Great Australian Ghost Stories (7 page)

This disturbing story has found a permanent place in the folklore of the flat, dusty Wimmera region of north-western Victoria where the events took place on a hot Saturday afternoon in the not-too-distant past. The story begins at an old weather-beaten wooden church on the outskirts of a small town where most of the district's residents had gathered to witness a marriage.

Both bride and groom were well-known locals — she the daughter of a local businessman, he a wheat farmer with a modest spread about twenty kilometres out of town. The stark little church had been brightened up with bunches of wildflowers and sheaths of pungent eucalyptus leaves, the minister was robed up, the elderly organist was seated at her harmonium ready to strike up ‘The Bridal March' and the congregation sat on hard wooden pews, excitedly chattering, swapping compliments on one another's outfits and awaiting the arrival of the wedding party.

Showing the practical spirit that characterises people who live in such remote and harsh regions, the bride drove herself to the church in her own little Morris car with her Dad sitting beside her and her Mum and her sister (the only bridesmaid)
in the back. They arrived punctually at the wicket gate of the church to be greeted by a worried-looking best man and no sign of the groom. ‘Sorry, love, he isn't here yet,' the best man explained. ‘He was gonna meet me here half an hour ago, but he hasn't showed up yet … reckon he's had a spot o' car trouble, eh? I'm sure he'll be along in a minute.'

That minute passed and so did about thirty more and there was still no sign of the missing bridegroom. The congregation got restless, the bride got worried, her father got angry and her mother, fearing scandal, shook her head and sniffled into her handkerchief. Finally, half an hour after the service was to have begun, the bridegroom appeared, not driving his car as expected, but on foot and running up the street towards the church. As he drew closer the waiting group saw that his suit was torn and covered in red dirt and a makeshift bandage wound around his head was clotted with dried blood.

‘What happened to you?' the bride asked, relieved that her intended had turned up but concerned about the state he was in.

‘I had a bit of an accident on the road, love. This bloody big roo bounded across in front of me. I couldn't miss it and I lost control of the car. It's smashed up, but I'm OK. I had to wait till someone came along so I could hitch a ride,' the groom explained. ‘Anyhow I'm here now, so let's get on with the wedding, eh?' he said, giving his future wife a squeeze and adding in a whisper: ‘Cor, you look bonzer, love!'

The minister was concerned about the injury to the young man's head and suggested the local doctor should take a look at it before the ceremony.

‘I'm all right, Reverend,' the bridegroom insisted. ‘I've held everybody up too long now … I'll get the doc to have a look at me later. Let's get on with it, eh?'

And so the ceremony took place. The bride and groom exchanged their vows, the groom placed a gold ring on the bride's finger, the men in the church mused over what ‘a lucky bastard' the groom was and how soon they could get at the beer, the women had a jolly good cry and the minister finally pronounced the couple ‘man and wife'.

A spread of ham sandwiches, fruit cake, hot tea and cold beer had been arranged at the local pub and most of the thirsty guests trekked off to get stuck into that, but as the newlyweds were leaving the church, the groom asked his new wife if she would drive him out to pick up his damaged car before they went to the wedding breakfast.

‘I'm a bit worried someone might pinch me tools out of the back,' he said. ‘I'd be able to enjoy meself better if I knew the car was safe.'

‘
Men!
' muttered the bride, but at that moment if her new husband had asked her to walk over hot coals she would have agreed just to please to him.

Excuses and promises to return within the hour were made and the bride's father promised to save his new ‘son' some beer. The best man, the bridesmaid and three of the groom's closest mates were recruited to go with the couple in case help was needed to tow the car into town.

Reluctantly, the bride hitched up her wedding dress and climbed into the driver's seat of her own little car. While she removed her veil and tossed it onto the rear seat, the groom slid in beside her, wincing with pain as he ducked his head down and again when he settled on the passenger seat.

‘You sure you're all right?' the bride asked.

‘I'm fine, love. You know me … me head's like a block o' wood. We'll pick up the car then go to the pub for a while and
then
…' The groom put his hand on his bride's knee, but she pushed it away.

‘One thing at a time, eh?' she remonstrated. ‘As soon as we get back here, the doctor needs to take a look at that bang on your head. I don't want you passing out on me tonight, do I?' The couple laughed as the bride drove off. The rest of the group followed in two cars and years later one of the men testified to the mystifying and terrifying events that followed.

‘What I'm gonna tell you will be hard to believe, I know,' he explained, ‘but as God is my witness, it's the truth. And it was not just me but
all
of us who went off after the wedding that day that saw what happened.

‘All the roads were unsealed then and the dust was fierce. I was riding in the second car with the best man and the bride's sister was in the back. There was another car following us with the other two blokes in it. We couldn't see the bride's little Morris — she was a few minutes ahead of us — but we knew where she was heading and we could see the cloud of dust she was making. We drove on for miles and then, all of a sudden, the weird stuff started to happen.

‘Now, I can tell you 'cause I've lived in the Wimmera all me life, bends are as rare as hen's teeth on the roads out there. You can drive 100 miles in some places without turning the steering wheel, but, anyhow, we came to what must have been the only bend in that road — a right-angle turn where the boundaries of two properties met. The country all around was covered in thick, stunted scrub and we couldn't see what was around the bend as we came up to it.

‘The best man was just saying to me that maybe this was where the accident had happened when he stopped in mid-sentence and shouted out “Bloody hell!” As we came around the bend we saw the little Morris stalled in the middle of the
road. The best man jammed his foot on the brakes and we just managed to stop in time — just a yard from the other car. But that was not what gave us the biggest shock. The bride was out of her car, standing beside it screaming her head off!'

A more incongruous sight could hardly be imagined than a bride dressed in her long white wedding gown, standing quite alone in the middle of a dusty road in a dusty landscape miles from anywhere; especially one who had been deliriously happy just half an hour before and who was now wringing her hands in a frenzy and screaming with horror and dismay.

Our witness continued his account. ‘We all piled out and ran to her. Her sister grabbed the bride's arms and held her. “What is it? Tell me,” she begged. But, by then, me and the best man knew what was wrong. Both of us had glanced into the little car and it was
empty.

‘“He's gone!” wailed the bride. “He was sitting next to me one minute and we were talking. We were going along fine … he said we were nearly there … then suddenly, he just
vanished
. He's
gone
!” she repeated, then collapsed, sobbing hysterically into her sister's arms.

‘“He can't be gorn,” the best man whispered to me. “He
is
,” I said. “He must've wandered orf,” said the best man, loud enough for the bride to hear. “He didn't
wander off
… how
could
he?” she screamed. “We were going twenty miles an hour!”

‘At that moment the third car that had been following pulled up and the best man explained what had happened. He and the two from the third car insisted on making a search of the scrub on both sides of the road. I didn't bother. I believed the bride. You don't make up stories like
that
. The three returned after about ten minutes and the best man whispered to me “He's gorn all right … there's no one out there.” I didn't bother
to answer and a terrible explanation for what had happened began to dawn on me. “We need to go to crash site,” I said to the other men.

‘I suggested the bridesmaid bundle her sister into our car and wait for us, while the rest of us drove on to find where the groom had crashed his car. The man who had insisted on the useless search tried to reassure the bride by saying that her new husband had probably wandered up to crash site ahead of them and that we would bring him back. The bride simply stared at him, her eyes like tear-stained saucers. It broke me up, I can tell you. I turned away.

‘We got into the third car and drove carefully around the other two. “It's bloody weird,” said the best man. “He couldn't just disappear out of a moving car … could he?” I kept silent while the others tossed the idea about. I believed I knew the explanation and it scared the hell out of me. Half a mile further up the road, the best man who was sitting next to me, shouted: “There! Up ahead! There's his car … Oh
Jesus
!”

‘I parked a few yards from the groom's car. Lying on the opposite side of the road was the kangaroo he had hit — a large male, unmarked but dead, with a trickle of blood oozing out of its nose. We ran up to the wreck. The sand all around was soaked with petrol and oil. The car was overturned and lying with its wheels sticking up in the air. The roof of the car was crushed and almost flattened. I dropped to my knees at the passenger side window, knowing full well what I would see through the jagged, broken glass. I prayed I would be wrong, but I wasn't. The bridegroom was still in his car where he had been trapped since the crash, his lifeless body wedged between the dashboard and roof. His head had gone through the windscreen and a swarm of flies buzzed around a terrible, bloody injury to his forehead.'

The witness's account ends at that point and I am tempted to end the retelling of this story on the same dramatic note, but I can hear a chorus of complaint from readers wanting to know how these strange events played out and what happened to the unfortunate bride. Well, the local constable filed an accident report which tactfully avoided mentioning the time of death and a coroner's inquest concluded that the bridegroom had met his death by misadventure. The local newspaper (showing more consideration than the press generally do today) reported the ‘tragic death of a local man on his wedding day' very briefly and left the details to the imagination of its readers. Most of those readers had been present at the wedding and they knew what they had seen, as did those of the party who had gone out to the wreck. The bridegroom's signature was written boldly in the church registry and the ring he had given his now widow rested on her finger for all to see. She attended her husband's funeral in the same church they had married in a week earlier then moved away from the district. As far as I know she never received another visit from her spectral bridegroom.

Every period in Australian history has had its Alan Bonds and Christopher Skases: opportunists in the right place at the right time prepared to risk their shirts on long odds and exploit weaknesses in the system. In the 1820s and 30s such a man was Solomon Wiseman, known far and wide as ‘The King of the Hawkesbury' and who, witnesses swear, still haunts his former home in the company of a collection of colourful and terrifying spooks.

As a young man Solomon Wiseman worked as a lighterman on the River Thames in London carrying cargo from ship to shore. A little less usually reached the shore than left the ship and the profit went into Solomon's pocket. He was caught red-handed one night transferring some valuable Brazilian Redwood from his lighter to an accomplice's boat. The next morning he was arraigned before a magistrate at the Old Bailey, who promptly sentenced him to death. This was later commuted to transportation to the penal colony of New South Wales — for life.

Solomon's young wife and infant son accompanied him on the convict transport
Alexander
and Mrs Wiseman gave birth to a second son as the ship was passing Cape Town. On arrival in Sydney in August 1806 Jane Wiseman, being
a free woman, applied to have her husband assigned to her as a convict servant and the authorities agreed. Less than a year after being sentenced Solomon was, effectively, a free man and able to devote himself to making his fortune. On his wife's recommendation he soon had a ticket-of-leave and a year after that a full pardon.

Solomon used the profits from his Thames exploits as a deposit on two trading vessels that plied the coast from Newcastle to the Shoalhaven River, and was granted land in several places around the fringes of the colony. One parcel of eighty hectares was on the banks of the Hawkesbury River, opposite the mouth of the Macdonald River. Solomon established a tavern there in 1821 which he called ‘The Packet', but so remote was the spot and so few the customers that he allowed the licence to lapse. That same year Jane Wiseman became ill, died and was interred in a vault on the Hawkesbury property. Solomon was left with four sons and two daughters to care for although, by then, he was on the way to becoming a very rich man.

In 1826 providence smiled twice on Solomon Wiseman: a comely widow agreed to become his second wife and stepmother to his brood and Governor Darling announced that a road connecting Newcastle with Sydney was to be built — running right past Solomon's Hawkesbury property. Solomon wasted no time. He tendered for and won a contract to supply fresh meat to the convict road gangs, built a new tavern and obtained a licence to operate a ferry across the Hawkesbury, which became an integral part of the new Great Northern Road. Profits poured into Solomon's coffers and within months he was able to set about building himself a fine two-storey stone residence, Cobham Hall, on a hillside overlooking the tavern and the ferry. In less than twenty years Solomon Wiseman
had progressed from being a felon to a man spoken of in government circles as ‘our wealthy and respected contractor' and from a convict to ‘King of the Hawkesbury' complete with his own castle.

In 1832 the government decided it could no longer allow a private individual to control the ferry and purchased it (for a generous sum) from Solomon, retaining the name Wisemans Ferry — which it bears to this day. In that year Solomon also divested himself of the running of the tavern to one of his sons-in-law and spent the six years of life that remained to him living like a country squire, holding grand social entertainments at Cobham Hall, including one attended by Governor Bourke.

In October 1838 Solomon Wiseman died. His body was laid to rest temporarily beside his first wife's in the grounds of Cobham Hall. His obituary described him as ‘a respected old colonist' (which was a common euphemism for an ex-convict) and rather wishfully as ‘a friend to the poor'.

Shortly before his death Solomon had promised the community in the small village that had grown up around his ferry and taken its name that he would donate a piece of his land and 300 pounds to build them a church, which was also to house his and his family's remains. Construction had just begun when Solomon died. Scrutiny of his estate revealed that he had never owned the land he so freely gave away and his executors refused to hand over the 300 pounds. A scandal ensued and, although the church was eventually completed, the disenchanted community shunned it.

Notwithstanding, Solomon and Jane Wiseman's remains were duly installed in a vault in the church but Solomon was not allowed to rest there very long either. There were rumours that he had been entombed in a swallowtail coat and expensive boots, with a court sword at his side, a diamond ring on his
finger, gold stickpin in his cravat and his gold watch and chain strung across his ample belly. (‘It would be just like old Sol to try to take his riches with him!' the locals said.) When the disused church fell into disrepair, thieves broke in and raided Solomon's tomb. They didn't find any of the aforementioned booty, just the old man's teeth and bones, which they scattered. According to one story, youths in the village used his skull as a football, kicking it around in the dust. Eventually the local postmaster paid to have what remained of Solomon gathered and buried in the local cemetery. Jane's body was also removed to the cemetery and the couple were laid to rest for the third and final time.

Perhaps no man's mortal remains deserve the fate that befell Solomon Wiseman's but there is plenty of evidence (apart from the debacle over the church) to suggest that he gave the villagers at Wisemans Ferry little reason to respect him. He was not the benevolent country squire he liked people to think he was nor the charitable sage his obituary described. Solomon started and ended his life as a rogue. Only his bank balance improved. Such men are the stuff legends are made of and in no time at all wild stories about the King of the Hawkesbury's character and his lifestyle became part of local folklore. So too did a whole collection of ghost stories centred on Cobham Hall, which became, in the 1880s, the Wisemans Ferry Hotel.

The most oft-reported ghost was (and still is) that of a female whose appearances are sometimes heralded by the rustle of fabric, footsteps or gentle coughing. Guests staying in the hotel in the 1890s and early 1900s reported visits to their rooms in the middle of the night by a pale figure dressed in a long, gossamer-like nightgown; it would float across the floor, sometimes pausing to look at them lying, quaking with fear, in their beds. The ghost seemed to some observers to be crying.
The same pathetic figure was also seen leaving the kitchen and climbing the main staircase, floating about in the garden and on the road between the hotel and the ferry. One lady in her eighties described to the press in 1974 how as a small girl out walking with her mother one evening she encountered the ghost ‘just up from the ferry and surrounded by grey mist'.

‘She was quite beautiful — if a dead person can be said to be beautiful — with a long, slender neck and graceful arms. The features of her face were indistinct as if they had been worn away or faded, but her expression was very sad. In fact, a sort of overpowering sadness seemed to ooze out of her whole body which we could feel and which made me want to cry. I was scared, of course, wondering why she had shown herself to us and worried what she might
do
to us, but I was also fascinated by her. My mother grabbed me and folded me in her arms to protect me; I could feel Mother's body trembling through her skirts.

‘The ghost just stood in front of us, blocking our way, for maybe three or four minutes, then she sighed — a deep, mournful sigh that sounded like a rush of wind — then she faded until only her outline was visible, then that disappeared into the strange mist … and the mist itself just evaporated, leaving bright moonlight. Five minutes after she appeared, she was gone. Mother grabbed my hand and we ran back up the hill as fast as our legs could carry us!'

Most people believe that this footloose phantom is the ghost of Jane Wiseman. Sceptics argue, quite rightly, that Jane died a full five years before construction began on Cobham Hall but forget that she was originally buried close by and that some reports of the ghost refer to it rising from Jane's original tomb and hurrying towards the house. Where legend and history do clash is concerning Jane's death. Legend would have us believe
she was thrown from the balcony at Cobham Hall by Solomon and died when her head struck the semi-circular steps below. History, of course, proves that impossible. Springing from this story was a claim, still repeated, that bloodstains appear on those steps from time to time. If they do, the blood was never Jane Wiseman's.

Another contender in the identity stakes is Rosanna White, a housemaid whom Solomon found one day in bed with another servant, Richard Maddox. Stories tell of Solomon ordering Rosanna's hair shaved off and Maddox heavily flogged. Rosanna was reported as cursing her employer and swearing that she would one day come back to haunt his house. Perhaps it is she, not Jane Wiseman, who haunts the building and its surroundings.

The shade of Solomon himself is said to wander his former home and the cemetery where his bones were finally interred. A European traveller staying in the hotel room that was once Solomon's bedroom claimed to have been awakened in the night by a strange scraping noise (‘like rats' he said) and when he opened his eyes a ‘most singular-looking old gentleman' was standing by the window.

‘His face was the colour of parchment, crowned with a mass of white curls, his eyes small and his jaw prominent and lantern-shaped. He wore an old-fashioned coat of dark-coloured velvet and tight knee breeches. He had large buckles on his shoes and a heavy gold watch chain was fixed to his waistcoat and glinted in the moonlight. Under his arm he carried a brass telescope — like those used by ship's captains — and I fancied that before I had woken he had been using the instrument to look out the window. Now, however, his gaze rested squarely on me in a piercing and accusing stare. He was scowling at me as he would if he had come upon an intruder.' The traveller
reached for his walking cane and the apparition vanished. Next morning when he described his nocturnal visitor it fitted the description old-timers gave of the King of the Hawkesbury.

The ghosts of three different convicts are also said to haunt the house. One, according to a popular but unlikely story, was Jane Wiseman's lover whom Solomon caught, tied in chains and dumped in the river. The second is an old lag who was supposed to have been flogged to death at Cobham Hall and the third a young convict-servant who came to Solomon one day begging to be allowed to go to Sydney to visit his dying mother. Solomon, the story goes, refused his request, saying there was too much work to do. The young man ran away and tried to swim across the river (which is odd considering Sydney is in the opposite direction), but his leg-irons dragged him under.

This convict was said to appear regularly at the door of Cobham Hall in ghostly form searching for his former master and still begging for permission to go to his mother. A witness described him as covered in weed and slime and with tears coursing down his ashen face: ‘His hands were raised and held together, like he was prayin' or beggin'. There weren't much flesh on him … maybe like he'd been eaten by the fishes, but his leg-irons was still on his ankles. I ain't never seen anything so bloody terrifying in all me life!'

One, or both, of the other convicts have been heard slowly dragging their leg-irons and chains across the yard, into the house and up the stairs — an eerie clanking sound that is all the more frightening because it has no visible source.

In the spring of 1961 Jane's ghost was blamed for a farcical sequence of events while the hotel was being renovated. An old wall was deliberately knocked down and, at the moment it fell, thunder boomed overhead and another wall collapsed
spontaneously. An embankment close by gave way, allowing 5000 gallons (22 cubic metres) of water to rush like a tsunami through the ground floor of the hotel, smashing furniture and making what the appalled owner at the time called ‘a horrid mess'.

In 1967 a well-known psychic and her assistants spent a night in the hotel with photographic and sound-recording equipment. At around midnight the temperature in the kitchen plummeted and a black cloud (‘like smoke, but not smoke') enveloped half the room, obscuring everything it covered. Photographs taken then reveal a dark haziness over the affected area.

The expressway now linking Sydney and Newcastle takes a different route from the old Great Northern Road. There's not much traffic through Wisemans Ferry any longer but it is a popular spot for campers and visitors to nearby national parks. There is a cable-operated vehicular ferry where Solomon's ferry ran, and Cobham Hall under its Wisemans Ferry Hotel guise is still there — much altered but intact. To this day if you ask staff about the ghosts they will tell you stories of doors mysteriously opening and closing just last week, of strange noises heard the week before, of items moved by unseen hands and of the shadowy figure seen ‘not long ago'. Whoever the restless spirits are that haunt Wisemans Ferry, they don't seem to show any inclination to depart.