Great Australian Ghost Stories

by Richard Davis

  The Captain was also a courageous explorer who made many journeys sometimes alone, into the interior, surveying and mapping the wild terrain. It was while returning from one of these excursions, riding alone along a bush track in what is now South Brisbane, that Logan met a ghost. The Captain spotted a man in convict uniform a few yards in front of him and, thinking it was an escapee from the settlement, hailed him and ordered him to stop.

  Logan expected the figure to run but to his surprise it approached him, reached out a sinewy arm and grabbed one of his stirrups. Logan’s horse took fright and reared. The Captain lashed out with his riding crop but the blow passed straight through the shadowy figure. He spurred his horse to a gallop but the ghost clung on, floating effortlessly beside the terrified horse and rider. It was not until they were nearing the south bank of the Brisbane River that the ghost suddenly let go and disappeared.

  Logan’s fear may seem out of character for a ruthless man with an inquiring mind, but something else had unsettled him: Captain Logan had recognised the ghost. It was a convict called Stimson, who had absconded, been recaptured at the very spot where he appeared, and died while being flogged on the Captain’s orders exactly one month earlier.

  Logan met his own death on another expedition. He set out with his batman and five trusted convicts on 9 November 1830, to map a creek west of the outpost at Limestone Hills (Ipswich). The party was stalked for most of its journey and attacked twice by hostile Aborigines but, despite this apparent danger, Logan went off on his own on 17 October, planning to rejoin the party at a rendezvous at dusk. When he found he could not reach the spot before nightfall, Logan built a rough shelter and settled down for the night. In the early hours of the morning of the eighteenth he was attacked and killed by Aborigines or — according to some historians — by convicts.

  At noon that day a party of prisoners working on the river bank at the Moreton Bay settlement spotted Captain Logan on horseback on the far side of the river, waving to them. None had any doubts about who it was. Two of them downed tools and hastily launched the punt that was used to ferry people across the river and rowed over to pick up their commandant. When they arrived on the south bank (the spot where Stimson’s ghost had disappeared and the Queensland Performing Arts Complex now stands) there was no sign of Logan. He and his horse had vanished into thin air.

  At that time the Fell Tyrant’s battered body was growing cold in a shallow grave in the bush seventy kilometres inland.

  21.

  The Rabbi, the Bishop and the Pearl

  ‘I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.’

  ‘Long past?’ inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarvish stature.

  ‘No. Your past.’

  A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

  (English novelist, 1812–1870)

  On 12 March 1912 a severe cyclone was bearing down on the small town of Port Hedland on the north coast of Western Australia. In port that day was the 3726-tonne passenger steamer Koombana, pride of the Adelaide Steamship Company’s fleet, scheduled to depart for Broome 500 kilometres to the north. The captain decided it would be safer to put to sea and weather the storm in deep water. The Koombana steamed straight into the path of the cyclone. It was never seen again and has gone down in history as the worst civilian shipping disaster in Western Australian waters. Not one of the 138 people on board survived.

  Among the victims was a man named Abraham Davis, well known in Port Hedland and Broome as a successful pearl buyer (and no relation to the author, as far as I know). This was the heyday of pearling on the Western Australian coast and the rough shanty town of Broome was the pearling capital of the world. Pearls of unprecedented size, quality and lustre and tonnes of precious pearl shell were being harvested from the Timor Sea. The dangerous work was done by Japanese and Filipino divers but the profits were made by men like Davis, some honest, others shady and most somewhere in between.

  Davis had first come to Broome as manager of his brother-in-law Mark Rubin’s pearling empire, comprising several ships, dozens of divers (kitted out in the company’s distinctive livery when above water), an impressive office in Dampier Terrace and agents trading the company’s wares as far afield as London. When his brother-in-law over-extended himself and went broke in 1908, Davis took over what remained of the enterprise and also the Rubin family home in Hamersley Street.

  By local standards this building (described as a ‘bungalow’) was palatial, with polished wooden floors and wide verandahs. Davis employed a team of Japanese craftsmen to further enhance it by installing ornate moulded ceilings and expansive bay windows. He also retained the most remarkable feature of the house — a German-made pipe organ that dominated an enclosed verandah on one side of the house; it had been his sister’s pride and joy.

  The Rubins and Davis were Jewish and after the departure of his kin, Abraham Davis became the unofficial rabbi for the Jewish community in Broome and the covered verandah (complete with organ) became their makeshift synagogue. It was said that the strains of the organ, the cantillations of the chazzan and the responses of the congregation could be heard wafting across Roebuck Bay every Shabbat — strange and incongruous sounds in a place well-accustomed to incongruities.

  In 1910 Davis transferred his business to Port Hedland but retained ownership of the bungalow in Broome. At the time of his death he also owned a large stock of pearls, including the famous (or infamous) ‘Rosea’, an exquisite, pink-hued gem the size of a marble and valued at almost 20,000 pounds. The Rosea had been wrested from the sea in 1905 and passed through many hands, leaving a trail of treachery and death in its wake, before Davis acquired it. Some believed the pearl was cursed and possessed black powers that would bring bad luck and death to all who touched it. It had (believers claimed) already accounted for a drowned diver, a murdered buyer, the lives of the buyer’s murderers (who had been hanged for their crime) and the suicide of a subsequent owner. The popular writer Ion Idriess eventually used the Rosea pearl’s turbulent history as the basis for his novel Forty Fathoms Deep.

  When Davis’s death on the Koombana was reported many people blamed the curse and asked the question: what has become of the ill-fated pearl? It was not among his stock or his personal effects in Port Hedland, which meant that Davis had either been carrying it when he boarded the Koombana (in which case it had returned to the bottom of the sea) or he had hidden it somewhere. As the pearl had been bought in Broome, people speculated that it might be hidden in or around Davis’s bungalow and the strange events that followed seemed to support that theory.

  In 1914 the bungalow was bought by the Anglican Church as a residence for the first Bishop of North West Australia, the Right Reverend Gerard Trower. Bishop Trower moved into what was thereafter known as the Bishop’s Palace a few months before the outbreak of World War One. Gerard Trower was an energetic, practical administrator with a fine mind and a zealous faith. He had previously been Bishop of Likoma in Nyasaland (Malawi), where he had built schools, hospitals, a theological college and a fine cathedral. No doubt his superiors hoped he would do the same in his new diocese. The Bishop wrote that the house in Broome, comfortable though it was, was of little use to him, his territory being so large and priests so few that he spent most of his time travelling. However, when he was in residence he sometimes had a quite unexpected, late-night visitor.

  Soon after he moved into the pearl buyer’s former home, the Bishop was awakened one night by a strange light and an unaccountable breeze stirring the curtains in his bedroom. As he watched, mystified, a hazy figure surrounded by an aura of soft light entered the room — not through the door but through a solid wall. The Bishop thought he might be experiencing some divine revelation — the visit of an angel perhaps, to give him guidance or call him, prematurely, to his Maker — but as the figure became clearer he realised that it was a middle-aged, heavily bearded man with flabby folds of flesh the colour of bruises under his eyes, wearing the robes and prayer shawl of a Jewish rabbi.

  The spe
ctre (according to the Bishop) addressed him in perfect English and introduced himself as Abraham Davis, the former owner of the house. The Bishop asked what he wanted but the spectre gave no answer, preferring to make light conversation about the house, the weather and anything but his reason for being there. The Bishop and the Rabbi chatted amicably for ten minutes, then the latter began to look furtively around the room, slowly faded, and finally vanished, leaving the Anglican cleric rubbing his eyes in astonishment.

  Davis’s ghost reappeared to Bishop Trower several times, always apologising for its intrusion but clearly bent on some mysterious purpose. As the Bishop later recalled: ‘Finally, on our fourth or fifth encounter, I quizzed my spectral visitor directly on the purpose of its visits. “Are you in need of something, sir?” I asked. The spectre screwed up its face into an obsequious smile, stroked its beard with one pale and heavily-ringed hand and replied: “It is such a fine night, my friend. Does one need a reason to be abroad on such a night?” I was determined to pin the spectre down so I pressed on. “I get the impression that you have a quest … that you are searching for something lost,” I said. The spectre bowed its head and replied: “I seek only what all men seek … wisdom and serenity.”’

  Visitors to the palace also reported seeing the Rabbi wandering the garden at dusk when the Bishop was away, a substantial figure that appeared to be flesh and blood until it passed uninterrupted through thorny bushes and effortlessly through solid obstacles. Observers all commented on its rabbinical robes and its beard, which was variously reported as neat and black or long and grey. Others reported that the spectre seemed to be afflicted with a limp. None seem to have been particularly alarmed or agitated by its presence.

  Despite the assumption that ghosts need no sustenance, the ghost of Rabbi Davis seems to have retained a keen interest in food. The Bishop’s housekeeper reported it appearing suddenly one evening in her kitchen and inspecting the food she was cooking. ‘I had a nice leg o’ mutton simmering away on the stove with a pot of potatoes and another of broad beans,’ she said. ‘I watched him bend over the stove and cast a suspicious eye over the contents of the pots. I think he was checking to see if the food was kosher, and disappointed to find it was not.’ On another memorable afternoon, the ghost was seen mingling with guests at a garden party hosted by the bishop; not speaking, but bestowing ecumenical smiles on everyone and, some say, stealing a plate of buttered scones!

  What was it that made the ghost of the dead pearl buyer return to his bungalow so many times? Was he simply curious to see his old house and to meet the Christian priest who entertained gentiles in his former synagogue, or was he searching for the Rosea pearl? When news of the Bishop’s other-worldly visitor spread most people chose to believe the latter.

  Bishop Trower departed in 1927; and if his successors ever saw the ghost they never admitted it. The building became sleeping quarters for the staff of a nearby hotel, then operated as a cheap boarding house for some years. Eventually it fell into ruin, but the legend that the ghost of Rabbi Davis haunted its crumbling walls persisted until it was finally demolished in 1980.

  As far as I know the Rosea pearl has never turned up. Perhaps it lies on the seabed in the wreck of the Koombana (believed to be in deep water midway between Port Hedland and Broome), or maybe it’s still buried where the Bishop’s Palace stood, waiting for some fortunate (or unfortunate) person to stumble upon it.

  22.

  Crimes of Passion

  Of all ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.

  The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes,

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Scottish mystery writer, 1859–1930)

  Unlike those in most other state capitals, Perth’s daintily odd Government House is on the edge of the central business district and overshadowed by tower blocks, but of the thousands of people who pass its gates each day few know the story of the cold-blooded murder that once occurred there and the ghostly legacy it left behind.

  Beside the main block of Government House stands a ballroom, designed in 1899 by the father of Australian composer Percy Grainger. In former times this large, airy room was the centre of the city’s social life. Charity balls were regularly held there and it was at one of these that the murder took place.

  Imagine, if you will, the packed interior on an August night in 1925, decked out with long ropes of flowers and lit with ever-changing pastel-coloured lights. The dance floor is filled with smart young couples, some in fancy dress, the rest in chic gowns and tuxedos, strutting and gliding to the music of a jazz band. Silvery laughter, clapping and cigarette smoke fill the air and the cares of the world seem far away.

  Suddenly, among the dancers, a pretty young dark-haired woman in an electric-blue dress raises her arm. As if in slow motion, a lace handkerchief slips from her hand and flutters to the floor, revealing a small black pistol. One deafening shot rings out and a man in a tuxedo clutches his forehead. Blood begins to spurt as he falls like a stone to the floor.

  Audrey Jacobs was an independent young woman used to getting what she wanted, and what she wanted was Cyril Gidley, handsome young marine engineer and notorious womaniser. They had been lovers until Cyril tired of her and moved on to fresh conquests. According to evidence at Audrey’s trial the two had met unexpectedly at the ball. Audrey had then gone home to fetch her gun and visited St Mary’s Cathedral on the way back before exacting a terrible revenge on her ex-lover.

  Due in part to the persuasive powers of Arthur ‘Ginger’ Hayes, her defence council, Audrey Jacobs was acquitted at her trial and walked free to loud cheering from the public gallery, but what really saved her was the absence of one key witness, the man standing closest to the shooting, who had disappeared in the commotion. That witness kept his identity secret for forty-six years until he published his autobiography — it was Claude Kingston, J. C. Williamson’s celebrity concert manager, who had decided he could not afford to get entangled in the affair and wondered for the rest of his life whether his testimony might have altered the outcome of Audrey Jacobs’s trial.

  If Cyril Gidley’s killer had been punished perhaps his ghost would not haunt the scene of the crime. Soft footsteps, thought by some to be a woman’s and by others to be those of a man wearing dancing pumps, have been heard pacing the ballroom at Government House. Gidley was an Englishman and also an anti-Royalist and that may account for a flurry of ghostly activity in 1977 when Prince Charles was due to attend a ball there to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

  Organisers complained that furniture carefully set in place to observe royal protocols was mysteriously moved around and crockery and glassware in the supper room rearranged at night. A portrait of the Queen was tilted to an odd angle and potted plants placed in buckets ready to be installed the next day were found dry and wilted.

  The official explanation was ‘wind’ and it was pointed out that the building had a reputation for being ‘draughty’, but the real culprit was spotted by a security guard at dusk on the evening before the ball. A young man dressed in a tuxedo and fitting the description of Cyril Gidley at the time of his death was spotted leaning on the railing of one of the balconies, casually smoking a cigarette.

  The security guard shouted a challenge and reached for his high-powered torch. The figure turned and looked down, but when the torch beam reached the spot where it had stood it was gone. The security guard rushed upstairs to find the balcony empty. Only the faint smell of cigarette smoke lingering in the air reassured him his eyes had not been playing tricks on his brain.

  There were also reports of a female ghost being seen in the ballroom, but as Cyril Gidley’s is the only recorded death in the building her origin is a mystery. Gidley was by all accounts a solidly built man who, even in spectral form, would be unlikely to be mistaken for a female. Could it be Audrey Jacobs? Well, after her trial she married an American and went to live first in South Africa then in the United States. Her death, presumably in the United States, went unnoticed.

  A
jealous lover was also responsible for a female ghost who haunted the grounds of Coolgardie Hospital a generation earlier. By all accounts Elizabeth Gold was an attractive young woman — attractive enough to turn the head of Captain Charles de Garburgh Gold, a distinguished soldier twenty-six years her senior. Captain Gold was the scion of a renowned British military family and a widower with two grown-up children. His great-grandfather died at Bunkers Hill during the American War of Independence; his grandfather fought at Waterloo; and his father commanded the British troops in New Zealand at the outbreak of the Maori Wars. Captain Gold had had his charger shot out from under him, been wounded twice and awarded the Medal of Abyssinia.

  Elizabeth and Captain Gold were married and somehow ended up in Coolgardie in 1896. He was by then retired from the army and may have gone there to watch over mining investments. Shortly after his fifty-seventh birthday, in May the following year, Gold suffered a ruptured appendix and was admitted to Coolgardie Hospital, where he died of peritonitis.

  After the Captain’s death, Elizabeth Gold moved into a house in Hunter Street where she became very friendly with her neighbours, Mr and Mrs Kenneth Snodgrass. The father of five children, Snodgrass was a respected accountant who served on the boards of several public institutions, and Mrs Snodgrass’s friendship was a great comfort to the young widow.

  Elizabeth was just thirty-two and found herself at a loose end. She conceived the noble idea of devoting the rest of her life to nursing. Whether the idea originated from her husband’s short stay in hospital or whether nursing was an old, unfulfilled ambition is unknown but, for whatever reason, she set off for Perth and nurses’ training college.

  In less than a year she was back, employed as a probationary nurse at Coolgardie Hospital. Among the other trainee nurses was one of the Snodgrasses’ daughters and the hospital matron was Kenneth Snodgrass’s cousin. Elizabeth picked up her friendship with her neighbours where it had left off, but Mrs Snodgrass was now spending long periods in Melbourne. In her absence the relationship between Elizabeth and Kenneth Snodgrass developed into far more than friendship. They became lovers.