by the mid 1960s more houses were being built of other materials and one of the kilns was closed. By 1974 the brickworks was surrounded by suburbia, raw materials had long been brought from elsewhere, and it was decided to construct a new works at Mitchell. The old works closed in 1976.
But what about the hauntings?
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There are a number of accounts of poltergeist activity at the location, like doors slamming, bricks and rocks being thrown at people and ghostly screams. There are also reports of a ghost girl that wanders the abandoned factory.
Unknown name:— My ghost story happened about 8 years ago. My friend and I decided to see if there was any truth to the hauntings. We never entered the location, we just stood by the fence waiting for something to happen. After a while, we walk down the road towards the chimney.
My friend started to get bored and decided to provoke the ghosts, telling them to throw something or do
something to one of us to prove that they were there. Nothing was happening, so we decided to head back to the car. As we did, we heard a thump right next to us and lying on the ground was half a brick. We stood in silence, shocked! Then we heard a door slam inside the Brickworks. We didn’t hang around to investigate, we just took off back to the car.
And yes, it could have been people trespassing inside the Brickworks trying to mess with us, but we were way too scared to stick around and find out. The Brickworks is not safe, it’s fenced off for a reason and security patrols the location. I know there are a lot of people wanting to get spooked, but I don't suggest anyone enter without permission. It’s very old and some parts of the location are very unsafe.
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Richard:—On the 17/6/2011 we went dissapointedly from Air Disaster Memorial to the old Canberra Brickworks. On the night of a full moon both seemed pretty eerie. Just the look of Brickworks was enough to give the seven of us the shivers. We found a hole in the fence after a solid search. Two boys went ahead and checked for security and heard some scrathing but blamed the wind even though no tree’s swayed in the breeze.
After these two boys went through the the arches at the back of the brickworks (which a former security guard told us was sketchy and notourious for weird stuff), we checked it out and didnt see anything. We stayed and watched the two mates and their torches explore the wreck. Five of us stayed near the fence and were hestiatent to move very far from the arches.
One boy said “There is something there”. The five of us rushed and saw the exact same girl standing in the darkness of the arches tunnel. Her pale face and eyes hit me and instantly any doubts of ghosts had erashed my mind.
She looked maybe 8 or 9 years old and seemed curious by our visit. Her long white dress draped the ground and her transparence made me look twice before i froze in shock and fled through the whole in the fence to our car. After maybe 10 minutes we returned back in to find our two missing mates who were waiting, waiting near the arches but didnt claim to see anything.
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As i turned to leave i looked into the second floor window the seen the silhouette of a man, at first i thought it was something but i turned on a torch and shined onto the dark figure who gleared straight into me, i said to my friends “who is that”. We all looked and saw the same man who seemed emotionless and again with the curiosity that appeared with the way he looked almost intrigued by what we were doing.
By this stage, the girls were in tears over our ordeal when we heard a scratch and a bang from where we saw this man. We fled and fell over and pushed through the hole in the fence and after a quick head count, the seven of us left without looking behind us. We doubt if we will return but you never know.
The image of this girl plays in my mind over and over. These anomaly’s were real, once a skeptic i confirm the ghosts conspiricy. To see the emotion of nothingness on this girls face as her transparent white dress draped the ground i know the girl was a ‘ghost’. Ghost hunters be warned, the Air Disaster Memorial is an effort and a let down, but the Brickworks is haunted by past souls and will not disappoint the bravest of hearts.
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Further research failed to find a young girl connected to Brickworks, only found one reported death linked the building.
Could Mr Marr be the dark figure seen by Richard and his mates on the second floor window?
In 1976, local developer and businessman Alan Marr (A R Marr Pty Ltd) put forward a proposal to develop the Brickworks as an integrated tourist, recreation and retail centre. Uses envisaged included manufacturing (including a pottery, winery and crafts), speciality shops, an antiques market, plant nursery, restaurant and tavern, offices, art displays (in the upper levels of the three continuous kilns) and museums, including collections of vintage cars and fire engines.
Medium density housing of around 300 dwellings was proposed to the east and north of the site. Under Marr’s scheme, the quarry was to be landscaped to include picnic areas, walking trails and a miniature railway.
In the early 1980s, Alan Marr was seriously injured in a fall at the brickworks, and later died of complications. In 1984, the Commonwealth accepted surrender of A R Marr Pty Ltd.’s lease and paid $1.1 million for the lessee’s interest in the site. The surrender included options to acquire adjoining land for the construction of 151 townhouses.
A number of tenants from the Marr lease, including artists, the antiques market and a timber recycling merchant, Thor’s Hammer, remained at the site. In the mid-1990s, due to concerns about the safety of some of the buildings and in anticipation that the site was going to be redeveloped, the tenants were required to leave. In recognition of the considerable volume of its timber stock Thor’s Hammer was granted an extended period to relocate. The company relocated in 2019.
However, there’s another alleged ghost lurking close by.
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Directly behind the Brickworks building is a forest, most of it now is within the grounds of the Royal Canberra Golf Club. The Westbourne Woods has some sort of reputation of being haunted. Many have reported that it is haunted by the spirit of an Aboriginal boy.
Could this Aboriginal boy be linked to Government House (Yarralumla House) just down the road?
To find out more, read Kanacki’s Ghosts of Yarralumla House, here’s the link.
https://www.paranormal.com.au/public/index.php/topic,11664.0.html
We now travel 7km to Belconnen.
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Some places are more likely than others to elicit ghostly experiences. The former Belconnen Naval Transmitting Station, or known as Bels, in Canberra was one such place.
The Belconnen Naval Transmitting Station operated for 66 years, from 1939 to 2005. Back in 1939 the suburb of Belconnen did not exist, and the naval base was set in an open landscape remote from the centre of Canberra. The naval base had its own village of 26 cottages, known fondly by those who lived there as ‘The Patch.’
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Bels was the most powerful radio transmitting station in the southern hemisphere. It operated 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year for 66 years, from 1939 to 2005. When Bels started, the district of Belconnen was very isolated from the rest of Canberra. For the navy personnel, it was like living on a sheep station, and Canberra was just a big country town.
The Transmitter Building was near the centre of the Bels site, around 500 metres from the guard house and surrounded by open grassland dotted with aerials. At night it was completely dark.
In the Transmitter Building, Radio Electrical Mechanics set the requested transmitters and frequencies, and connected the transmitters and aerials to enable messages to be sent around the world.
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Cyril (Doc) Rice worked there in the 1960s. He recalled:
It was a pretty noisy place because the big Carrier air conditioning used to make a fair bit of noise, and out in the back hall, which at night-time was always in darkness, you’d get the humming sound of these big mercury-filled rectifiers, vacuum rectifiers, and they’d give this eerie glow.
You know, it’s quite an eerie sort of a presence, particularly in the wintertime when the winds come down howling out of the Snowy Mountains and straight up the ducting where all the aerial cables used to go outside. You’d get this howling wind coming up, real eerie, oorie noise, you know, ‘oo-oo-oo-oo’, you know. And of course it’s not hard to picture that the place was damn well haunted.
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Mick Wellings recalled from his time at Bels in the 1970s:
There were times when I was working in the quiet areas of the station, you’d get the feeling someone was watching you, just a weird feeling up your back and think, ‘Something going on here.’ I personally would get up, leave the area, go for a walk, maybe have a coffee, go back and continue on what I was doing. But that happened all the time.
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Gordon McDermott was posted to Belconnen three times during the 1960s and 1970s. He recalled the ghosts:
Casper was the name of the poltergeist that we believed lived in the station. We’re not really quite sure how he came to be there, we’re not sure if there was any deceased people there that had re-emerged as Casper. We were all of the belief that there was some supernatural thing there.
Often we would go out into the transmitter, in the hall… making those changes to the links… We would then, before we returned back to the control room, we would energise switches so that when we got to the control room all we had to do then was to remote feed and it would go straight through.
When we got back to the control room, we would find that those switches or the breaker had in fact been placed at the off position. And it wasn’t just me, it was nearly every one of us had experienced an event like that. And at times, particularly in the middle of the night, you were on your own, you were out there tuning up these transmitters or preparing them for tuning, and you would hear or feel or sense a presence, and you would look behind you, although there was nothing there, but something was.
And to this day we still don’t quite know what it was, but we are convinced that there was some form of supernatural being there.
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The ghost didn’t just interfere with switches in the control room. John Connors, who was posted to Bels in the 1980s and 1990s, remembered:
Yeah, there is ghost stories. I’ve never experienced it, but some of the watches swore that there was someone of a night-time, early hours of the morning, walking around or a door would shut or whatever.
Tom Laws they thought, his ashes were sprinkled from the top of the mast [the 600 foot mast that supported a transmitter aerial], they felt it was him, he was an ex-technician here, here for a long time. Everyone put it down to him.
But, as I said, I never experienced it, but certainly there were stories. And from the civilians as well that worked for me, when Boeing were running the site [from 1995], there was a few of them that had some stories as well. Never vindicated. It’s very hard to prove that sort of thing. But certainly it happened so much and so many different people said it, I feel there was some warrant there of something happening in the site, whatever it was.
Can we find a Mr Tom Laws and perhaps link him to the hauntings at Bels?
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Thu 3 Feb 1977:— Mr Thomas Frederick Laws, the senior technical officer at the Belconnen Transmitting Station, died on Tuesday after a long illness, aged 53. Mr Laws was born at Newcastle on Tyne, England, on April 19, 1923, where he was educated and spent his youth.
In 1941 he joined the Royal Navy as a torpedo electrician and saw active service during World War II. In 1947 he became the youngest chief radio electrician the RN had ever had. In 1948 he arrived in Australia to serve for two years with the RAN on exchange service. After that he joined the RAN, and served in it until 1956, when he was medically discharged.
Most of his RAN service was at HMAS Albatross, near Nowra. In 1958 he re-entered the Navy as a member of the Fleet Reserve and was posted to the Canberra Naval Radio Station at HMAS Harman. He remained there, working at the Belconnen Transmitting Station, until he was discharged in 1966. Then he became a civilian technical officer at the Belconnen station and worked there till his death. Mr Laws was an authority on high-frequency radio communications.
He is survived by his wife, Esther, two sons, Christopher, 20, and Michael, 19, and a daughter, Janie, 17. A service will be held today at 2pm at the Anzac Memorial Chapel, Duntroon, and he will be cremated later at the Norwood Park Crematorium.
Does Thomas Frederick Laws still keep a watchful eye over the Belconnen Transmitting Station?
Perhaps he does, however, I’m not overly convinced it’s him.
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We know Thomas Frederick Laws died in 1977, also Gordon McDermott was posted at Belconnen three times during the 1960s and 1970s.
However, Gordon McDermott stated that:— “Casper was the name of the poltergeist that we believed lived in the station. We’re not really quite sure how he came to be there, we’re not sure if there was any deceased people there that had re-emerged as Casper.”
If Gordon McDermott was posted at Bels after 1977, surely he would’ve know or heard about Thomas Frederick Laws death.
Or did Gordon McDermott encounter “Casper” before Thomas Frederick Laws death in 1977?
Is there another identity of this alleged ghost?
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MAN ELECTROCUTED FATALITY AT SUBSTATION
Mon 20 Nov 1939:— At the Canberra Courthouse on Saturday, the Coroner (Col. J. T. H. Goodwin) returned a verdict that Harold Lewis Mallesch, aged 55, of Griffith, Canberra, died as a result of an electric shock received at a sub-station at Belconnen Naval Station on Monday, November 13.
The Coroner stated that there was no evidence to prove why Mallesch entered the danger area at the sub-station, but it was probable that he went there to look for tools, contrary to the instructions.
Dr. D. G. MacKellar, medical superintendent of the Canberra Hospital, stated that he examined Mallesch. There were superficial burns on the palm of the right hand, as could be expected from the touching of a white hot wire. Extensive abrasions were visible on the back of the left hand, but there was little evidence of burning. Witness concluded that death was due to heart failure following a severe electric shock.
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Geoffrey Gasston Cribb, electrical fitter, Kingston, employed by the Department of the Interior, stated that alterations were being made to the high tension equipment at a sub-station at Belconnen Naval wireless Station. At 10.30 a.m. the high tension power was disconnected at the power house while adjustments were made, Mallesch assisted with the work. Witness then went to the wireless transmitting station to await a signal from Mr Mitchell to the effect that the adjustments had been made.
The power came on at 10.45 a.m. About five minutes later, witness returned to the sub-station. Mr Mitchell instructed witness to disconnect meters on the side of the sub-station, and at the same time warned witness and Mallesch to keep away from the high tension end of the sub-station.
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Mallesch and witness completed the job and Mallesch started to gather his tools. Witness was walking round the sub-station when he saw a flash, and turned to see Mallesch falling. He raised Mallesch's head and shoulders from the floor and asked him if he had been burnt, to which Mallesch replied, "Yes, try and get me away from here."
Witness applied artificial respiration measures for about five minutes. Mallesch appeared to be breathing freely, so witness ran to the wireless station to secure help. The ambulance reached Belconnen 14 minutes after the call was put through, and Dr James arrived a few minutes later. Oxygen was administered, and attempts to resuscitate were continued until 12.45 p.m., when Mallesch was removed to Canberra Hospital.
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Replying to Sergt. E. S. Bailey, witness said that fitters did not use rubber gloves, and they never worked with live wires. Witness was sure that Mallesch had heard the warning given by Mr Mitchell. He thought that Mallesch had made contact with the wire, as there was a white mark on the water-proofing which indicated that there may have been an electrical discharge from that point.
William John Mitchell, electrical supervisor, Department of the Interior, stated that he was present when Mallesch and McAlister connected the main switch at the sub-station. The work at the sub-station was completed in seven minutes, after which witness told them to stand clear while he signalled Cribb. A few minutes later the hum of the transformers indicated that the current was on. Witness instructed Cribb and Mallesch to remove three temporary meters. He also warned them not to go near the high tension side of the sub-station.
Who’s haunting Bels? Thomas Frederick Laws or Harold Lewis Mallesch? Perhaps both?
But that’s for you to decide.
Close by is Ginninderra Creek.
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Here’s a short story I came across.
Unknown name:— Mr Crace was a pastoralist and one of Canberra's pioneers who owned 30,000 acres of land covering the suburbs we now know as Ginninderra, Gungahlin and Charnwood. 122 years ago one dark stormy night, Mr Crace was crossing the creek on his way home when he and his coachman were swept away by flooding waters. Both men drowned and were found the next day by farm hands.
The stories of a ghost who walks along side the road or whispers to you as you walk along the creek are known through out our city but not many people can put a name to that lonely man who haunts the Ginninderra creek. Unfortunately I was never able to find the name of the coachman riding along with Mr Crace that night.
What do you think Canberra? Is it Mr Crace walking the land that he once owned or a man who was forgotten 122 long years ago?
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Carroll Hurst also stated:—
“He often is seen standing by the creek near the wooden foot bridge that goes over the creek, its generally late at night when there's a low mist over the water, he is unmistakeable with his long jacket and big hat appeared to have for lack of a better word an aura around him, I spoke to him and as I walked toward him he just
disappeared, my daughters have also seen him by the creek and also at the park just near our house just up from the Charnwood shops.”
Is there any truth to these hauntings?
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In 1892, September, 20, then owner of Palmerville, Edward Crace, went by buggy with his coachman, George Kemp, across the Ginninderra Creek to the store. A thunderstorm had passed through that afternoon. Crace succesfully negotiated the creek to Ginninderra, but noticed as he did that water levels were rising.
The local shopkeeper, George Harcourt, warned Crace not to attempt the return crossing. However, Crace ignored the warning and left anyway.
Shortly afterward, Harcourt’s children reported that the buggy was stuck in the creek. He then heard a cry from the creek and went to help.
Harcourt went back to get a rope and by the time he returned, Crace along with his buggy, had fallen victim to the raging waters of the creek. Later that night, Crace’s body was found about half a mile further downstream. Kemp’s body was found several days later.
Our next location is a residence house on the corner of Furneaux and Bougainville Streets, Manuka.
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In I929, Dr Rolland Fraser leased a block on the corner of Furneaux and Bougainville Streets, Manuka. He was a ‘surgeon dentist’ who had trained at the Universities of Melbourne and Pennsylvania. He commissioned Kenneth Oliphant to design a building which would function as both surgery and residence for himself and his wife, Florance. It would be home eventually to two dentists, an optometrist and a doctor.
It was built by Chapman and Eggleston in the Spanish Mission style, and later named The Pines because of the two pencil pines either side of the front path. The entrance to the surgery was on the east wall and that to the residence at the front corner, through an arch of ‘barley sugar’ columns. Each of the three upstairs bedrooms had its own balcony. The stucco walls were painted light apple green and the woodwork salmon pink, with black wrought iron balcony railings, window boxes and grilles.
The roof was of tiles in red, purple and green. The house was one of three by Oliphant featured in Australian Home Beautiful. It has been claimed (though not confirmed) that the design closely followed a house in Beverly Hills by Irving Gill that was publicised in an American architectural magazine.
It had a fairly prosaic early history. Fraser set up business, advertising his proximity to the recently completed Capitol Theatre on Manuka Circle, Canberra’s first cinema. Suffering the effects of the Great Depression, he soon tried to sell the house, even offering it to the government for conversion to flats.
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It was let and then sold to another dentist, Eric Harvie, and his wife, Joy in 1947. The Harvies engaged in an ugly divorce case, culminating in Eric being caught in flagrante delicto with his lover at the Hotel Kurrajong. On the day the judge ruled against him, he committed suicide in the dentist’s chair at Canberra Hospital.
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DEATH OF DENTIST
Fri 19 Dec 1947:— Eric Hugh Harvie, dental officer attached to the Canberra Community Hospital, died today from the effects of an over-dose of sleeping tablets. Harvie was found unconscious in the dental chair. He was in a divorce action yesterday when he was ordered to pay alimony of £4/13/ a week.
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Less than six weeks later, Marjorie Lambert, who was lodging at The Pines with her husband and infant son, was found dead in the upstairs bathroom.
The following morning, in a murder-suicide, the bodies of John and Warren Lambert were found on a vacant allotment nearby. The coroner ruled that Marjorie’s death was accidental, and that John had acted while deranged with grief.
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LARGE CROWD ATTENDS LAMBERT FUNERAL
Thu 29 Jan 1948:— St. John's Church, Canberra, was crowded yesterday afternoon for the funeral service, of John Henry Lambert, his wife, Marjorie Grace Lambert, and their son, Warren John Lambert, which was conducted by the Rev. G. K. Armstrong.
Approximately 350 mourners, including relatives from Sydney, attended the service at the cemetery. Pallbearers consisted of members of the Legion of Ex-Servicemen and Naval Men's Association. Approximately 50 cars and three buses formed the cortege. The family were buried in the same grave.
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Frank Arnold, who became its fifth owner in 1998, grew up in Canberra admiring the house and set up his design business there. Alone one evening soon after, he came downstairs upon hearing voices and walked into icy conditions with an unpleasant smell and ‘a strong, disquieting female presence’. The unexplained incidents persisted, noticed also by Frank’s staff. And he engaged a Buddhist priest to conduct a blessing ceremony.
The house has been quiet ever since.
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Benedict House is located at 39 Isabella Street, Queanbeyan, and stands grandly on a corner block looking back down to the CBD, the Queanbeyan River on one side, and overlooking one of the town's first public schools on the other.
The two-storied, multi-roomed Victorian Gothic mansion "of vast proportions and imposing height" opened in 1882 as St Benedict's Convent, accommodating just four nuns. A young Irish immigrant, Mary Anne Corrigan, lived with the Sisters for some time in the early 1880s. When she married and gave birth to a son, he was named after the convent. The son grew up to become the 16th Australian Prime Minister – Ben Chifley.
It would become a school and then later, a “Higher School for Young Ladies”. For a hundred years, it was then a secondary school. Many former students reveal it was widely accepted that its hallways were home to a presence of some sort.
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Lights being turned on and off in rooms in which no one's about, items being rearranged of their own volition, and perhaps most disconcertingly, a former owner in the 1990s who revealed one of the most fascinating experiences
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One evening, his two dogs would not stop barking at the window at the end of the upstairs hallway - one of 41 contained throughout the building.
Finally deciding to find out what the problem was, as he rounded the corner, he was astonished to see what he thought, as he described it, was the bearded face a man looking back at him through the glass. He said he would have dismissed it as his imagination or a trick of the light except for the dogs reaction – they continued to stand there barking, hackles raised as if there were indeed an intruder. He had no idea of who the figure might possibly be, or why they might remain.
Can we link a bearded man to this residence?
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Here’s what I found.
Thu 10 Jan 1895:— Mr McCAULEY died on Saturday morning last. For many years a citizen of Queanbeyan, quietly following his avocation of bricklayer, he was well known and much respected. At the time of his decease, he was engaged in carrying out a contract for the erection at the St Benedict's Convent, Queanbeyan, of an ornamental iron palisading surmounting a dwarf concrete wall, with here and there stately concrete pillars intervening. After a few days, illness from a severe attack of inflammation of the lungs, he succumbed at about 8 a.m. on the day named.
Let’s find out more details on Mr McCauley.
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Thomas McCauley, was born on 02 September 1844, at Strabane in County Tyrone, in Northern Ireland. Little is known of Thomas’s family, or the reason he left Ireland. He arrived in Melbourne in 1867, and married Sarah Ann Plummer (of The Burra, Monaro District of NSW). Sarah had been employed by the Reverend Gwalter Soares, of Kangaroo Flats (near Bendigo) as a housemaid.
Four children were born in Victoria, 2 of whom died in infancy. Thomas decided to move the family to Queanbeyan NSW to be near Sarah’s family. It is believed that Thomas found work, as a carpenter along the route. There is a story that they were visited by bushrangers, Sarah was very friendly and gave them a meal including bread and jam, the men did not realize that she had hidden their money in the jam jar.
The McCauley’s settled in what was known as Irish Town in Queanbeyan (now Booth Street), and another six children were born. Thomas found employment on the construction of St Benedicts Convent, and worked there for fifteen years. He was well known for the plinth and lath work (way that put ceilings in houses those days, little strips of timber across the roof and then plastered, often over Hessian).
He was still working on the St Benedict Convent when, in the act of completing the front fence as the final touch, on January 5th, 1895, he collapsed on the spot and died. His son, Daniel, finished the work on the fences around St Benedicts following the death of Thomas.
However, one important question, did Thomas McCauley sport a beard?
Indeed he did. (difficulties loading photo)
Perhaps Thomas McCauley feels his job there is still not done?
I'll leave it for you to decide.
Next stop, Adaminaby.
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It was June-July 1957 that the residents of Adaminaby, nestled in the high country in southern New South Wales, started watching runnels of water creep from a gorge lower down the hill and begin filling their pastoral valley.
Eighteen months earlier a massive concrete wall had been constructed to check the flow of the Eucumbene River (created by snow melt) and gradually create a vast dam that at its peak would hold six times more water than Sydney Harbour.
For months all this was happening out of view of the little township until one day in mid-1957 the water came into view – and didn’t stop until the town itself was drowned in the new Lake Eucumbene’s lightless depths.
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This lake was to be the heart of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, a vast complex of alpine lakes, tunnels and underground power stations – listed by the American Society of Civil Engineers, at its completion in 1974, as an engineering wonder of the modern world.
But before this, and before the waters lapped at the cement steps of the lowest of Adaminaby’s two hotels, the town was moved; all wooden buildings cut from their stumps and ferried on trucks to a new site 8 kilometres away.
The stone buildings, like the pubs, were bulldozed and they with their century of memories lay drowned under more than 70 metres of water for almost 60 years – partially glimpsed during drought in the early 1980s, the millennial drought of the early 2000s, and then in 2018 fully exposed.
By August 2018 almost 80 per cent of Lake Eucumbene’s precious water resource had been drawn-off to feed drought-afflicted irrigators on inland plains and to meet the eastern seaboard’s escalating demands for low-cost electricity.
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While the exposed brown mud banks of Lake Eucumbene are, for many, a stark illustration of Australia's long struggle to manage its scarce water resources, the chance to step through the ruins of this historic town is also a chance to reflect on a near forgotten history.
If you look carefully you will see clues to lives, histories and building layouts – rusted bedsprings, horse shoes, bolts, buckles, bits of bottles and the gnarled roots of what once were mighty courtyard trees.
And everywhere, glinting in the early morning sun, little sparkles of metal and plastic – snagged fishing lures that will keep many a modern angler out of the tackle shops for years to come. Such is the changing nature of people through the passage of time. Trout now graze the valley plains and fishermen camp where once reposed men and their horses.
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One of the most popular haunts on Lake Eucumbene is the northern end of the lake, where there have been numerous boating accidents since its construction in 1958 as part of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme.
A number of trout fishermen have reported witnessing ghostly visions floating above the lake, especially in drought years when the lake has partially dried up, exposing the watery graves of those unfortunate souls who have lost their lives in boating mishaps.
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These ghostly visions usually materialise in the form of a tormented spectre stuck somewhere in the limbo between this world and the next, and send a shiver down the spine of many an early-morning trout fisherman wading through the icy cold waters at dawn.
One regular Eucumbene fly fisherman, Mick Stokes of Canberra says: There's a strange aura of sorrowful stillness that hangs over the lake some mornings. It feels almost as thick as the fog; it might also have something to do with the 121 men who lost their lives during the construction phase of the Snowy Hydro Scheme.'
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The rising waters of Lake Eucumbene reached their highest mark in 1973. Then, once the Scheme became fully operational they stabilised about 20 to 30 metres lower. This drop in the water level through 1974 allowed the recovery of the lake’s first drowning victims.
One skeleton, still wearing fisherman’s rubber waders, was removed from the leafless branches of a previously submerged tree. Another skeleton, with a block of concrete chained to a bony ankle, was found on the muddy bank; its discovery solving a local murder-suicide mystery.
A year or so earlier a woman had been found along with a note from her husband confessing to murder and stating that he intended killing himself. Police suspicions that he may simply have left the area and gone into hiding were dispelled by forensic tests on the skeleton.
To date, at least 17 people have drowned in Lake Eucumbene. Several, including three Victorian policemen who went missing on a fishing trip, have never been found.
Close by is our next destination, the tallest mountain in Australia.
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On 11 August 1928, a group of eight adventurous skiers set out from Brett's Camp on a skiing expedition along the Mt Kosciuszko Summit Road. Among the group was Evan Hayes, a 29-year-old Australian, and Laurie Seaman, the 34 year old son of the Mayor of Glen Cove in America.
Seaman had given up a promising career as a civil engineer in America and immigrated to Australia to live with his Australian wife. As it was a clear sunny day the group did not consider it necessary to pack extra clothes or emergency rations.
After reaching Charlottes Pass, in an attempt to ski to the summit, Seaman and Hayes broke off from the main party. Soon after, as so often happens in the high country, a fast moving change came in from nowhere. By 1 pm the mountain was shrouded in fog and lashed by wind and icy rain followed by heavy snow. What ensued was one of the worst blizzards in 23 years. The winter storm raged for four days and four long nights.
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Soon after the onset of the harsh conditions, Seaman and Hayes made it to the Kosciuszko summit but became separated as they attempted to descend the mountain. Hayes inadvertently headed off to the northeast, finally meeting his death after presumably becoming lost near Lake Cootapatamba. His bones weren't discovered until 16 months later, when stockman Jack Willis was mustering sheep.
Sadly Seaman suffered a similar fate. He followed the road down the mountain but died of exposure while waiting for his friend at a prearranged meeting point. His body was discovered some 25 days later by a local schoolmaster. Fortunately, the rest of the party was located during the following days by a massive rescue operation comprising 100 men and three aeroplanes.
The following year, in 1929, using a donation from Seaman's parents, the government Tourist Bureau built Seaman's Memorial Hut. Since then the hut has saved the lives of countless travellers on the mountain, but tragically it was unable to help five young snowboarders who lost their lives in a snow cave only a few kilometres away in 1999.
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In January of 2006, while on a break to the Snowy Mountains, the paranormal researcher Mr Lightyear and his partner Maryanne of Byron Bay set out to walk the trail up from Charlottes Pass. During the walk, the weather suddenly deteriorated and a thick mist rolled in, drastically reducing visibility to a couple of metres.
“We were about five kilometres out, too far to turn back, and I was eager to get to the summit so we pushed on. As we crossed the Snowy River all hell broke loose, lightning and thunder shook the very core of the mountain.”
Reluctantly Mr Lightyear considered his partner's pleas to turn back: “But I felt a strange reassuring calm, as though someone else was there with us guiding us onward. Then out of the mist it appeared, a small stone hut, like a sentinel perched on the mountain. We scrambled inside as the heavens opened and a deluge bucketed from the sky.”
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“The hut consisted of two small rooms, one with a small stove, and an annex stocked with firewood. Of all the places I have visited this was the most haunted, not by the dead but by the living. The grateful spirits of thousands of weary travellers pervaded the air in that small sanctuary. Their love and thanks for its shelter and warmth filled the room.”
“As we sat gathering our wits, enjoying the simple beauty of this hut, the storm intensified, hammering at the windows. But we felt safe. My eyes were then drawn to a panel up on the wall. On it was written the story of the two skiers who perished here in the 1920s.”
Mr Lightyear believes it was Seaman's courageous spirit that was with him and his partner as the storm closed in, guiding them to the hut that was named in his memory.
The hut is built very close to where Laurie Seaman's body and camera were found. When the film was developed, among the pictures were one of him and one of Evan Hayes beside the cairn at the top of Kosciuszko taken shortly before their death.
From here, we’ll zigzag our way down to Montague Island on the South Coast of Narooma, but first we’ll visit a mansion near Bombala.
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Owner of Victorian Gothic-style mansion, hidden away from prying eyes in this remote part of the Monaro. A former Canberran, Steve Rickett reveals he "fell in love with Burnima as soon as he set eyes on it", and "just had to buy it when it was for sale in 2002". Rickett explains he then lived in the oversized home, just out of Bombala, "as a weekender for five years before moving in permanently in 2007".
Burnima was built by Frederick Young, of Queanbeyan, (builder of the "Yarralumla" residence of the Governor-General) for Henry Tollemache Edwards in 1896 and Rickett's deep admiration for Edwards, or HT as he affectionately refers to him, in establishing this opulent outpost is very clear.
In fact, Rickett has embraced HT's legacy to such an extent that on the day he moved in, he embarked on a self-confessed quest to transform this rare 1800s homestead back to its original state. That's not only inside its 10 bedrooms, sitting room, formal dining room, study, reception, billiards room and servants' quarters, but also its four hectares of sprawling Victorian-era influenced gardens.
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Rickett divulges he now spends "more money on fuel for his mowers and hedge trimmers than for his car", and when you live in these boondocks, where it's a long drive to just about anywhere, that's saying something. A stroll through the gardens soon reveals why. They are as expansive as they are rambling, with conifers, spruces, and cedars from all over the world interspersed with formal lawns with inviting nooks and crannies aplenty. There are fountains, a maze, an old orchard which still bears fruit, and statues at every turn.
However, the piece de resistance for Rickett is an elaborate fish pond which was once a much-loved oasis for HT's eldest daughter, Miss Edith Edwards, who lived at Burnima and upheld the formality of the Victorian era right up until her death in 1952.
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"Although strict, Miss Edith also had a softer side, especially for animals, and she absolutely adored her goldfish," Rickett says. "When she was dying in hospital, she paid a taxi driver to drive all the way out here to feed the fish”
"She'd then pay another taxi driver to follow him to make sure he did it," says Rickett. Miss Edith's paranoia over the welfare of her fish continues to this day, for her spirit lingers on with a number of sightings of her apparition, including most recently a bulldozer driver who, while waiting to meet Rickett for a landscaping job, spotted "a lady wearing a long white gown walking to the old fish pond, only for her to vanish before his very eyes."
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Rickett confesses he walks past the pond every evening in the hope he might glimpse Miss Edith. "Every night just before the sun goes down, I put on my top hat, grab a glass of port and stroll through the garden, wondering what it would have been like for Miss Edith walking around with a couple of servants waiting on her call," Rickett says.
"Around this part of the garden, with the setting sun there's often a sepia-type light; it's almost like walking through an old photograph," says Rickett as we emerge from the garden and approach Burnima's front verandah.
Inside its cold, very cold. "Even in the midst of summer, due to the triple bricks, it rarely gets above 9 degrees," explains Rickett as he leads me up the grand stairwell.
It's as if I've entered a Victorian museum. Using historic photos, Rickett has completely restored every room to its former glory, right down to the antiquarian books and period animal trophies on display in the library. It's an extraordinary effort and testimony to his commitment to bring Burnima back to its glory days of the early 1900s.
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While overlooking the southern garden from one of the old servant's rooms, Rickett explains that Burnima harbours a number of macabre mysteries including "the disappearance of a young servant girl who was thought to have become pregnant to HT. "The well in the southern garden was apparently filled in the very day she vanished," says Rickett, adding somewhat morbidly that "her body is most likely still buried at the bottom of the well".
A number of people, including Rickett, claim to have seen the poor girl's ghost. While sleeping in the old cook's room back in 2006, at about 2.30am Rickett was awoken by heavy breathing at the side of his bed. "I turned over towards the noise only to see a girl standing right along my bed," recalls Rickett, adding, "I screamed at it, kicked the doona at it and it vanished."
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Not surprisingly, the ghosts of Miss Edith and the young girl aren't the only spooks lurking in Burnima's chilly shadows. Rickett has a long list of other things which go bump in the night, from phantom phone calls,
unexplained hammering and even a shuffling wardrobe.
Rickett admits living alone in such a haunted house can be challenging. "After moving in, it didn't take long before I realised there were the presences of others here," says Rickett who, now, to reduce his anxiety, "never watches any thriller television shows or movies as it heightens the senses."
"I'm used to all the ghostly goings-on now as it's been happening for quite some time and no one has been hurt," says Rickett, adding, "sure, it still scares a little bit, but it's no drama any more."
Who’s the young girl?
And who’s the other ghost Steve Rickett claims to be shuffling the wardrobe and hammering?
Let’s research this story further.
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What do we know about the alleged disappearance of a young servant girl who was thought to have become pregnant to Henry Tollemache Edwards and perhaps still in the filled-in well at Burnima House?
Henry Tollemache Edwards was born at Parramatta in 1837. He died on 19th November, 1915, aged 81 years.
We also know that Burnima House was built for Henry Tollemache Edwards in 1896.
Was there a disappearance of a servant girl between 1896 and 1915?
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GIRL FOUND DEAD
Mon 23 Nov 1908:— The police received information early last Friday morning that a girl named Linda Grace Waterson was missing from the home of Mrs R Warburton, Pipeclay Springs, near Bombala, where she had been employed as domestic servant for the past four years.
Sergeant Stutchbury and Constable Walcott immediately set out and after searching for some hours the Sergeant discovered the body in an old cherry orchard about 200 yards from the residence where the girl had been employed. Owing to the heat of the day, the body when found was in a very bad state.
There was a bullet wound through the left breast. An inquest was held on Saturday before Mr Couleton Murphy, Coroner, and after exhaustive evidence had been taken, a verdict : “That Linda Grace Waterson had died from a pea rifle wound self-inflicted, but whether accidentally or otherwise evidence did not lead the Coroner to say,” was returned.
This incident was close to Burnima House, however, let’s take a look at Henry Tollemache Edwards first wife.
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Henry Tollemache Edwards first wife was Anna Rebecca Edwards (born Wren) was born in 1845, Henry married Anna in 1862, she was 17 years old. They had 2 children: Henry Vassel Edwards and Edith Edwards. Anna passed away at Eden in 1865, at age 20. The distance between Eden and Burnima House is 60km.
Perhaps Anna has resided with her beloved family once again?
Could Anna be the young girl at Burnima House?
Or perhaps the rumours could be true about the young servant girl in the bottom of the well.
Quite surprisingly, there is one death that occurred at the house which Steve Rickett didn’t mention.
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Hello Headless
My apologies I have not been around much. I being tied up renovating two properties at once. And writing a trilogy. However i have been enjoying your posts immensely.
Was there a disappearance of a servant girl between 1896 and 1915?. That is a short time period. Given Henry Tollemache Edwards age. I cannot see him connected in a relationship with her in that sense. But many people came and went for better opportunities. I see 1915 was one year in world war one.There was growing opportunities for work else where when many men was off overseas fighting in WW1.
Regardless. Please do continue fascinating.
Kanacki
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Hi KANACKI
Exactly my thoughts too, especially he’s age.
DEATH OF MR H. T. EDWARDS
Tue 23 Nov 1915:— The death of Mr H. T. Edwards at his station home on Monaro, on Saturday, is reported. The late Henry Tollenache Edwards was one of the most prominent pastoralists on Monaro, and he was very well known throughout our pastoral world. For nearly 30 years he managed Bibbenluke, from which he retired to his own station at Burnima.
As a cattle judge he had few, if any, superiors in this State, and he judged in many show rings, including the R.A.S., Sydney. Horses were to him a well-loved hobby. He was a man of marvellous energy, and of great geniality. There was a lasting twinkle in his eye that everybody who knew him will remember. His memory for faces, and for men once met was remarkable. District affairs came in for a generous share of his attention and energy.
He was a magistrate, and was the first chairman of the Bibbenluke Shire Council, president of the Bombala Exhibition Society, and chairman of the Pastures Protection Board. A mental picture that comes to us now is the late Mr. H. T. Edwards hand-feeding the many birds that were attracted from out of the bush to his Burnima house during the recent drought.
Was it Henry Tollenache Edwards that shuffled the wardrobe and caused the unexplained hammering?
That’s for you to decide.
45 Bombala St, Nimmitabel is our next stop.
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Rhondda Garside remembers vividly the day 'a white human-like figure floated through my kitchen.' For Rhondda this was no chance encounter for, between 1990 and 2014 as owners of the Royal Arms Guesthouse in Nimmitabel, Rhonda and other members of her family learned to live with the veritable gaggle of ghosts who inhabited their home.
If the regular visions of man, woman and child are anything to go by this lovingly restored coach station, built from stone and hand-made bricks in 1850, has to be one of the state's most haunted buildings.
Phantom bells ringing at midnight, keys mysteriously turning in locked doors and the face of a dishevelled lady appearing at the kitchen window are just a handful of recent examples from a long list of unexplained happenings in the former coach station.
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“We even called the police on a couple of occasions. A few years ago we were convinced there was an intruder in the main hall. We hid and cowered in the kitchen and called the police who responded from Cooma. There was all sorts of commotion but no-one was found. It must have been ghost activity,” Rhondda told the author when he visited the Monaro Plains guesthouse in 2004.
One of the more disconcerting hauntings is the regular sound of bells ringing; even though there are no bells anywhere on or near the property.
“Many years ago, when the building operated as a coaching stop, there was a bell that would be rung when a coach was on approach, but that bell hasn't been here for decades,” pondered Rhondda.
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“There's a ghostly lady lurking in the shadows at the top of the stairway outside the honeymoon suite. We recently had some newlyweds staying here. They walked straight out and never came back,” recalled Rhondda, whose beloved dog, 'avoided the stairway like the plague.'
“There's the tale of a woman, many years before the Garsides arrived, who in a desperate attempt to flee a ghostly vision, jumped from the attic room. Her petticoat acted like a parachute and she walked away from the incident with a bruised modesty,” said Rhondda.
“In 2001, a group of trout fisherman hired out the hotel and said they saw ghosts outside the windows all night - we never saw them again.”
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Luckily, the ghostly goings-on didn't seem to annoy all the Garsides guests. “We had a couple of regular guests who returned several times a year - maybe they were drawn here by the paranormal activity,” mused Rhondda's daughter Heidi.
Not surprisingly, the century-old cellar is another popular haunt - “it's dark, damp and quite frankly not a nice place; even for a ghost. People have been scared out of their wits by many of the weird happenings down there,” said Heidi.
Grant and Diane Walker bought the The Royal Arms and now operate it as both a B&B and a house of prayer.
Who could be behind these alleged hauntings?
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Joseph and Mary McKee were once the licensees of Royal Arms Hotel. Joseph was born in 1825 in Dartford, Kent, and married Mary White on July 24, 1859 in Cooma, NSW. Mary was born in 1832 in Cork, Ireland and died on February 12, 1883 in Royal Arms Hotel, Nimmitabel, NSW at age 51, and was buried on February 14, 1883 in Nimmitabel, NSW. The cause of her death was pneumonia.
Was the face of a dishevelled lady appearing at the kitchen window and lurking at the top of the stairway Mary McKee?
As for a man and child, I found no reported deaths linked to the premises.
70km away is Pambula, a town in the Bega Valley Shire on the far South Coast of NSW. Located at 28 Quondola Street, the building began life as the Forest Oak Inn and has also been used as a general store, post office, court room, police barracks, doctor's surgery and residence, and in more recent years restaurants. Today it’s the Covington House Gallery-tourist attraction.
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Pambula is of such historic interest that it has been classified by the Heritage Council of Australia. But of most interest to visitors is the 'person' who shares the upper storey accommodation with the restaurant owners.
When former owners (1987) Anne and Wolter Hofstede bought the restaurant they were amused by the ghost stories, and the tradition of leaving off one of the chimney pots so that the ghost could get in and out of the building.
But since then they have learned to take the stories and traditions more seriously.
"Everyone in the area believes in the ghost," Mrs Hofstede said. "And people who work here are convinced that there is often something in the room with them. We have problems with the power, which no one is able to fix, and there are a lot of strange noises."
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It was Syms Covington who built the thick-walled rooms and wide verandas in the 1840s to serve as an inn, post office and general store. Covington himself is an intriguing character. He was Charles Darwin's right-hand man on his world voyages in the Beagle. His life reads like a colonial soapie. On one of his visits to Australia with Darwin he met and fell in love with Eliza. On his return to England he decided he could not live without her and returned to Sydney to marry her.
The couple moved to Pambula and built up their business. Covington became Postmaster of Pambula in 1854, and managed an inn called the Forest Oak Inn built on the coast road above the floodplain where the first Pambula township had been repeatedly damaged by floods. His original inn was licensed in 1855, and the building which still stands was constructed on the same site about a year later.
By 1848 he and his wife had eight children, six sons and two daughters. In 1861 Covington died of 'paralysis' at only 47 years old. The inn was then run by his widow, and later by her second husband Llewelyn Heaven. The license was taken over by John Behl around 1864, and the building became known as The Retreat in 1895.
Both the current owner, (1985) Mr Roly Hough, and previous owners have felt a ghostly presence.
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During dinner at the restaurant, trevalla was prepared by Mr Hough, he was at first reluctant to recount his experiences. Mr Peter Bruce, a friend who occasionally helps out in the restaurant, said he had not felt anything till Christmas, 1984. Then, during a function at the restaurant, Mr Bruce had gone upstairs to look for something.
“I felt a shadow behind me, two or three times it happened," he said. "There was somebody behind... I could feel somebody moving."
When he turned around he saw nothing. Mr Bruce also spoke of a particular door upstairs which has no lock. Normally it will open freely, but sometimes it cannot be opened at all, as if someone is holding it closed on the other side.
“The people who have lived here always remember something," Mr Bruce said.
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Mr Hough, who also lives in the building, said he had had to change his bedroom several times because he had felt someone trying to get him out of bed. While he was redecorating the building late at night he said that he also felt a presence. Sometimes a light flickers and guests occasionally feel a cold shiver, but the only evidence of Syms Covington is a photograph on the wall in the entrance.
Mr Hough is not intimidated by the ghost, and he and Mr Bruce have an avid interest in the history of the area. It is as if the ghostly legends adds a certain authenticity to the historical atmosphere which Mr Hough has recreated in the restaurant.
Does the ghost of Syms Covington still watch over the colonial building?
Next stop is a Hotel in Tathra, 25km north of Pambula.
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Tathra’s first hotel, The Brighton, owned and run by Mrs Jane White in 1875, was situated just above where the hall is now, and was in its infancy in 1870 when William J. White conveyed guests between The Brighton and his Victoria Inn at Bega. Members of the White family, who arrived in the Colony in 1842, and this district in 1852: White Snr was killed by lightning in 1854, his wife Ann died in 1888. The family at Tathra were called to an inquiry following the mysterious destruction of The Brighton by fire in 1881. Jane was tried for arson and found not guilty.
A second hotel, the original Tathra Hotel, once stood adjacent to the present post office. There are records of an inquest being held there in 1883 following the death of Alfred Swansen at the wharf the previous day. It was a requirement under earlier liquor laws that hotels had to be able to store dead bodies awaiting inquests, funeral arrangements etc – probably because of limited refrigeration at the time.
The existing Tathra Hotel was built by J.W. Twyford in 1888, who named it The Ocean View Hotel. It became the Tathra Hotel at a later date, probably after the Tathra Hotel closed. Mr Twyford apparently kept guns and boats for use by guests. In early years Tathra was a transport hub for passengers and goods – everything went by boat in those days.
Various additions were made in the 1960’s and the red brick motel added in 1975. The hotel was a popular place to see the live bands of the day during the 1980’s and 90’s.
For over a century there has been talk of a presence of a young woman at the Ocean View Hotel.
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The stories are many and varied, from patrons and staff, the sober and those that have enjoyed a few brews, those that claim to have glimpsed something, to the tales of opening doors and switching on and off of a light here and there, to the wafting smell of flowers crossing a persons path when no one or no breeze is around, to any number of other accounts and yarns. The young lady at the heart of all these stories is Bertha.
Now days Bertha is often blamed in good fun for slammed doors or any oopsy and dropsy moments. Bertha was a 23 years old young woman from the Bega area. Christened on the 24th April 1884.
Her family had established strong roots in the area beginning with her ex convict grandfather on her fathers side and a minister of the church with an interesting head for business in the growing agriculture sector on her grandmothers side. The pioneering families had many businesses in the Bega Valley including the owning and operating two of Bega's popular hotels.
Bertha and her travelling companion were travelling back to Bega from a stay in Sydney where Bertha had gone to have some new treatment for her lingering illness. While in Sydney Bertha sat for a photographic portrait. At no time thinking this would be her last photograph.
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Boarding the S.S. Bega for the return sea voyage home Bertha and her companion (a family member) enjoyed the sea air and this modern transport link that shortened the time of travel significantly between home and Sydney. The steamer powered on toward Tathra and a tired but happy to be going home Bertha lapsed into what today is known as a diabetic coma.
Bertha passed away on 22nd November 1907 aged 23, just before the boat The SS Bega berthed at the Tathra Wharf. The coroners report states Bertha died at sea of heart failure due to diabetes. Bertha’s body was transported to the Tathra Hotel , then called The Ocean View Hotel operated by J. W. Twyford, a good friend of the family, to be laid out in the back shed /room until she could be transported to Bega for her funeral.
Years later the buildings and sheds at the rear of the Tathra Hotel were demolished to make way for the construction of the new kitchen, Bistro, Dining area, function area and dance floor on the 1st floor, ensuring the best ocean views and whale watching point in the area. The drive through cellars and store room area on ground level. The motel was at a later time constructed on what was the livestlock holding pens later to be the parking area.
We now head 55km north to Montague Island.
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While it's now an island paradise, 20,000 years ago Montague Island, located 10 kilometres from the New South Wales far south coast hamlet of Narooma, was an inland hill. Beside it were two other hills, now named Mt Dromedary and Little Dromedary.
Around 9000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, the sea level rose by more than 100 metres, encircling the hitherto inland hill in water and creating an island. These days, for most of the eco-tourists who brave the attimes rough crossing to explore Montague Island, their first experience is a stomach-churning odour.
'Yeah, they can get a bit on the nose,' confesses former Montague Island National Park guide Mark Westwood, referring to the pungent odour of the island's colony of Australian fur seals - the last remaining colony off the New South Wales coast. 'It's a potent mixture of their sweat, fur oil and excrement, all caked on the rocks,' explains Mark.
It's predominantly the island's wildlife - the fur seals, fairy penguins and thousands of nesting seabirds that led this Garden of Eden to become a wildlife sanctuary in 1953.
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Montague, however, is also a very special place for the local Aboriginal peoples who have their own stories about how Montague Island was formed. The popular story is that Gulaga (Mt Dromedary) had two sons who left to travel east. When they reached the sea she called to the younger son, 'Come back, come back, my boy. You're too young.' While the younger son who remained close to his mother's feet became Najanuga (Little Dromedary), the older son went on into the sea and became Barunguba (Montague Island).
Archaeological surveys suggest that for thousands of years Montague Island was a fertile hunting ground for the Walbanga and Djiringanj Aboriginal peoples who paddled across in specially made sea canoes to feast on the abundance of food available, including mutton birds and seabird eggs. Making seaworthy canoes was no mean feat.
Mark Westwood tells of a tragic incident during a food collection expedition by over 150 Aboriginal people in the late nineteenth century.
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‘Dozens of men toiled for months, laboriously constructing the 70 to 80 large canoes required to take 150 adults on the return trip to Montague Island. When the canoes (crafted from a large sheet of stringy bark tied at both ends with twigs and cords), were ready, there was great expectation and as the collection party set off at the crack of dawn those remaining on the mainland cheered and danced in jubilation.’
‘Later that day, the children and older women who had waited all day in anticipation of a feast to end all feasts became very excited, when just on sunset, the returning men and their canoes laden with culinary treats approached the mainland. Suddenly, when the canoes were less than a kilometre away, a nasty southerly blew up and one canoe after another became swamped by the raging sea. Not one of the 150 men was ever seen again.’
Today, despite most visitors being unaware of this tragedy, as soon as some set foot on the island they feel an overwhelming pang of sadness. The misplaced spirits of the 150 poor souls lost at sea aren't the only paranormal entities reported to roam this barren island.
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The job of lighthouse keeper is lonely at the best of times, but in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Montague Island was a particularly lonesome outpost for the keepers and their families. For most of these years there was no cable or wireless telegraph between Montague Island and the mainland. Contact with civilisation was restricted to a passing supply ship that would (weather permitting) stop off once every few months.
In the case of a medical emergency, the lighthouse keeper resorted to raising a distress flag, hoping that either a pasing boat or someone from the mainland would see it and raise the alarm. Sadly, the graves of three people in a small cemetery just to the south of the lighthouse are testimony to the shortcomings of this primitive SOS method.
One of the graves is inscribed with the name Charles Townsend, the first assistant keeper, who died on 3
December 1894. Townsend was on his way back from the jetty with a load of supplies, when the horse pulling his cart unexpectedly bolted. Charles was caught off-balance and was thrown into the air, falling stomach-first onto the guard iron that ran along the top sides of the cart, badly injuring him. Despite his family raising the distress flag, no one saw it in time, and 12 hours later, Charles died a most painful death.
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There is one small cemetery on the island, set well away from the lighthouse and buildings and reached by via a dirt track. The cemetery is well cared for and contains two graves, surrounded by a white fence and a metal plaque set in front of the graves providing information on the burials as one of the headstones is now badly weathered.
Two children are in one grave and a single burial of Charles Townsend the other. Mrs Burgess conducted the ceremony, burying Charles next to her children.
These graves represent the real isolation problem involved with these old lighthouses in that medical help could not be obtained for the three due to the rough seas and being able to contact the mainland (or passing ships) for help.
The two children were part of the family of the lighthouse keeper, John Burgess, and his wife, Isabella (O'DELL). It is believed that one may have died from meningitis, but with no doctor being able to attend, the death certificate notes the cause as "Unknown"
* BURGESS, John Sydney O'Dell; Died 9th July, 1888, buried 11th July, 1888, aged 2 years and 10 months. The length of illness was noted as 3 days.
* BURGESS, Isabella Millicent; Died 24th January, 1890, Buried 25th January, 1890, aged 1 years and 8 months. Cause of death noted as "Whooping Cough"
The Cobargo Watch newspaper on the 29th December, 1894 ran an article using information provided by Mrs John Burgess, mother of the two children, noting the problems of getting help for isolated lighthouse people. Ships did not respond to their distress fares and there was no cable or signal station on the island for communication with the mainland.
There are also a number of reports of a female ghost that occasionally appears in the lighthouse's small window. 'It's a mystery, we don't really have any idea of the ghost's real identity,' says Mark Westwood.
We now travel to Bodalla, 25km from here.
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Hello Headless some great stuff well worth looking into.
Kanacki
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A landlady filmed the spooky moment she believes the ghost of a girl killed by a car outside her 'haunted' pub spoke to her. In her spine-tingling footage inside the dark tavern, footsteps can be heard before a young girl's voice appears to call out 'are you waiting for me?' and a door creaks.
Bodalla Arms Hotel (now Bodalla Pub) owner Michelle Coric thinks the ghoulish voice is the spirit of a young girl struck over 15 years ago as she chased her pet turtle into the road. The 49-year-old is determined to uncover the truth amid a wave of paranormal activity surrounding the historic pub in New South Wales, Australia.
"We were waiting around when we felt this sudden drop in temperature.
"I could feel someone there. We had been waiting here at the bar every night, so we felt shocked and excited when all those long nights paid off.
"I couldn't help but wonder what she meant; 'are you waiting for me?'. Maybe it's because I wait in the bar for her every night?"
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Since she sharing the footage on social media, it has racked up more than 4,500 views and even saw her contacted by a family member of the girl she believes is now haunting the venue. Michelle was told the tragic five-year-old died 15 years ago after she was hit by a car outside the establishment when she chased her pet turtle into the road.
She said: "The girl's voice is gentle and high pitched. I don't know how to alter footage, so it is what it is.
"I've also heard a man laughing and it did scare me because it was echoing and deep, but I never felt threatened. I fear the living more than the dead."
Have a listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRDbEOcHuG4
Is there any truth to this story?
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GOOD SAMARITAN ACT LEADS TO DAUGHTER’S DEATH
December 4, 2002:— A five-year-old girl was struck and fatally injured by a car after her father stopped his vehicle on a highway to help a turtle. NSW Police said the 27-year-old Moruya man and his daughter were travelling on the Princes Highway near Bodalla, on the state's far south coast, about 9.30am (AEDT) yesterday.
Spotting a turtle crossing the road, the man pulled over to move it to safety, instructing his daughter to stay in the car. But it's believed the five-year-old girl undid her child restraint, got out of the car and crossed the road into the path of an oncoming vehicle. The car was being driven by a 36-year-old Potato Point man.
A passing motorist stopped to administer CPR until the arrival of ambulance officers but the girl died a short time later at Moruya Hospital. Police said there appeared to be no suspicious circumstances surrounding the crash. Far South Coast Local Area Commander Superintendent Rick Mawdsley said all those involved were being offered counselling.
A very sad tragedy in any case.
Who could be the man behind the deep, echoing laugh that Michelle Coric claimed she heard?
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HOTEL PROPRIETOR DROWNED
Sat 24 Feb 1934:— Flood waters claimed a victim at Bodalla today, when Mr. H.J. Burbidge proprietor of the Bodalla Arms Hotel, Bodalla, was swept from his horse when attempting to cross an area inundated by the Tuross River. He was drowned.
Could it be Mr H.J. Burbidge that was heard laughing?
75km from here is Braidwood.
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For some few weeks past considerable excitement has prevailed amongst residents of Six-mile Flat, Warri-Bombay by a series of extraordinary occurrences, the origin of which is still as deep and impenetrable as ever, not-withstanding the most careful and rigid inquiry, although there are people who refuse to believe anything else than that they are the result of supernatural agency.
It appears that a miner named Cunningham and a male lived in a hut belonging to Mr. Terence M'Graft which is situated close to the Shoalhaven River. They had occupied the place for some time, when all of a sudden, one night the building was bombarded with clods from an ant bed which had been picked up by Cunningham, and which is situated about 100 yards from the hut.
The pieces of hard mud penetrated tbe cracks between the slabs, although how some of them could get through it puzzled them, since they were larger than the opening. They naturally looked about to find the author of the throwing, but without any success. When they went outside, the clods hit the inside of the building. On the following night a repetition of the business occurred, and the men became somewhat alarmed. They told some others of it, at the same time expressing their belief that the throwing was the work of a ghost.
These persons visited the scene, and found the facts exactly as stated by Cunningham and his mate. The story spread, and others viewing the matter as a joke, likewise visited the place with the assurance that they at least would discover the origin of these peculiar occurrences. They left in the same happy condition of mystification as those who had preceded them, although they went with guns, which they fired in the direction from where the throwing proceeded. And here we may remark that the clods thrown strike the hut in almost exactly the same place every time between two slabs near the window.
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On several occasions no less than eighteen people have been on the lookout at the same time, forming a sort of semi-circle round the side of the hut where the throwing occurs. They fired their guns, loaded with shot, into the bushes of the trees surrounding the place, with such good effect that there is not a tree or log within a couple of hundred yards of the hut that is not riddled with shot.
To make sure that the clods came from the ant bed, a number of them were marked with charcoal, and these have been subsequently found inside the hut, perfectly unbroken. Although the spot is plainly within view of the watchers, and any one visiting it could easily be detected, and to make assurance doubly sure the watchers have actually placed cotton thread on small stakes right round the bed, but this line was not broken or touched, showing that there is no possibility of anyone sneaking up to the bed, throwing the clods, and running away.
Although the proceedings are most mysterious, and rival the recent stone-throwing case near Sydney, which created such excitement some short time ago that the metropolitan papers even devoted considerable space to the extraordinary proceedings enacted there. The most peculiar thing about the matter is that the clod-throwing started simultaneously with the disturbing of the ant bed by Cunningham.
And what is still more peculiar, the presence of this man in the hut is absolutely necessary to produce the "manifestations." Without him there is no clod-throwing. Many sensible, level-headed men have visited the spot, and although loth to believe that the throwing is done by any supernatural agency, they are absolutely unable to account for the proceedings. The throwing usually commences at about half-past 10 o'clock at night, and continues sometimes till daybreak, although as a rule it only lasts for a couple or three hours.
We are now 52km to Riverside Cemetery and Oaks Estate where we started, here’s some more mysterious and haunted places randomly around NSW.
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Walcha is located about half way between Sydney and Brisbane.
Wed 2 Feb 1938:—Whether the paralysing ordeal of the night I spent in that lonely, deserted house was based on some psychic manifestation or not, I cannot say.
Had someone, in the past, choked to death there, or had some helpless victim been strangled within those walls?
It happened in 1905 near the little town of Walcha, N.S.W. Travelling along a hot, dusty road, I reached the town in the late afternoon, and, getting some fresh supplies there, walked on some distance. Seeing an apparently empty cottage some distance back from the road, I decided to camp for the night.
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It was a small, two-roomed structure with an open fireplace. There was a queer sense of desolate loneliness about it. Some other swagman had evidently camped there. Fresh ashes were in the
old-fashioned fireplace.
I have often wondered if he, whoever he was, went through the same terrifying experience that I had. After tea I rolled out my blankets and soon turned in. I had been asleep for a couple of hours when slowly I awakened. The stillness was oppressive.
Suddenly the wall near me seemed to vibrate. Then, apparently from the other room, came a
queer choking sound, which became more and more agitated and violent, accompanied by a trembling and shaking of the whole building.
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The noise of choking and vomiting ended in a sort of groan. Then all was silence. My hair rose. I could see nothing in the darkness. Terror seized me, and I was too scared to move. Presently, the awful choking, vomiting and groaning was resumed, accompanied by the shaking of the whole building.
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This was repeated at intervals during the remainder of the night, until dawn, when the shaking of the building and the convulsive choking became more violent. I could stand it no longer. As the mysterious noise ceased, I rushed outside and quickly ran round the building twice.
There was no sign of anything. I was puzzled, and still am. There was no wind; it was dead calm. There was no cover of any kind for over a quarter of a mile round. Both rooms were empty.
I was (and still am) an abstainer, so the charge of intemperance cannot be levelled against me. I did not stay at the deserted house for breakfast. I will readily admit I was in need of money, but if anyone had offered me £5 to sleep in that cottage by myself again, I would have promptly declined.
According to the author of this article, he walked some distance from Walcha and spotted the cottage where he camped. A tragic incident happened in 1895, a few miles from Walcha.
Could this be the cottage mentioned?
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Fri 3 May 1895:— A shocking domestic tragedy was reported to the Walcha police last week. A woman named Sweeney, wife of Bernard Sweeney, a selector, living a few miles from town, was shot dead. Both were middle-aged people and have a large family of young children. Owing to domestic unhappiness the Rev Father Robinson visited them on Wednesday, and persuaded them to sign an agreement to live together amicably.
Shortly after he left, Mrs Sweeney thought she had done wrong in signing the agreement. Sweeney then fired a revolver, the shot, passing through the mouth, the bullet tearing away a tooth and a portion of the tongue, finally passing through the spinal column.
When arrested Sweeney admitted being with his wife and having a quarrel with her, and firing at her twice to frighten her. Sweeney had a six-chambered bulldog revolver, fully loaded, in his possession, and accounted for it being fully loaded by saying that he intended to commit suicide. He had taken out the empty cartridges and put full ones in the revolver.
He is a well-to-do selector, and there are nine children in the family. At an inquest a verdict of wilful murder was returned, and Sweeney was committed for trial.
Was the choking, vomiting and groaning noises the result of Mrs Sweeney’s death?
That’s for you to decide.
We now head to Sydney.
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