Great Australian Ghost Stories Read Free

like Charlie Lee, lived to a ripe old age and died in his bed, still chuckling about his own craftiness.
    Cynics dismiss the whole story of the ‘Headless Horseman of the Black Swamp’ as a hoax. Believers point out that Doyle’s death and the earliest appearances of the ghost (without mention of cattle stealing) predate the butcher’s escapades by a decade or more. Whatever the truth is, the headless horseman and his nifty nag have become one of Australia’s most popular ghost stories and a profitable part of the folklore of the Riverina.
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    Our final ‘headless horror’ is much less well-known, but his story is perhaps the most touching of the three. Unlike Lucretia Dunkley, no one would suggest that he deserved his fate and, unlike the horseman at the Black Swamp, there has never been any conjecture about trickery or foul play associated with his story. On the contrary, what follows is testament to the perils of living in the most isolated regions of Australia and to the personal courage required to face them.
    One of the great pastoral properties of the Channel Country in the south-western corner of Queensland is Hammond Downs. This giant cattle station (as large as a small Europeanstate) was established by the Hammond family in the middle of the nineteenth century. Hammond Downs can lay claim to several ghost stories, mostly concerned with victims of the flash floods that come roaring down Cooper Creek most years, turning the dry and dusty land into an inland sea.
    The distinction of being the property’s and the region’s most famous ghost (and their only headless one) belongs to Edward ‘Ned’ Hammond, son of the first Hammonds to arrive in the district. Ned was an accomplished horseman; and he was strong, wiry and in the prime of his life when he went out alone one day during the dry season of 1889 to round up some stray horses. In what is still called the Wallaroo Paddock Ned’s own horse slipped in a clay pan, throwing him heavily to the ground.
    There are two versions of how Ned Hammond was found. The most likely tells of a search party finding him with a fractured spine trying to crawl home and his brother, John, riding 300 kilometres to fetch the nearest doctor but finding Ned dead on his return.
    The other version claims that Ned managed to remount and the horse found its own way home. Along the way Ned collapsed and fell from the horse again, but one of his boots remained caught in a stirrup. Ned was dragged many kilometres, his head repeatedly hitting the stony ground until, by the time the horse limped into the homestead it was dragging a headless corpse.
    Ned Hammond was buried near the homestead beside his infant daughter Mary, who had died eight years before, and some say that his ghost still rides the dusty plain where he suffered his fatal fall. The ghostly horse and rider have been seen in the beams of car headlights and heard galloping around camps at night. The story is passed from one generation ofjackaroos to the next and the new chums are warned to watch out for the ‘old boss’.
    â€˜So, how will we know him, then?’ the youngsters invariably ask.
    â€˜Oh you’ll know ’im all right,’ the old hands reply. ‘’e ain’t got no ’ead!’

2.
Fabulous Federici!
    There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
    Hamlet , William Shakespeare
(English playwright and poet, 1564–1616)
    Theatres the world over claim to have resident ghosts and those in Australia are no exception. Australia’s oldest surviving playhouse, the Theatre Royal in Hobart, for example, has ‘Fred’, a friendly, smiling phantom who is credited with having saved the little architectural gem he calls home by lowering the safety curtain when fire broke out backstage in 1984.
    Even modern Sydney Opera House has its share of theatrical spirits, including ‘Old Harry’, who