Great Australian Ghost Stories

by Richard Davis

  12.

  Saucy Spirits

  I believe in a ghost, I believe in a ha’nt,

  Good God a-mighty, I ain’t no saint,

  Ain’t got no arms, ain’t got no haid,

  Don’t stop to count them tracks I made.

  Traditional African–American Song (untitled)

  The theme of the dead returning to avenge themselves on those responsible for their deaths belongs more to popular fiction than genuine ghost lore. Leaving aside gruesome appearances, the ghosts in most of these stories seem a fairly respectable lot and as puzzled as their victims to find themselves where they are — but not all. There’s an old story from the Monaro district of New South Wales about an enraged spirit who returned almost immediately to take his revenge on his persecutor in some very peculiar ways.

  The story concerns a retired army major turned farmer and one of his convict labourers. The Major, according to the story, was a priggish bachelor with a quick temper who took sadistic pleasure in meting out rough justice with lash and noose. A loaded pistol was kept on his dining room table during meals and beside his bed each night. It was said that if any convict walked behind him, swore or blasphemed, the Major would have him flogged and serious offenders were hanged from one of two large gum trees in the homestead garden — four men in one day, it is claimed.

  The convict in the story was an Irishman, transported for political crimes, who considered himself a cut above the rest and complained about having to work and sleep with riff-raff. When the Major showed no sympathy the convict threw a stone at him. According to the story, the Major tried the convict, condemned him to death and presided over his hanging that very afternoon but, if summary justice had rid the Major of problems before, it failed this time. A few nights after the hanging strange things began to happen on the farm: milk pails were knocked over, animals were let out of enclosures and a haystack burned down. The barracks that housed the convicts at night was a sturdy building from which they could not escape, so the Major blamed his free servants and the local Aborigines. His overseer was told to be more vigilant but the incidents continued and then, one dark and windy night, the Major himself discovered the culprit.

  The incongruous sound of a man singing in the middle of the night woke him. Night-gowned and tassel-capped in the fashion of the time, the Major sat up in his giant four-poster bed and reached for his gun. He fumbled with candle and matches, but before he could strike a light the room began to fill with a lurid glow and the figure of the dead convict materialised at the foot of the bed. As the Major watched, horrified and scandalised, the ghost began to dance an Irish jig and sing a particularly bawdy song about the whores of Sydney Town. The Major fired his pistol at the figure but the bullet passed straight through and smashed an expensive vase on the mantel.

  Now the Major had many unlikeable qualities but he was not a coward. He ordered the spectre to desist, cursed it and inveigled heavenly support. He hurled the pistol at it but all to no avail. The ghost of the Irish convict just chuckled, bowed obsequiously, kicked up its heels and launched into another, even more ribald song. Finally the Major closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears and that was how the servants found him when they came to his aid — but no trace of the ghost did they see.

  The Major, being the practical man that he was, probably put the first night’s experience down to indigestion or overwork but, when it was repeated night after night for weeks on end, he finally broke. Fearing that he would go mad if he stayed a night longer, the Major packed his possessions, sold his farm and moved back to England.

  Well, that’s how the story goes. History, however, tells it a little differently. Major William Sandys Elrington retired from the British Army aged forty-three in 1824. He was tall, red-haired and carried a large sabre scar across his forehead, a legacy of the Peninsula Wars where he served under the Duke of Wellington.

  When he arrived in Australia in 1827 he was not a bachelor but a widower. His son Richard and the Major’s old nanny, Mary Smith, aged seventy-three, accompanied him. Governor Darling granted the Major 200 hectares of fine land on the banks of the Shoalhaven River near the present town of Braidwood. He called the property ‘Mount Elrington’. The census of 1828 shows his labour force comprising five assigned convicts and two emancipated convicts. Thomas Clarke, father of the notorious bushranging Clarke Brothers, also worked for the Major at one time. The Major had an elder son, also in the British Army, Lieutenant Clement Elrington, who sold his commission and joined his father for a time.

  Major Elrington prospered. He was older, more experienced and had more capital than most settlers. He also lived on his property and supervised its running (many wealthy landowners preferred to live in the relative comfort of Sydney and left their properties in the hands of unscrupulous managers). He was respected in the district and appointed the local magistrate soon after his arrival.

  Major Elrington was often cited as a model free settler but the model was flawed. The Major was subject to rapid changes of temperament and may have suffered from what we call today bipolar disorder. He quarrelled openly with his son Richard, disinheriting him and challenging him to a duel on at least one occasion, although there is no evidence of a duel taking place. His relationship with his other son, Clement, a would-be poet, was probably not much better. The Major also had a mania for discipline. The convicts at Mount Elrington were driven mercilessly and the lash and other brutal forms of physical punishment applied with alacrity.

  There is official correspondence between the Major and the colonial secretary that confirms his power as a magistrate did not extend to pronouncing death sentences on convicts (or anyone else), but two trees, fitting the description of the infamous ‘hanging’ trees, stood until fairly recently at Mount Elrington in the location described in the story.

  So, what of the ghost? There were many Irishmen among the convicts at Mount Elrington at different times; and a lad of about fifteen did throw a stone at the Major. This was probably not the youth’s only crime, for he was brought before a senior magistrate. The Major, apparently in a benevolent mood, spoke in the young man’s defence and tried, unsuccessfully, to save him from the noose.

  Major Elrington did sell up, suddenly and unexpectedly, in 1845, and returned to England, but whether the reason was a ghost or simply the desire to spend his last days in his native Northumberland no one knows. So legend and history agree on some things, disagree on others and we must make up our own minds whether the Major was a maligned man and whether one of his convicts did enjoy a gleeful, ghostly revenge.

  The Irish spook with his nimble feet and his bawdy songs is not the only saucy spirit in the annals of Australian ghost lore. A few of those ladies mentioned in his songs also feature in other stories and not only in Sydney. Take for example the ghost of the prostitute that used to appear on foggy nights on Princes Bridge in Melbourne in our great-grandfathers’ time. She was a grotesque, aging creature with a painted face and threadbare finery who would stand under one of the street lamps, twirling a tattered pink parasol. As men passed she would smile at them and if any took a fancy to her and stopped, she would reach out a hand as cold as the grave and hold their arm in an icy grip. Then she would stretch back her head to show off her breasts, revealing a broad, jagged and livid scar running from her right ear to her left shoulder. While the observer gasped and recoiled in horror the wanton wraith would laugh — a staccato cackle that blended with the rattle of carriage wheels on the bridge. She would then try to shove her victim onto the busy carriageway. Most managed to regain their balance before falling or being run over and when they looked back their tormenter had disappeared, leaving only the smell of cheap violet scent lingering on the damp air.

  Another of the ‘sisters’ features in a story about a lesson in manners that went horribly wrong in the Murray River town of Echuca around the same time. The story goes that this fille de joie picked up two sawmill workers in an Echuca pub one night and allowed them to buy her drinks. L
ater when the trio were strolling along the river bank near the sawmillers’ cottage the men suggested the lady should repay their generosity with some free sex.

  The prostitute got on her high horse and told the men her company was ample reward for the drinks. If they wanted sex, she said, they would have to pay for it. Just then they were approaching the old tramway bridge over Southern Cross Creek, so the men suggested that if the prostitute didn’t cooperate they’d dangle her over the bridge until she learned how to show her gratitude properly.

  The lady was still adamant: no pay, no pleasure. So the men carried out their threat. It was then that things went horribly wrong. As she dangled over the water, the prostitute’s tight-fitting clothing bunched up around her neck, stopping her breathing. Her face suffused with blood and her eyes bulged. After five minutes the men dragged her limp body back onto the bridge but it was too late; the lady never again gave pleasure, with or without payment.

  For the next thirty years or so, until the bridge was destroyed by flood, the ghost of this prostitute used to appear there when the full moon was setting (as it was when she died), waiting to take revenge on her unprincipled companions. The ghost’s face was described as ‘beetroot coloured’ with either rage or the effect of strangulation, and its eyes bulged hideously. Witnesses claimed it would materialise in front of males crossing the bridge in pairs and block their way. It would stare at each pair until satisfied they were not the murderers, then howl with frustration and slowly ‘evaporate’.

  And then there’s Sabrina — no, not that blonde bombshell whose mammaries used to fill our screen in the early days of television — but a lithesome young spectre of more recent times, given that name by the companion she adopted. Sabrina’s story (surely one of the most bizarre in this collection) has its origins at the scene of a fatal road accident in the Sydney suburb of Blacktown. An unemployed artist told his part in the story to the National Enquirer in 1993.

  The artist was the proud owner of a 1974 Triumph 2500 with a red body and white top. When he went driving alone one day and had car trouble a reassuring voice from the back seat told him not to panic — there was a garage one kilometre up the road. When the artist swung round there was a ‘passenger’ sitting in the back seat. The figure was hazy but clearly female, young and very attractive. He yelled: ‘Who the hell are you?’ (or words to that effect). The figure vanished — but not for good. She appeared six times more, lighting her finger like a candle on one occasion, according to the informant, so he could read a road map in the dark.

  The young man told the National Enquirer the ghost usually appeared dressed in the same clothes — very short red shorts and a very tight white tank top — but, on one memorable day, appeared stark naked. He finally got an answer to his question after the two got to know each other better. Sabrina, as he decided to call her, told him she had been riding her bicycle in Blacktown one day when she was run down by a car and killed. It was not the Triumph that hit her and it did not then belong to the artist, but it was being driven past at the time. It was so new and bright and shiny and painted in her favourite colours that she decided to ‘move in’ — permanently. The artist said he didn’t mind ‘Sabrina’ living in his car but he did try to avoid having friends sit in the back seat in case they took up her space or, worse, sat on her.

  Another decidedly ‘saucy’ spectre which might, like Sabrina, still be around haunts Saint Andrews Inn at Cleveland in Tasmania. The old inn dates from 1825 and offers excellent accommodation and fine food. In its heyday, the hotel served travellers on the road from Hobart to Launceston and was popular with cut-throats and vagabonds. History tells of Tasmania’s most notorious bushranger, Martin Cash, trading shots with the police there one day while holding the innkeeper’s daughter hostage and stealing some bacon.

  History records that a girl was also murdered in an upstairs room at the inn in the 1860s. Perhaps it is her ghost, or that of the young lady affronted by Martin Cash, who stalks the staircase, exacting revenge on the opposite sex.

  Legend has it that the spirit accosts males of all ages, sidles up to them and begins to unbutton their clothes. Transfixed with fear (or delight) the victims allow themselves to be stripped completely naked after which the ghost vanishes leaving them mortified with embarrassment and, if it happens to be winter, shivering with cold.

  The owners in the 1970s told the press the ghost had been very active in their time (following people up and down the stairs), but when they sold out she seemed to go to ground. The third owners saw her frequently, but the fourth did not, suggesting that perhaps the ghost skips a ‘generation’ of owners. The next owners (the fifth in this cycle) took over in the 1990s and reported hearing murmuring voices in one room and complained of clothes being put away mysteriously, so maybe it won’t be long before this clothes-stripping, saucy spirit (like Freddy Krueger) is ba-a-ck.

  13.

  The Mourning Bull

  No man can deny the many honest and credible people who affirm they have seen ghosts

  Ludwig Lavater (Swiss theologian, 1527–1586)

  Few ghost stories are as reliably attested to as the one known as ‘The White Bull of Yeumburra’. The prime witness to the strange events in this story was one of the most respected policemen in the New South Wales police force.

  When Senior Superintendent Martin Brennan wrote his memoirs in 1907 he devoted a whole chapter to a murder investigation he had been involved in during the winter of 1876 and its strange, supernatural sequel.* Martin Brennan was then a senior sergeant in charge of the Queanbeyan district of New South Wales. On 28 June Brennan received word that a shepherd named Jeremiah McCarthy had been murdered at a remote spot near the boundary of the Queanbeyan and Yass police districts. By arrangement, Senior Sergeant Brennan and one of his troopers met with an inspector and another trooper from Yass, the local coroner and a hastily recruited jury at the scene of the crime. The place was called the Washpool, an isolated spot on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River a few kilometres from the present town of Murrumbateman. Steep hills surrounded the area on three sides and the only signs of human habitation were some old sheep-washing pens belonging to Nanima station and the shepherd’s tiny hut. The nearest homestead was Yeumburra, a few kilometres away.

  McCarthy’s body was recovered from where it had been found, partly concealed in sparse scrub. It was carried back to the hut, where the coroner examined it and conducted an inquest. The shepherd had been shot in the head, then the front half of his skull hacked away with a sharp implement. Thirty-two pieces of lead shot were removed from what was left of his brain. The jury brought down a verdict of ‘Wilful murder, by person or persons unknown’ and the gruesome corpse was hastily wrapped in two blankets found inside the hut and buried close by.

  The inside of the shepherd’s hut was disordered. Several religious books that the victim had been fond of reading were scattered about. Three possums had taken up residence in the cold fireplace and a large goanna had devoured the contents of the meat bag and gone to sleep amongst the stinking remains of its feast. The flour and sugar bags had also been tampered with. At first it was thought the animals were to blame, but when an empty strychnine tin was found and large amounts of the deadly poison detected in the flour and sugar the evidence pointed to the murderer. There were also clear boot marks on the dirt floor, one pair belonging to McCarthy and another, much larger set made by someone wearing two left boots.

  The policemen then rode to Nanima station to speak to James Ramsey, McCarthy’s employer. Ramsey confirmed that McCarthy had been forty-five years old, single, sober and well read and had worked on Nanima for many years. Good shepherds prepared to live in wild and lonely spots with only their flock and a sheepdog for company were rare. Ramsey was very sorry, he said, to lose such a reliable one.

  Next the police called at Yeumburra, where Charles Hall could give them little information, and at Ginninderra, another local station, where William Davis had some startling news. On the evening o
f McCarthy’s murder Davis had found a villainous character called Mad Tom the Soldier in his kitchen. Mad Tom, despite his sixty years, was tall and powerful, one sinister eye staring out of a battered face framed with a grisly beard and lank hair. Mad Tom was well known to Senior Sergeant Brennan; his real name was William Hutton but he used many aliases, including ‘Tom Robertson’ and ‘Waterloo Tom’. He claimed to have been a soldier in the British Army and to have lost his eye and been injured in the leg at the Battle of Waterloo, none of which was true. He had never been in any army and had sustained his injuries when attacked by Aborigines in Tasmania while trying to carry off a young Aboriginal girl. He had roamed the Murrumbidgee region for years, begging, stealing and intimidating people with his six-foot long-barrelled rifle and a bayonet-like knife. The police suspected him of many crimes but had not been able to convict him.

  Davis said that Mad Tom had asked whether the shepherd McCarthy was still at the Washpool. The station owner and his men sent him packing, but discovered the next morning that a blanket, a left boot and a tin of strychnine were missing. The police had their culprit. Mad Tom the Soldier was tracked down and let off one shot from his murderous gun before being overpowered and taken into custody. He was wearing two left boots. The police were determined to get a conviction this time and decided the victim’s body should be exhumed and the blankets retrieved as evidence. Senior Sergeant Brennan, the Inspector from Yass and two troopers returned to the Washpool a few days later to carry out this gruesome task. What happened that day is stranger than fiction. Brennan takes up the story:

  It was a beautiful clear day, the sun’s rays shining on the river, but this changed as we stood beside the grave. Suddenly an extraordinary cumulo stratus [sic] cloud, or ‘woolpack’, descended enveloping the mountains and casting deep shadows over the Washpool. We commenced the work of exhumation but just as the spade touched the timber slab that covered the body there was the sound of a terrific explosion. The ground trembled and seemed to sink beneath our feet. A great rumbling sound reverberated through the valley for some seconds followed by a tremendous roar from the hilltop above us. Suddenly we observed through the gloom a huge bull of immaculate whiteness rushing down the slope towards us. We promptly sought the protection of some trees close by, drew revolvers and stood in readiness for defence, but this was unnecessary, as the animal on reaching the open grave, stopped suddenly, and with head erect, surveyed the surroundings, pawed the earth for a few seconds then lay down beside the grave, moaned piteously and expired.