Great Australian Ghost Stories

by Richard Davis

  Snodgrass was fifty-five, about the same age Captain Gold had been when he and Elizabeth married. A routine developed. Once a week Snodgrass would tell his children he was popping over to see Mrs Gold but, as well as making love to her, he would interrogate her about other men. Snodgrass was that most dangerous of lovers — the jealous kind.

  About a year after the Captain’s death it was announced that a charity ball in aid of the hospital was to be held in the local hall. Elizabeth informed Snodgrass that, like all the nurses who worked there, she was expected to attend. He could not appear in public with her and the thought of Elizabeth dancing with other men infuriated him. Snodgrass demanded she make some excuse not to go. Elizabeth refused point blank; she was going. Snodgrass badgered her for days but she would not be swayed.

  The day before the ball Kenneth Snodgrass borrowed a revolver from a friend. He needed it, he said, to shoot some feral cats that were annoying his hens. Mrs Snodgrass arrived back from Melbourne the next day. Snodgrass made some excuse to leave the house that evening and waited for Elizabeth on the path behind the hospital, where he knew she would pass on her way to the ball.

  At dusk, while the sky glowed lemon and purple shadows descended over the dusty bush, she appeared — a vision of loveliness in an elegant white ballgown. Snodgrass stepped out in front of her, brandishing the revolver. He begged her to change her mind and go home but she refused. The mixture of hatred and pity on her beautiful face enraged him. He raised the gun and fired. The bullet hit Elizabeth in the breast. She staggered then recovered and began to run across a tennis court towards the hospital. She managed only a few frantic steps before he fired again. The second bullet struck her in the head and she fell. A huge patch of blood spread across the white fabric of her gown and dripped from her head onto the tennis court.

  Snodgrass stood over Elizabeth’s lifeless body, the smoking revolver still in his hand. Suddenly anger and passion were replaced with horror as he realised what he had done and to whom. He raised the gun again, held the end of the barrel under his chin and squeezed the trigger. The dead lovers were found lying side by side on the fault line of the tennis court.

  Elizabeth Gold was buried the next day. Clouds had gathered during the night and the short service at the graveside was held under a grey and threatening sky. Just a few of the other nurses from the hospital attended. The rest of the community had grasped the truth of the situation as soon as news of the double slaying had broken. Within hours Nurse Gold had been posthumously demoted from respectable widow to Jezebel. One of the nurses placed a small cross of wild, yellow everlasting daisies on the coffin as it was lowered into the ground, then a sudden heavy rain shower washed the sand from the clergyman’s hand as he was about to sprinkle it on the lid.

  Snodgrass’s family paid for an elaborate headstone and a wrought-iron fence around his grave. Elizabeth’s remained unmarked for three quarters of a century, then a former president of the Coolgardie Council, the late Jack Tree, paid for a simple plaque to be added. Both headstone and plaque carry the same date of death: 31 May 1898.

  The respectable citizens of Coolgardie might have preferred to forget Elizabeth Gold, but the lady herself gave them no opportunity. Quite soon after her murder reports began to come in of people seeing her ghost: a wraith-like figure in a flowing white gown floating across the tennis court behind the hospital. A cook and several nurses claimed to have seen her. The cook told how she had been taking some scraps up to a rubbish bin near the tennis court one evening when she saw ‘a vague white shape, like a girl in an evening dress’. She dropped the scraps and fled. One of the nurses described the figure as appearing to be dancing — or playing tennis.

  Another nurse claimed to have had a close encounter with the ghost and later told the press: ‘I knew nothing about Nurse Gold or her story when I went to work at the hospital in the 1920s and I did not believe in ghosts. At the time I also thought people who claimed to see ghosts were nutters … but I’ve changed my mind about that. I came off duty one evening at about six o’clock and I ducked out the back entrance planning to take a short cut past the tennis court to get back to my lodgings … I had a date with a nice young man that night.

  ‘On the path beside the court I saw a movement behind some bushes and I called out “Is there anyone there?” thinking someone might have been waiting to leap out at me. A woman came around from behind the bushes and walked towards me. She had long, dark hair and she was wearing an old-fashioned pearly white evening gown. My first reaction was to think to myself how beautiful she was and I was envious of her pale almost translucent skin — a rare sight in that scorching hot part of the country.

  ‘“Hello,” I said or something like that. The woman kept walking towards me and I got the sudden and quite alarming impression that although she was looking at me she couldn’t see me. I stepped off the path and she passed right by me … just a few feet away. I heard the swish of her gown on the ground and I could see she wore white satin evening slippers. Without realising what I was doing I reached out to touch her dress. My hand passed straight through the fabric and I felt nothing. Then, three or four yards down the path, she just vanished. One moment she was there; the next she was gone. I didn’t stop shaking till I got to my lodgings and the next day when I commenced my shift I told the nurse I was replacing what I had seen, expecting her to tell me I was a fool. “Oh, that’s Lizzie Gold … she’s a ghost,” the other nurse said quite matter-of-factly. “Most of us have seen her.”’

  Hospital authorities always debunked reports of Nurse Gold’s ghost, suggesting witnesses must have seen bed linen flapping on the hospital laundry’s clothesline. The cook was especially vocal in refuting this. She said she was quite capable of recognising a bed sheet and was adamant that the ghost existed.

  Eventually the tennis court was ripped up and the area remained strewn with rubble for many years, but the sightings continued. Jack Tree was quoted as saying the apparition only appears on 31 May, the anniversary of the murder – suicide, but admitted he hadn’t seen it himself. He went on to say: ‘When the hospital was operating the authorities wouldn’t allow people on the grounds at night but now it’s closed there’s nothing to stop anybody going there on May thirty-first, any year, to see for themselves.’

  If any reader thinks that sounds like an invitation they can’t refuse, don’t be put off by the locals when you arrive in Coolgardie. When asked by strangers about their most famous ghost, like as not they’ll reply with a quip something like: ‘Listen, mate. The only way you’ll find gold in this town is to dig for it!’

  23.

  Phantom Steeds

  My Lady hath a sable coach

  With horses two and four

  My Lady hath a gaunt blood-hound

  That goeth on before.

  My Lady’s coach hath nodding plumes,

  The driver hath no head,

  My Lady is as ashen white

  As one that is long dead.

  Sabine Baring-Gould (English novelist and poet, 1834–1924)

  In Baring-Gould’s famous poem ‘my lady’s coach’ is black and somehow we know her horses must be black too. Australia has its own pair of spectral black steeds, but rather than being harnessed side by side to a sable coach, their haunts are separated by about 200 kilometres.

  One is said to appear in the courtyard of the Royal Oak Inn (one of Australia’s oldest pubs, now called the Mean Fiddler) on Windsor Road at Rouse Hill west of Sydney. The story goes that on one tragic night in the nineteenth century a magnificent black stallion kicked a groom to death in the stables behind the inn. The animal was destroyed and its carcass buried but, from time to time, its ghost has made spectacular appearances, whinnying and snorting, pawing the ground with its hooves, rearing on its hind legs and flicking its ebony-black mane and tail in the moonlight. There have also been reports of its victim appearing, his head showing the marks where the animal’s hooves clove his skull.

  One witness reported hearing
the noises the spectral horse makes, going outside to investigate and being confronted by it. ‘There was bright moonlight casting deep shadows across the courtyard and at first I thought the big patch of black in front of me was a shadow. Then the thing snorted and reared up. I could see its coat shining in the moonlight and its eyes bulging and glowing like black coals. I saw its raised hooves held above my head then coming down to strike me. I threw myself off to one side. I must have hit my head on a barrel. I was dazed momentarily and when I regained my senses I struggled to my feet expecting to have to ward off another attack from the creature — but it was gone and there was no sign or sound to show it had ever been there. I have fought in battles and seen many terrible things in my time,’ the witness concluded, ‘but nothing that scared me half as much as that ghostly creature.’

  John Seath, who held the licence of the inn until 1910, is said to have encountered the ghost of the groom in the stables one night and claimed it was so horrible to look at he could not bring himself to describe it. Ironically, Seath himself is now said to haunt the old inn. Legend has it that he buried a fortune in coins and banknotes in its grounds and died suddenly before disclosing the whereabouts of his fortune to his next of kin. Seath’s ghost, locals will tell you, has now joined the spectral horse and the ghost of the groom and wanders the inn, frustrated and angry that his treasure is lost.

  ‘The Black Horse of Sutton’ is one of Australia’s best-known ghost stories and a staple of the folklore of southern New South Wales. It tells of a Sutton farmer who rode into Goulburn one day to arrange a land deal. As he was nearing home on the return journey his dogs ran out to meet him, startling his mare and causing her to rear. The farmer was thrown to the ground and killed. Meanwhile, the farmer’s wife was sitting on the verandah of their farmhouse unaware of the tragedy and waiting patiently for her husband’s return. In the still of evening she heard the sound of galloping hooves in the distance. Relieved, she got up and walked to the verandah rail ready to greet her husband.

  Suddenly, out of the lengthening shadows came a glistening black stallion, riderless and galloping at a furious pace. It crossed the patch of lawn in front of the house without hesitating, hooves digging, sending chunks of earth flying through the air. The creature headed straight for the house and the verandah where the shocked farmer’s wife stood transfixed. The stallion made no attempt to slow, stop or turn. Then, at the moment it should have crashed into the verandah rail, it vanished, just a metre from the terrified farmer’s wife.

  The stallion had disappeared, but the sound of its galloping hooves continued, muffled for a few moments then loud again at the rear of the house. The spectre — for, as the farmer’s wife had come to realise, this was no flesh and blood creature — had apparently passed right through the walls of the house before galloping off into the hills behind.

  The distraught wife took this strange and totally unexpected experience as an omen and raised the alarm. A search was made for her husband and his body was found a kilometre or so down the road. The meddlesome dogs were whimpering and fussing over it while the farmer’s mare grazed quietly nearby.

  This was the first tragedy to strike the family and the first time the black stallion appeared but it was not the last of either. When the widow’s eldest son was killed at the Boer War the phantom steed made another appearance; and again, when the youngest son was killed in an accident, the four-legged banshee returned.

  Old-timers will stake their lives on the authenticity of this story, but if you ask the family’s name or the exact location of the farm no one remembers. A bit of modern detective work reveals that there was a family name Ryan who owned a farm at Mulligan’s Flat near Sutton whose history fits at least some of the details in the story. William Ryan was killed in the way described in the story returning from a trip, not to Goulburn, but to Queanbeyan, way back in 1857; and his youngest son did die in an accident, but there is no record of another son being killed in the Boer War. So is the story fact or fiction? Well, probably a bit of both. But we shouldn’t let that detract from a damn good yarn and I for one would love to see that magnificent black stallion pass straight through a house! Wouldn’t you?

  Both of the above spectral steeds seem to have been magnificent animals, but without the slender grace of the racehorses who feature in our next three stories, all set in Victoria.

  Many famous racehorses were bred at historic Bundoora Park on the outskirts of Melbourne; and two of the most famous, Wallace (first colt of the legendary Melbourne Cup winner Carbine) and Shadow King, who ran in six Melbourne Cups without winning any, are buried near the present-day museum.

  It is claimed that ghostly hooves can be heard near the horses’ graves and that they are made by the ghost of a mare named Lurline, who was shot by careless rabbiters over a century ago. Believers in the invisible, four-legged phantom suggest Lurline comes galloping down to investigate when she sees anyone near the graves of her famous stablemates. The phantom hoof beats are said to be so realistic that those who hear them expect to see a horse appear at any moment — but none ever does.

  Another story (this time from Ballarat) features a winner of the Melbourne Cup — though it is not the horse whose ghost figures here, but its frustrated owner. During the gold rush era, Walter Craig built and operated Craig’s Royal Hotel, one of Ballarat’s most imposing pubs. The hostelry earned the title ‘royal’ after it played host to Prince Albert, Duke of Edinburgh and it continues in that tradition today as one of the state’s finest boutique hotels.

  So wealthy did the hotel make Mr Craig that he was able to indulge his passion for racehorses. One of these, Nimblefoot, was entered into the 1870 Melbourne Cup and, a few nights before the race, Craig had a dream in which his horse won the coveted cup. But, as he explained, there was an odd feature to the dream — the jockey riding Nimblefoot was wearing a black armband. Walter Craig died a couple of days later. Nimblefoot won the Cup and Jimmy Day, the jockey, rode wearing a black armband in memory of the late owner.

  Over the years there have been reports of Walter Craig’s ghost discreetly wandering the hotel. Perhaps he’s searching for the 1280 pounds prize money his horse earned by winning the Cup. One witness described it as ‘a portly ghost with a bushy beard’ — not frightening but disturbing because of its forlorn expression and the long, sorrowing sighs it emits and which echo along the empty corridors of the building.

  Legendary Australian jockey ‘Darby’ Munro, who rode three Melbourne Cup winners, attributed his first success as a jockey to a ghostly mare and a ghostly jockey; and his remarkable story makes a fitting end to our horses’ tales. Munro — known to his admirers as ‘the Demon Darb’ — was just fourteen when he won his first race at a country meeting in Victoria. Years later he confided to well-known race commentator Bill Collins that he had had some supernatural assistance to get over the line that day.

  ‘It was a fair size field for a country meeting,’ Munro told Collins, ‘about a dozen horses, as I recall. I got a good start and settled in nicely in third place on the inside. I made my move about midway through the race and overtook first one then the other leading horse, but my mount was tiring. He was a good little horse and he struggled on, but about 100 yards from the finish the rest of the field was fast catching us. Then another horse suddenly loomed up on the outside and shot straight past us! The new leader was a pretty rough-looking nag, but it was going like hell. The jockey wore purple and green colours and I swear he gave me a wink as they passed.

  ‘Now I was only a kid at the time and there would have been no shame in coming in second, but I saw red when the bastard winked at me. My horse must have been pretty pissed off, too, so when I gave him a cut on the rump he shot forwards and caught up with the cheeky bugger.

  ‘While all this was happening I was trying to remember who the horse and the jockey were, because I couldn’t recall seeing them in the field, at the marshalling point or on the starting line. Anyhow, my little mount tried to hang on to the fin
ish, but in the last few yards the other horse put on a spurt and crossed the line about half a length ahead of us.

  ‘I was cursing and swearing and sobbing because it seemed I’d come within half a length of having my first win, but then all hell broke loose. Everyone started cheering and people came rushing up to me. The horse’s owner and trainer and the chief steward shook my hand and congratulated me on winning the race. I opened my mouth to argue, looked around to locate the horse I thought had really won, found there was no sign of it or a jockey in green and purple and closed my mouth again very sharpish.

  ‘You know, to this day, I have no explanation for what happened all those years ago. I asked a couple of people I knew well if they had seen the other horse and rider and they looked at me as though I’d gone crackers. I’ve wondered if some old horse and jockey long dead had reappeared on the track at that moment just to spur me on. Maybe the wink was a deliberate challenge. If so, I’m bloody grateful! My win that day was really the start of my career.’ As an afterthought, Darby added: ‘You know, Bill, when I die I wouldn’t mind being a ghost on a good mount and maybe dropping in on a few big races.’

  ‘The Demon Darb’ died in 1966 and the Darby Munro Stakes is run annually by the Sydney Turf Club in his memory. If ever you have the privilege of watching this race, I suggest you count the horses and riders very carefully.

  24.

  Banished Spirits: the Ghosts of Port Arthur

  Ghosts are the souls of men who met with a violent death, hanged, beheaded, impaled or departed this life in such a way.