Canberra and ACT: Weird Canberra

Take a night-time ghost and history tour of Canberra and find out why the Nation's Capital is also the Mystery Capital.

From the outside, it can sometimes seem like nothing much happens in and around Canberra once the lights go down. But spend a night with Tim the Yowie Man on a Weird Canberra Ghost and History Tour and you'll never see the city in the same light again. 

Led by Australia's foremost (if not only) cryptonaturalist and renowned paranormal investigator Tim the Yowie Man, (yes, that's his real name, he changed it by deed poll after spotting an unidentified big black hairy creature in Canberra's Brindabella Mountains in 1994) the three-hour bus tour visits around 20 weird and spooky sites in and around the city, exposing the dark underbelly of the capital that lurks beneath the surface.

"Weird things are going on all over the place in Canberra," says Tim as we gather in the darkening gloom while we wait for our tour bus to arrive. "Always have been."

Our first stop seems only to prove his point, a church that was once a train station in Sydney, and as if that wasn't weird enough, we learn that it was the last stop for those headed to the mortuary at Rookwood Necropolis. 

Our next stop seems much more normal, an historic pioneer's cottage sitting serenely on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. But as we approach, Tim warns us that we may encounter a strangely upsetting smell, for this cute little stone cottage is, apparently, home to a very smelly ghost, the spirit of a woman who died in a fire here many years ago. "It's the smell of her burning flesh that indicates her presence," says Tim with a shiver.

Back on the bus we visit a range of local landmarks, each time getting an alternative view of history. We learn about another smelly spirit, the ghost of an airman who haunts the National Library, who very spookily crashed his plane shortly after Dame Nellie Melba had jokingly asked for the noise of the planes flying overhead to cease as she was trying to sing God Save the Queen during the opening of Parliament House in 1927.

We learn about the ghost of Cadet Casey who apparently roams the halls and parade grounds of the Duntroon Military Academy.

According to the legend, young cadet Casey was, whilst skylarking, locked in a broom closet during end of year celebrations. Unfortunately for him, no-one noticed until they returned to the college the following year, and while his skeleton was found his ghost still haunts the corridors. According to tradition, a place is set for him at every Graduation Dinner and his skeleton is present at each Graduation Ball to help make up for the fact that he never got the chance to graduate in real life. 

We continue our spooky tour of the city and, as Tim hands out ghostly marshmallows, the stories get progressively weirder. We take a drive by the National Filim and Sound Archive, a beautiful Art Deco building that was once an Institute of Anatomy and is reputed to be one of the most haunted sites in the country. (I visit the next day and am told ghostly stories of rooms crowded with ghosts and about the strange links with one of Australia's most bizarre murders, the infamous 1930s Pyjama Girl murder mystery.) We learn that Old Parliament House is so haunted that many security guards refuse to work there at night, cruise past a suburban funeral parlour that was once a hot bed of espionage activity, and stop for a cup of hot chocolate and slice of chocolate cake at the Kurrajong Hotel, where we visit the room where former Prime Minister and then Leader of the Opposition, Ben Chifley, lived and died in 1951. His ghost is said to still haunt the hotel, materialising at his bedroom window, pointing towards old Parliament House where he ruled from 1945 to 1949.

There are around 24 of us on the bus, and so far, none of us has really experienced any ghostly encounters at any of the sites we have visited. That all changes though, when we reach the air disaster memorial on the outskirts of the city. 

It was a fine, clear day on 13 August 1940 when a RAAF Lockheed Hudson aircraft enroute from Melbourne to Canberra inexplicably stalled and crashed into hills near the airport, killing all 10 onboard, including three Commonwealth Cabinet Ministers, the Chief of the Australian General staff and air crew. The causes of the crash have remained a mystery; the pilot was an experienced RAAF officer, and flying conditions were, as reported at the time by the Melbourne Herald "ideal flying conditions" and even though it was during war time, there has never been any hint of enemy action or sabotage.

During the day the lonely memorial site, surrounded by gum trees, is moving enough, but at night, as the strange rustling sounds of nocturnal animals echo through the bush, it is dark, eerie and positively spooky. We have been encouraged to take photos during the tour in the hope that some unexplained 'orbs' may appear (ghost watchers and cryptonaturalists say that orbs are the most common way ghosts or spirits will appear on film) and on our way out to the memorial, Tim regaled us with stories of orb sightings from his previous tours. So of course, as soon as we arrived, those of us with digital cameras started to madly snap away in the dark.  It was only once we were back on the bus that we discovered at least two people had captured photographs covered in weird glowing shapes that hadn't been visible to the naked eye that we really began shrieking in terror.

Were they really the ghosts of the dead aircrew and passengers?  Or were they, as the sceptics maintain, simply the result of digital flaws caused by lack of pixilation, a reasonably common effect found on photographs taken with digital cameras under extremely low-light conditions. Who knows? You'll need to take you own photographs and make your own mind up.

More information

Tours depart on selected Friday evenings at 8pm and cost $64 including light refreshments. Tours are very popular, so you'll need to book in advance. To check dates and book, visit Destiny Tours or call (02) 9943 0167.

By Lee Atkinson, March 2008. Photos courtesy Lee Atkinson, Destiny Tours and Tourism Canberra.

All information was correct at the time of writing but may change without notice.