Great Australian Ghost Stories (13 page)

Australia was colonised by the British to provide a dumping ground for murderers, thieves, rapists and rebels, but if the villains who arrived in chains were an unsavoury lot, those put in charge of them were often not much better. The power-drunkenness of such men (liberally spiced with sadism and bestiality) created monsters and their convict charges were easy prey. Not surprisingly many a brutal overseer or superintendent of convicts met a sticky end and their enraged ghosts refuse to depart, still seeking retribution 200 or so years later.

One particularly nasty example is said to reside at Hyde Park Barracks in Macquarie Street, Sydney — once home to 900 convicts and arguably Sydney's most haunted building. Reports of the ghosts of emaciated convicts in convict garb, female figures in filmy white robes, clanking chains, ghostly footsteps and strange lights have been reported from this building for the past sixty years, but the phenomenon that upsets witnesses most is the ghost of a former superintendent. This evil spectre materialises in the doorway of what was once his office; and all agree he is not a pretty sight and the sounds he makes are far from pretty.

‘I was leaving the building one night at about six o'clock when I remembered that I had not switched a photocopier off,'
one former employee recalls. ‘Only the security lights were on, but because it was summer there was plenty of soft light coming in through the windows. I was walking back to the office when I heard a noise behind me. I turned thinking another colleague was working back or a security guard was on his rounds, but what I saw stopped me in my tracks and made me scream — the first and only time I have
ever
screamed involuntarily in my life.

‘In a pool of bluish light like a spotlight stood a giant of a man dressed in old-fashioned clothes — a greasy white shirt with a red bandana knotted around the neck, tight black pants, heavy boots and a maroon jacket. He had a large belly that hung over the top of his pants and tufts of wiry, grey hair poked through gaps in his shirtfront. He was completely bald and his face was red and veiny with bulbous lips and bulging eyes. He was leering at me and I could see spittle dribbling from his mouth.

‘I knew without doubt that I was face-to-face with a ghost. It seemed solid but parts of it were fuzzy and moved in and out of focus. I held my briefcase up in front of me and yelled “Leave me alone!”, then I backed away and the thing followed me. Then it spoke and I can still hear its gruff voice and its hollow-sounding tone as clearly as if I had heard it yesterday: “'Ello, m'dear,” the spectre said. “You come t' keep me company?” “No!” I shouted back. The creature's expression changed. What had been half a smile turned into an evil scowl. “Ain't I good enough for ya … ya stinkin' whore? You'll feel me fist if ya don't gimme a kiss!”

‘At that point I ran. I didn't look behind me to see if the thing was following but I could hear it shouting abuse at me. Never in my life have I heard such
awful
language. I didn't stop running until I reached St James's Church across the road. I
don't know what led me there — shock, fear, a cry for God's help? Who knows? I pushed on one of the old doors and it swung open. I stumbled into the church and slumped down on the nearest pew. I sat in that peaceful, comforting House of God for almost an hour until I had calmed down enough to go home. And you know, after that I
never
stayed in the barracks alone — day or night.'

A few years ago an organisation called the Centre for Metaphysical Studies conducted a survey of supernatural events at the barracks and members of that group reported being confronted by the same nasty spectre and also being given one of its foul-mouthed tongue-lashings.

Just how this obnoxious spectre came to meet his death is unclear. Witnesses have never commented on any life-threatening injuries visible on his face or figure, but visible (and horrible) they most certainly are on the one in our next story: another convict-keeper whose haunt lies about fifty kilometres west of Macquarie Street.

 

The old Great Western Road between Parramatta and Penrith is rich in ghost stories. According to an article in the
Nepean Times
, ghosts would sit upon the top rail of the fences that lined the road ‘like swallows on a telegraph wire' and the most ghoulish of them all was to be found at Quarry Hill, near where the University of Western Sydney now stands.

Quarry Hill gets its name for the obvious reason — there was once a quarry there where hundreds of convicts toiled and many died, gouging thousands of tonnes of stone from the hillside with picks, shovels and bare hands to pave the roads of an expanding colony.

The gruesome saga of this ghost begins at the quarry face in the winter of 1838. A young convict, unfit for such hard
labour, collapsed one day and the overseer had him carried a short distance away. The young man regained consciousness to find his face pressed against the rough bark of a gum tree, his shirt ripped down and coarse ropes binding him to the tree trunk. By turning his head slightly he could see the fate that awaited him. The overseer was limbering up his right arm and in his hand he gripped a vicious-looking cat-o'-nine-tails. The first lash drove the breath from the young convict and a searing pain the like of which he had never experienced before shot through his whole body. Fifty hard lashes were rained down on him and by the time the overseer desisted there was little flesh left on the young man's back.

The swooning and delirious convict was carried to a local infirmary where rum was poured on his wounds and later salt rubbed into them to aid healing. After a month of excruciating and unremitting pain, a surgeon pronounced him fit to return to work at the quarry.

The convict's back (which had been soft and white) was now tough like leather and so was his resolve to avenge himself on the overseer. He waited two days for the right moment. While the overseer's attention was diverted he crept up behind him, raised his pick and swung it with every ounce of strength he could muster. The overseer never knew what hit him — the sharp point of the pick entered his head at the base of the skull and ended up poking out of his forehead.

The convict paid for his moment of sweet revenge with his own life — strung up by the neck then buried in an unmarked grave, but it was not his ghost that was soon being reported by travellers on the Great Western Road. It was the overseer's and a more terrible sight, witnesses said, could hardly be imagined.

The ghost appeared near the entrance to the quarry, sometimes by moonlight, sometimes in lightning flashes on
stormy nights. It was covered from head to toe in fine dust. In its hand it carried the blood-soaked pick that had taken its life and from a huge cavity in the ghost's forehead rivulets of dark blood streamed over its face, neck and chest.

Coachmen cracked their whips and raced their horses past the spot while mothers covered their children's eyes and closed their own for fear of seeing the grisly sight. Travellers on foot prepared themselves with tots of rum and ran as fast as their legs could carry them to the next inn. Plenty saw the ghost and many who did not (including those who closed their eyes) imagined they did.

Stories of the ghost of Quarry Hill persisted for fifty years and more. One night in 1880 an employee from Fleurs, a large estate near today's St Marys, was sent to Penrith to fetch a doctor. When the man approached Quarry Hill his horse took fright and his dog began to howl. Only by blindfolding and leading the horse and carrying the trembling dog was the man able to pass. Well into the last century old-timers still spoke in whispers about the Quarry Hill ghost and travellers (unaware of the stories) commented on the unaccountable feeling of dread that overtook them on that stretch of the busy road.

 

It is impossible to put names to either the ghost at Hyde Park Barracks or the one at Quarry Hill, but a third colleague of theirs is the most famous of the many ghosts who haunt the picturesque village of Richmond in Tasmania and he can be named. A few biographical details about him also survive.

George Grover was convicted of stealing at Winchester in the south of England in 1825 and transported to Tasmania where he served seven years before obtaining the post of flagellator (official flogger) at Richmond. When repairs were required to
the stone bridge spanning the Coal River alongside the village, Grover was also put in charge of the convict work force.

Chained convicts quarried large blocks of stone at nearby Butchers Hill, then carried them in handcarts to the bridge. The stout and sadistic flagellator rode on top, cracking his whip like an Ancient Egyptian slave driver and inflicting as much pain and misery as he could on his long-suffering charges.

Grover's reign of terror came to an end one foggy day in March 1832 when he fell or was pushed off Richmond Bridge. One version of the event has the convicts turning on him and beating him to death with their manacled fists before hurling him off the bridge, but a report in the
Hobart Town Courier
says he fell or was pushed from the bridge parapet ‘where he had lain himself down while drunk'. Someone wrote in large, bold lettering across his convict record:
Murdered March 1832
as if to say ‘thank goodness'.

There have been claims ever since that whenever a heavy fog envelops Richmond, Grover's angry ghost can be seen stalking the bridge, searching for his killers and lusting for revenge. Some claim to have seen him trying to clamber up the slimy sides of the bridge from the rocks nine metres below. One witness — a mild-mannered young curate who was a stranger to the district and knew nothing about Grover or his ghost — had to be hospitalised after his encounter with the spectre.

The curate was crossing the bridge one evening when he heard a strange scratching sound and cries for help coming from under the bridge. The curate was short-sighted and when he peered over the parapet on the northern side of the bridge all he could see was mist swirling over the surface of the river. Then, when he turned to check the other side, a pair of large, hairy hands suddenly appeared, gripping the parapet. Thinking someone was clinging on for life the young curate
rushed forwards. Below the hands was a pair of brawny wrists and these the curate grabbed in his own slim, white hands. ‘Hang on,' the curate said, ‘I will try to pull you up.'

The curate was not a strong man and he doubted he had the strength to be a Good Samaritan, but he was determined to give it his best shot. He prayed for divine assistance, took a deep breath then tugged. To his amazement the figure offered no resistance; it rose quite effortlessly. In less than a second the figure's face was level with the curate's, but it was not a normal face; anything but. The curate later described it as the face of a demon from hell — ‘living, yet not living'. The eyes were alive and fixed on the curate with an evil, mocking gaze; the rest of the face was a bloody mass of whiskers and battered flesh.

The curate let go of the spectre's wrists and ran for his life. He looked back just once and the spectre was still there, floating beside the parapet, and from its bruised and broken lips came a cackle of demonic laughter. The curate ran to a house at the end of the bridge and pounded on the door before collapsing on the doorstep. Later he was admitted to a hospital in Hobart and it was many weeks before he recovered his senses.

Richmond Bridge is not the only place in the village that Grover's unsightly spectre is said to appear. A figure, believed to be him, has also put in occasional appearance in the flogging yard at Richmond Gaol, where he plied his bloody trade as flagellator. One small boy who visited the gaol with his grandmother a few years ago became visibly distressed when they entered the flogging yard. When asked what the matter was, the child pointed at an empty space and denounced ‘the horrible man with the bloody face' that only he could see and who was terrifying him.

 

George Grover and his two nasty colleagues in New South Wales all began life at the bottom of the social ladder and none climbed up it very far, but our fourth and final convict-keeper came of more distinguished stock. Captain Patrick Logan, commandant of the penal settlement at Moreton Bay (Brisbane) from 1825 to 1830 could trace his ancestors back to the time of the Crusades. He was a distinguished soldier, a capable administrator and a far-sighted visionary. Unfortunately he was also ruthless and just as merciless to his charges as the others.

Captain Logan's cruelty earned him the title ‘The Fell Tyrant'
^*
and made him the subject of one of Australia's best-known folk songs,
Moreton Bay
, which describes the horrific plight of convicts under his rule. Misconduct earned them up to 300 lashes and many died strapped to the flogging frame. Logan was feared and despised by the convicts and the final verse of
Moreton Bay
rejoices at his violent death.

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.