Great Australian Ghost Stories (6 page)

There have been reports of ‘ghost' lights appearing all over rural Australia since the beginning of white settlement (and probably before), but the ‘Min Min' is the grand-daddy of all such lights — the one everybody's heard of and every bushman claims to have seen. ‘Min Min' is an Aboriginal word (for what no one is absolutely sure) but the light was not named by Aborigines. According to legend, it was named after the Min Min Hotel on the old coach road between Winton and Boulia in central western Queensland, where it first appeared. There is, however, some doubt as to whether the light was named after the hotel or the hotel after the light.

‘Hotel' is far too grand a title for the timber and corrugated iron shanty built about a century and a quarter ago to serve as a way-station for Cobb & Co. coaches. Most such places had bad reputations but the Min Min had the worst of any in the region. It reputedly served rot-gut liquor at exorbitant prices, doubled as a brothel and was the haunt of thieves, cattle
rustlers and other assorted villains. Legend insists that many travellers and naïve jackaroos disappeared there and that the small cemetery behind the hotel was conveniently provided to bury the evidence. So infamous did the Min Min become that someone put a match to it one dark night in 1917 and it burned to the ground … or so the legend goes.

Reliable records, if they existed, would probably disprove most of the above and reveal a much more mundane history for this miserable little hostelry. Records do show the name of the last proprietor — a Mrs Hasted — but there is no real evidence that she presided over a branch office of Sodom or Gomorrah. Records also show that there were devastating bushfires in the district in 1917 (Mrs Hasted's brother was badly burned fighting one), so it seems more likely that nature disposed of the Min Min Hotel than a human avenger.

The generally accepted story of the first sighting of the Min Min Light belongs to later the same year, when a hysterical stockman burst into Boulia police station at around midnight one night gabbling about being chased by a ghost. After the local constable calmed him down, the stockman told how he had been riding past the ruins of the Min Min Hotel at about 10 pm when a ball of light suddenly rose from the middle of the cemetery, hovered as if getting its bearings, then darted towards him. The stockman panicked, dug his boots in and galloped towards Boulia. Several times he looked over his shoulder and the light was still there. It followed him to the outskirts of the town then disappeared. (Sceptics who know the region may well wonder how the horse and rider managed to cover 100 kilometres in two hours — but let's not spoil a good story.)

In 1961, a reported sighting from 1912, predating the above (and the destruction of the hotel) by five years came to light. Henry Lamond, one-time manager of Warenda station on
whose land the hotel stood, claimed that he had seen the light in the winter of that year. Its appearance had at first alarmed him, but when he realised his horse was quite unperturbed by it Lamond decided his own fear was unwarranted.

There have been so many reported sightings since then that it would take most of this book to recount them all. Station owners and managers, policemen, ministers of religion, school teachers, shopkeepers and no-nonsense bushman have seen the Min Min Light — most of them intelligent and honest people whose credibility is unquestionable. All describe it as a round or oval ball of light glowing so it illuminates its surroundings, travelling between one and two metres above the ground either in a straight or undulating line. Sometimes it appears to stop and hover; sometimes it bobs about and usually dives towards the earth as it disappears.

There are almost as many theories about its origin as there are sightings. The supernatural school claim that such lights are spirits of the dead: ghosts in inhuman form. Sceptics with some knowledge of the bush suggest that the lights may emanate from fluorescent fungi (such are quite common) or from birds who have brushed their wings against the fungi. Fireflies are also cited as are swarms of moths, their wings reflecting moonlight. None of these is likely. Personally, I've never seen a mobile mushroom and the only common bush birds that hover (eagles and hawks) are not nocturnal. A swarm of moths would not be visible at any great distance. And fireflies? Well, there's no doubting their ability to emit light but as one bushman put it: ‘You'd need about ten million of the little buggers, standing shoulder to shoulder, to produce a light
that
bright.'

Traditional science groups the Min Min and other similar Australian lights along with European and North American
Will-o'-the-wisps and Jack-o'-lanterns into the category
ignis fatuus
which simply means ‘foolish fire' and attributes them to marsh gas (methane) or phosphoretted hydrogen, the gas that escapes from decaying animal matter. As the Min Min Light was said to originate in a cemetery the presence of the latter was possible once, but its domain is far too arid to produce marsh gas. Subterranean gas escaping through fissures or drill holes is more likely and records show the Min Min Hotel was built beside a water bore, but all theories involving gas rely on the premise that the gas somehow self-ignites, which is impossible.

That very rare natural phenomenon, ‘ball' lightning, which travels across the landscape at high speed, has also been suggested as an explanation but, like all lightning, it dissipates quickly and never remains visible for as long as these lights are claimed to.

Some very distinguished scientists have studied the phenomenon, arriving in Boulia in a flurry of publicity and making claims of infallible theories, but most have not even managed to see the light let alone explain it. The famous novelist H. G. Wells (
The Time Machine
and
The War of the Worlds
) took an interest in it while visiting Australia, but even his fertile mind could not come up with an explanation. Probably the first plausible explanation came in the 1990s from Colin Croft of Charleville, who discovered that he could see a grass fire at night that was at least eighty kilometres away and below the horizon. Croft claimed that what he saw was a reflection of the fire on a layer of dense air. This tied in with an old theory that said the light only appeared when a lighted lamp was placed in a window at Lucknow, the nearest station homestead to the Min Min Hotel.

An even more cogent and convincing argument for this theory came in 2003 when a University of Queensland
neuroscientist, Professor Jack Pettigrew, published a paper in the journal of the Australian Association of Optometrists. Professor Pettigrew, who knows his way around Western Queensland and has seen the light, concluded that what he saw was an inverted mirage — the image of a distant bright light carried on a cold, dense layer of air — and that the terrain of the Channel Country makes the area ideal for this phenomenon to occur. Professor Pettigrew also cited another famous case where this phenomenon had produced an image of the Irish coast ‘floating' above the calm Atlantic and observed by the crew of a ship more than 1000 kilometres from land.

While scientists puzzle and country folk speculate, the sightings continue. Tourists report the light following their cars and campers put the kettle on in readiness to offer a cuppa to the rider of the motorcycle they think is approaching. A group of station hands on horseback claimed they cornered the light one night a few years back and played phantom polo with it!

The Min Min has also proved good for business in Boulia in recent times. The town now hosts the ‘Min Min Light Big Sky Festival' every September and during the tourist season visitors can view the ‘Min Min Encounter', a high-tech display in the town's centre.

If the reader feels inclined to go Min Min Light – watching, I suggest you take the Kennedy Development Road from Boulia. Cross the Hamilton River, then just west of the boundary between Warenda and Lucknow is the site of the old Min Min Hotel. The old coach road is about 500 metres north of the present thoroughfare; and there's not much left of the ruins, just a scattering of broken glass and some rusting rails around the cemetery. It's not the most pleasant place to be after dark, but your perseverance just might be rewarded with a glimpse of the legendary light.

 

Something most Australian ‘ghost' lights, including the Min Min, have in common is that they give rise to curiosity rather than fear. By and large, those who witness their transit across the landscape feel privileged rather than petrified — but not all. A light which appears in the Burnett region of Queensland has been dubbed ‘The Blairmore Ghost' because local legend has it that this mysterious light has enshrined the tormented spirits of a succession of murder victims.

The Blairmore Ghost first appeared on Christmas Eve about ninety years ago, the day after a mailman met his death on Blairmore station. When the unfortunate mailman was buried, rigor mortis had not set in and the local Aborigines believed he was still alive and would return as a
debil debil
. It seemed their prophesy came true when the mysterious light appeared. Many people have seen the light since including Jim Matheson JP, former Government Stock Inspector and Brisbane City Councillor, who published details of his encounter with the Blairmore Ghost in 1957. It makes spine-chilling reading.

Matheson was driving along the boundary road of Blairmore station on a humid, stormy night when his car became bogged in a wide patch of mud. Unable to free the vehicle, Matheson settled down in the back seat to sleep until morning. Minutes later another car came along the road travelling fast and, before Matheson could give warning, ploughed into the mud up to its axles. The second car contained a commercial traveller and his wife. The three chatted for a while then returned to their cars to sleep.

Matheson was just dozing off when he heard distant pitiful cries of ‘Help! Help! Help!' He scrambled out of his car and cupped his hands behind his ears. The cries seemed to be coming from the middle of a nearby paddock. Matheson hastily pulled on his boots and set off in the direction of the cries,
which were still coming at brief intervals. Before he had gone ten paces Matheson recalls there was ‘half a stone' of sticky black mud clinging to each of his boots, but he struggled on. Then he saw the flickering light. It wasn't any shape you could put a name to: it swirled and changed, swelled and shrank, like a formless, luminous blob of jelly.

When Matheson moved towards the light it began to dribble towards him like a fat, phosphorescent slug. The cries for help grew louder and seemed, Matheson recalled with lingering horror, to be all around him and
inside
him, entering through the pores of his skin.

‘I was absolutely terrified,' Matheson admitted. ‘I couldn't move … my legs seemed to be frozen, but worse, I couldn't
think
straight. All I knew for certain was that I was in the grip of some deadly struggle and that something no longer alive and just feet away was robbing me of my own life force!'

Then mercifully, just as Matheson felt himself being sucked — body and soul —
into
the light another sound intruded on what was left of his consciousness: the sound of the commercial traveller's wife screaming. The instinctive urge to go to the aid of woman in distress made Matheson turn and run back to the cars. He believed his life was saved at that moment.

The three travellers quickly gathered some sticks, paper and petrol and started a fire, then huddled in its cheerful light all night, listening to the distant, terrifying and increasingly desperate cries of ‘Help! Help!' drifting towards them on the wind. As dawn approached the sound faded and finally could be heard no more.

Jim Matheson searched the paddock in daylight but could find nothing remarkable. Later he related his experience to a local cattleman. ‘You were lucky,' the cattleman said. ‘A
stockman once heard the ghost crying for help and went to it. He was dead when they found him and his face was not a pretty sight. Some people believe his spirit took the original ghost's place and that the stockman has been trying to catch another victim ever since. It could have been
you
out there tonight, Jim, crying for help.'

Australian red cedar was often referred to as red gold in the nineteenth century. Its durability, fine grain and lustrous colour made it a favoured timber for panelling and furniture-making. Cedar cutters were the first white men to arrive in many areas and fortunes were made from its export while irreparable damage was done to the continent's native forests.

Cedar cutters were a rough, tough breed and there were none rougher or tougher than those who pillaged the dense forests of the south coast of New South Wales. Since 1802 it had been necessary to obtain the governor's permission to log cedar, but most of the cutters who established a base at what is now Kiama around 1815 were convicts holding tickets-of-leave, who did not give a toss for the governor or his laws. There is no better illustration of the types of men that roamed this wild country in those far-off days than the story of the
Ghosts in the Glen — one of Australia's most durable ghost stories. It's survived almost 200 years; a gruesome real-life melodrama in which the characters are divided into good and evil, innocent and corrupt, with biblical clarity.

The story begins one wet and windy night in the mid-1820s when a young Englishman accompanied by a large, brindled sheepdog entered the inn at the tiny settlement of Kiama. The young man had just arrived from England and was on his way to take up work on Alexander Berry's property, Coolangatta, at the mouth of the Shoalhaven River. The bar room in the inn was filled with rough characters in various stages of drunkenness. A wiser man might have kept his own counsel and his money concealed but the naïve young Englishman offered to shout drinks for the whole company and displayed a purse fat with gold sovereigns. As the night wore on the young man became drunk and only two ruffians remained to keep him company. Eventually he rose unsteadily to his feet, whistled his dog and announced he had to be on his way.

‘Now listen, chum,' said one of his devious companions, ‘me an' me mate 'ere, we wouldn't let ya go off on your own on such a night … there's some real
bad
lots in these parts. Ya never know what might 'appen to ya! As you're goin' south an' we're goin' south, we'll keep ya company an' show ya tha way.'

‘Very kind of you, sirs,' (or some such polite words) replied the innocent and the three men and the brindled dog disappeared into the night. The young man never turned up at Alexander Berry's and his two erstwhile companions disappeared without trace. Months passed and the fate of all three might never have been known had one of Berry's assigned convict servants not become lost in the wild country around the present-day township of Gerringong. Search parties found the servant after four or five days, cold, wet and hungry. Despite his ordeal the
man appeared to be in full control of his faculties and had a incredible story to tell.

In dense fog he had wandered from the track that ran south between Kiama and his master's property and had become hopelessly lost in the drearily uniform grey bush. Without food he soon tired; and as night closed in and rain began to fall he built a rough shelter out of branches and curled up on the cold ground to sleep.

The second day was spent fruitlessly searching for the track and another night, even wetter than the first, huddled in the rude shelter. Sleep was long in coming and short lived. A distinct tap on the man's shoulder woke him. He raised his head to find a bloodstained hand and forearm, raggedly severed at the elbow, on the ground beside his head and from the distance he could hear the faint sound of a saw cutting timber. The ghastly limb twitched just centimetres from his nose and the fingers stretched and clenched as if trying to reach for him, but the man was so terrified he could not move a muscle. After a few seconds the gruesome sight vanished and the sound ceased.

The man lay shivering with fear and cold through the rest of that long night, finally dropping back to sleep just an hour before dawn. But again, he was rudely awakened, this time by an agonising human scream that echoed through the bush. The sound of the sawing returned, too. He peered in the direction the sound was coming from and caught a glimpse of two tall figures sawing a log over a sawpit that he was sure had not been there in daylight. One figure was down inside the pit with only his head and shoulders visible and the other stood on the rim. Their clothes appeared dry but their faces were wet with perspiration and their hair and eyes clogged with sawdust. Their lips were drawn back in painful grimaces
as they strained at their work and the long two-man cross-cut saw flew up and down as it bit into the timber, its rasp ringing loudly now through the bush.

Morning came but not the sun. The wind picked up to gale force and icy rain pelted down. Terror, tiredness and hunger reduced the lost man to a state where he could only crawl about fifty metres to a large hollow log and ease himself inside (where it was blessedly dry) before collapsing into a deep but troubled sleep.

Night returned and with it came a violent electrical storm. One deafening crash of thunder woke the man. He rolled over inside the log and looked towards the open end. There, to his horror, he saw a head, blood-spattered and with terrifying, blood-shot eyes, staring back at him. In the distance he could see a dark shape lying on the ground with what looked like a dog beside it, but the horrific head held his attention. Its battered, blackened mouth was moving as if speaking, but its words were lost in the fury of the storm.

To the terrified man's relief the head vanished after a few seconds and he was able to climb out of the log. Shielding his eyes from the rain he stepped closer to the dark shape on the ground and realised it was the body of a man to whose neck the ghastly head was now attached. Beside the body cowered a brindled sheepdog, nudging the lifeless hand that lay nearest to it and licking the bloodied face.

A flash of lightning and a peal of thunder signalled the return of the spectral sawyers, now both at ground level and engaged in conversation. Between gusts of wind the man caught a few foul curses and a few callous words.

‘He's still got about fifty sovereigns on 'im … we'll cut 'im up and burn the bastard.'

‘I'll 'ave 'is boots.'

‘I'll 'ave 'is breeches.'

‘We'll have to slit that bloody cur's throat, too. It ain't no good to no one an' I'm sick of its bloody whining!'

Both figures then strolled towards the body, each drawing vicious-looking knives from their belts. Another scream, so loud and terrifying that the lost man had to put his hands over his ears, then resounded through the bush, followed by a lightning flash close by that lit the area like the noonday sun and temporarily blinded him. Deafening thunder shook the air. The poor man closed his eyes and fell to his knees, overwhelmed by the natural and unnatural forces that were assailing him. When silence returned, broken only by the pattering of rain and the rustle of the wind as the storm receded, he slowly opened his eyes. The body was gone. So was the dog. The vision of the sawyers and their sawpit had vanished. The lost man was quite alone, surrounded by dark, dripping bush.

If someone came forwards with a story like that today we would probably say it was caused by delirium, but the search party who found the man wandering several kilometres from the scene of his ordeal believed him. He was taken back to Berry's property and cared for until his strength returned, then he guided a party back to the gully he described as a ‘glen', where they found the remains of the shelter and the hollow log he had spoken of. Nearby they found signs of an old campfire and in it the broken and partially burned bones of a man with a shattered skull. Under a bush a few metres away was the skeleton of a large dog, the vertebrae of its neck savagely scored with a knife.

The story of these ghostly visions quickly entered the folklore of the district, told and retold around cosy firesides and memorialised in the poem quoted at the beginning of
this chapter. Farmers in the Gerringong region for decades after swore that the lost man was not the only one who saw the spectral sawyers and their human and canine victims. Whenever a violent storm coursed through the coastal ranges settlers trapped in it reported catching glimpses of the ghoulish tableau and hearing the scrape of that ghostly saw carried on the wind.

The story of the spectral sawyers also became a popular moral tale, told to generations of children in the region as warning against trusting strangers and in a few cases to curb the antics of mischievous offspring. Many a child went to bed with the remonstration: ‘If you're not good, them ghostly sawyers'll cut you up into little bits!'; and many a child's dreams were plagued with visions of severed heads, severed hands and saw blades spattered with blood.

There is a curious codicil that gives credibility to this tale. About ten years after the murder an Irish timber splitter named Pat McAnnally shared a hut with another man called Jem Hicks at Bulli, forty kilometres up the coast. Hicks was a morose man with a reputation for violence. One stormy night when the two sat alone in their hut McAnnally commented to his mate that it was a good night for a ghost story and mentioned the ghosts in the glen at Gerringong. The reaction from his companion stunned the little Irishman. The much larger Hicks turned on him: ‘You hold your gab about that there Gerry-gong business … d'ya hear?' Hicks shouted above the wind.

The two men sat without speaking for several minutes. A gust of wind blew open the door and howled through the hut. Jem Hicks jumped to his feet, put his hands to his temples and screamed: ‘Curse the money! Curse the dog! Will a fella never get no peace?'

The little Irishman made an obvious deduction. ‘You black-hearted hound! You're one o' them moiderin' bastards, ain't ya?'

Jem Hicks scowled. He grabbed a piece of firewood and hurled it at McAnnally, then ran out into the night. Next day McAnnally reported his suspicion to the police, but Jem Hicks was never seen again.

180 years on there's not much other evidence to test the veracity of this famous and compelling story. The modern holiday village of Gerringong and the surrounding farmlands bear no resemblance to the wild settings of the story, however, there is a fact most chroniclers seem to have overlooked. On a historic property called Alne Bank near Gerringong there is a gully that has always been called (though no one remembers why) ‘the glen'. Perhaps if, with the permission of the owners of Alne Bank of course, you were to camp there on a stormy night you might yet hear that spectral saw and catch a glimpse of those ghastly ‘Ghosts in the Glen'.