Ghost tour!

Emily and Kris found a brochure for a ghost tour through Central Melbourne.  We took a family poll, and the guided walk sounded fun for everyone.  So we booked it.  The tour met at 8:30pm at Federation Square on a Saturday night in March. 

Our guide identified himself as a ghost agnostic: maybe they're real, and maybe they aren't.  But ghosts or not, he entertained us with lots of stories of the history of Melbourne.

Federation Square is right on the Yarra River.  We began the tour on the steps of the church across the street, and we were told to ignore the lights and high rises and traffic, and to imagine a quiet fishing village. 

I won't repeat the ghost tales, but it was fun to look around the city and imagine times gone by.  In the 1830s, the Europeans displaced the natives, who had been living in the area for tens of thousands of years, and brought with them sheep and farms and disease -- especially disease, devastating to the native people.

And then the sheep herders and farmers, early settlers, whose names read as a who's who in street and park names around the city, were in turn upheaved by the gold rush.  Gold was discovered in the state of Victoria in 1851.  In 1852, the town's population doubled.  (Jonathan's primary school is 160 years old this year, so it would have been built with the gold rush in 1854.)  And then the city continued to grow and grow until about the 1890s.  Single young Englishmen heard that there were riches available for anyone who could just make their way to Melbourne, Australia.  Step off the boat and grab a chunk of gold and you have made it!

The reality was a little different, as reality sometimes is.  Soon Melbourne again was full of disease -- no sewage system until around the 1890s -- 1890s!  (At least that's the date of construction on the sewage pumping plant we toured at the Science Works museum.)  (And of course I am just writing this all on hearsay, without giving any historical references.  Go read original sources for the real truth.) 

And of course, if there was a gold rush, there was a fair amount of crime.  With the words of our guide, we all pictured a wild city, guns and alcohol and prostitution.  Although reading a little more, it sounds like the reality was more complex.  High birth rate requires families, too.  And - ooh -- Wikipedia says that Melbourne was known as the "working man's paradise" in the 1860's and 1870's, and that the Stoneworker's Union won an eight-hour workday in 1856.  No wonder people moved here!  I would too!  Except for the sewage thing.  (Really.  1890s!)

Anyway, back to the ghost tour, envisioning gold rush and crime, we followed our guide east and north, into this alley:

Apparently this alley is very famous for its ever changing street art.  And in three months of shuttling back and forth almost daily on the tram, I had not known of its existence.  So thanks, ghost tour!  The art was very good, but it was difficult to take pictures in the dark.  And plus, we were supposed to be listening for the sound of high heels late at night, and the scent of lavender perfume, as the ghost of a murdered woman walked by.  This can be a creepy place for the artist painting all alone, in the dark....

What else?  We learned about grave robbing.  Murders for medical research.  We paused in an alley to talk about death by motorcar in the early 1900s.  And in another alley, we heard the tragic tale of a man only recently pardoned, when it was learned many many years too late that the police had planted evidence against him, just so the public could finally be appeased by a hanging! 

There is an old hotel near the Parliament House where we were told Dame Nellie Melba used to live.  Nellie Melba was Melbourne's most famous soprano, and among other things, the dessert Peach Melba was named to honor her.  She was actually born Nellie Mitchell, but changed her last name to remind her listeners of her exotic upbringing here in Melbourne.

And the Parliament House itself had a little ghost story.  It's a grand-looking building, especially all lit up at night.  Their website says you can sign up for free architectural tours.  Allow 90 minutes.  Perhaps we should go!

The tour ended in the middle of China Town.  We walked a couple of blocks to catch a tram home.  I would say we walked through the darkened, spooky streets, for mood, you know.  But although it was well past sunset -- around 10:30pm -- it was still pretty crowded out on the well-lit streets of the Central Business District.  And our tram was pretty full, too.  What do you do with your Saturday nights?