Australia's Strangest Mysteries

by John Pinkney

  By April 2004 Brown was exploring fresh possibilities, directing a highly publicised expedition to an area of South Africa’s east coast far from the Xora River. A survey team, organised by the company Marine Geosolutions, used sidescan sonar to map an area of seabed that had never previously been surveyed. Possibly this would prove to be Waratah’s final resting place.

  But at expedition’s end, after 22 years of fruitless effort, the tenacious filmmaker conceded defeat. ‘We found no shipwreck targets,’ he said. ‘I can’t continue searching for her indefinitely.’ That was the end of it. Even the courageous Emlyn Brown had abandoned the lost liner.

  And so, on 4 May 2004, he stepped aside from the struggle. Emlyn Brown: perhaps the last person on earth who might have explained how a 12,000-tonne luxury liner vanished from the face of the ocean, taking with her every soul and every artefact – right down to the last lifebelt.

  Ill-luck on the Loch Line

  Among seamen and shipbuilders, the Waratah became internationally infamous as a jinxed vessel.

  But her evil reputation was overwhelmingly eclipsed by the Loch Line – which, in its dark day, lost 18 of its 24 ships. Several of the reputedly cursed company’s craft foundered, with multiple deaths, off Australia’s coast.

  One of the worst of these Antipodean disasters occurred in 1864 when the large sailship Loch Maree vanished in Bass Strait. Searchers found no trace of the vessel, her passengers or crew.

  Fourteen years later, in May 1878, the famously fast racing clipper Loch Ard was at the end of an 80-day voyage from England and within hours of reaching Melbourne – when her journey came to a deadly end. A fogbank formed nearby and the captain, confused, slammed the ship into beetling cliffs rising steeply from the sea. Most of the 18 passengers and 36 crew were drowned.

  The carnage continued in 1883 when Loch Fyne disappeared – again without trace – while sailing to England. In 1903 Loch Long similarly vanished when she was less than three hours out of Melbourne.

  In 1905 Loch Vennacher disappeared off Kangaroo Island. Three years later, in 1908, Loch Lomond was lost en route from New Zealand to Sydney.

  Death tolls in the northern hemisphere were similarly grim. In 1875 the Loch Earn had taken 226 passengers and crew with her when she sank in the Atlantic. During World War I, Loch Carron also went to an Atlantic grave. Loch Awe, Loch Torridon and Loch Groom were sunk by German submarines.

  By the early 1920s the Loch Line’s original pool of two dozen vessels had shrunk to six – with the remainder at the bottom of the sea. No board of inquiry ever found a ship of the line to have had major faults. But to superstitious sailors, the most dangerous fault a vessel could have was the presence of Loch in her name.

  The Antique Jawbone Mystery

  Nicholas Nott, a shell-collecting schoolboy, was unpleasantly shocked in January 2006 when he discovered a human jawbone on Victoria’s Port Fairy beach.

  Police scoured the sand, but could find no other remains. Subsequently, in the coroner’s court, a pathologist testified that the bone was probably from a woman in her mid-20s and showed no evidence of violence. He agreed with an anthropologist that the bone was at least a century old: the smooth edges consistent with it having rolled about in water for many years.

  A maritime witness told the coroner that in the month before the jawbone emerged from the sand, weather along the coast had been unusually rough – exposing many wrecks for the first time in decades.

  There were no clues to whom the. woman might have been. Possibly she was either Margarete or Annie Carmichael, whose bodies had never been retrieved from the Loch Ard, sunk 90 kilometres east of Port Fairy 127 years earlier.

  Or quite possibly the jawbone was even older. In 1835, when the Neva sank near King Island, 153 women were thought to have drowned. In the 171 intervening years the lonely relic, dragged by currents, might somehow have found its way to a beach distant in space and time.

  * * *

  The Fisherman and the Lady of the Cavern

  In 1955, Jim Byriel, an 18-year-old fisherman, found a strange barnacle-studded wooden carving in a tidal cavern on Queensland’s Great Keppel Island.

  The artefact depicted a beautiful young woman. Jim had no idea who she was – or indeed whether she was anyone at all – but he liked the artwork and took it home to use as an ornament.

  Not until Jim had passed his 60th birthday did he learn that the lady of the cavern had a name after all. A visitor from Gladstone’s historical society told him that the wooden beauty was the likeness of the famed 19th century singer Jenny Lind, carved as a ship’s figurehead. The historian speculated that the carving might have splintered from the shattered prow of the barque Jenny Lind, which sank beside a Coral Sea reef in September 1850.

  The crew had huddled on the coral for more than a month, drinking fresh liquid from a seawater still. Then they escaped to the mainland in a boat they had built from floating wreckage.

  The figurehead, swept away by fast tropical currents, is thought to have been sucked by a tide into the cavern, where it lay unnoticed for more than a century.

  * * *

  How Nostradamus – and a TV Quiz Hero — Foretold a President’s Death

  Great Australian Premonitions

  In mid-November 1963 a young Australian schoolteacher predicted – in print – an event that would shake the world. The teacher, Barry Jones, also happened to be the nation’s pre-eminent quiz champion. In a magazine interview Jones casually referred to the writings of Nostradamus – idly wondering whether the seer had intended to presage a tragic end for President John F. Kennedy. On 22 November, after the magazine containing the interview had been in newsagencies for three days, Kennedy was shot dead. And the eerie premonitions did not end there...

  THE ASSASSINATION OF President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, was steeped in myth from the start. Even before the young leader’s body was buried, columnists were reminding their readers that his murder was part of a sinisterly inexplicable pattern.

  Every president elected in a year ending in V had died in office.

  The baleful procession had begun with William H. Harrison (elected 1840), followed by Abraham Lincoln (1860), James A. Garfield (1880), William McKinley (1900), Warren G. Harding (1920), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1940) and JFK (1960). A later generation would note that Ronald Reagan (elected 1980) might also have died had there been a few centimetres’ variation in the trajectory of the maniac’s bullet that pierced his lung.

  The uncanny Australian link to JFK’s murder was little-publicised beyond the Antipodes. If the deadly attack had been predicted in the Internet era the world would have read about it.

  Barry Jones, the brilliant polymath at the centre of the Nostradamus episode, was a 31-year-old schoolmaster at Victoria’s Dandenong High when he was interviewed by TV Week. Personified by journalists as ‘the expert on everything’, he was in the middle of a record seven-year run as the undefeated champion of American compere Bob Dyer’s Pick-a-Box. There has been no contestant like him, before or since. Even when the judges pronounced him wrong, Barry was likely to be right.

  During one legendary program, Bob Dyer had posed the seemingly straightforward query, ‘Who was the first governor-general of India?’ Demonstrating an encyclopaedic knowledge of white colonialism, the laser-minded Barry shredded the question. India, he said, had not existed as a political entity before the 20th century. Britain had held colonial power in Bengal from the 18th century onward – but the king’s representative there was the viceroy, not the governor-general...and more, much more, in that vein.

  Bob Dyer subsequently admitted that, as Barry confidently lectured, he had felt grey hairs growing on his head. The adjudicator, George Black, was equally bemused. Solely because of such considered and analytical replies, the program’s producers were forced to find different and more sophisticated sources of information – and wherever possible to Jones-proof their questions.

  But the quiz series was little more than a luc
rative amusement for Barry Jones. Later in his career, he would not only gain a bewildering variety of university degrees, but would become Dr Jones twice, in science and literature, going on to become a pioneering talkback radio host, author, co-founder of Australia’s national film school, and federal science minister. He even had a body of water named in his honour (Barry Jones Bay in the Australian Antarctic Territory) – and became part of the Latinised label for a rare breed of marsupial (Yalkaparidon jonesi).

  Whenever the press sought interviews during his Pick- a-Box career, Jones politely obliged. He knew he owed a lot to the program – a debt bigger than the large number of prizes he had won.

  However, the trivially repetitive questions he was obliged to answer must have strained his patience. Whenever a journalist strayed into areas outside quizzes and TV, he responded (and held forth) enthusiastically. And thus it was during his lunch with TV Week when, for no particular reason, the conversation strayed to Michel de Notredame (Nostradamus), the 16th century astrologer and physician whose obscurely written prophecies have inspired argument for generations.

  Barry Jones ran quickly through a list of historic occurrences, including the Great Fire of London, which Nostradamus might – arguably – have predicted accurately.

  At one point, he said, ‘And of course Nostradamus says that great sorrow will come to a land ruled by three brothers born by the sea. If he actually were a prophet, you ‘d have to ask yourself whether he might be referring to the Kennedys... and to wonder whether an element of that tragedy might involve JFK; whether he’s in danger...’

  In the week before the president was assassinated, TV Week published a major article quoting Barry Jones’s thoughts about Nostradamus and the Kennedys. In its following issue, the magazine (besieged by calls from astonished readers) asked whether Jones might have experienced a premonition about the dark events in Dallas. Barry offered no comment – but it would be a mistake to think that he’d necessarily have tried to dismiss the affair as mere coincidence.

  In 2000, talking with Terry Lane on ABC radio, Barry Jones offered listeners an insight into his views on such matters: ‘I think that there is something profoundly mysterious about the universe. I don’t think it is all cut and dried. I wish I understood more about it...I have a profound yearning for the numinous.’

  There was more.

  While JFK’s murder was still dominating the world’s news, it emerged that an ABC-TV producer in Melbourne had suggested to his bosses (weeks before the tragedy) a new documentary series, Famous Assassinations in History. The idea was not taken up.

  And oddest of all was a program listing (prepared at least 10 days ahead) which appeared in TV Week and other publications. Channel 9 announced that it would televise the 1954 film Suddenly, starring Frank Sinatra.

  The movie tells the story of a plot to kill an American president. The published date chosen for the screening was 22 November 1963 – the day President Kennedy was murdered. Channel 9 quickly found a replacement film.

  FORTY-TWO YEARS LATER, precognition played a fateful role in the life of a second Australian quiz contestant.

  The strange saga began when Rob Fulton, a 36-year-old Sydney graphics operator, attended a reading with ‘Elizabeth’, a professional clairvoyant. During the session she confidently told him he was destined to win an extremely large sum of money on a TV program.

  Inspired by the advice, Rob spent several years trying to become a contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. He devoted much of his spare time to attending trivia nights and studying everything from encyclopaedias and National Geographics to newspapers and novels. He even watched tapes of the show’s British version.

  To maintain a half-belief that he was destined to win, Rob Fulton regularly replayed the clairvoyant’s audiotaped prediction. In October 2005 he succeeded at last in entering the show. From the start he publicly made it clear to host Eddie Maguire that he was following a psychic’s advice. And ‘Elizabeth’s’ counsel proved sound. After six years and a parade of 540 contestants, Rob became Australia’s first Millionaire winner. The $1,000,000 question: Which of these popular TV shows premiered first: Bewitched, Get Smart, Hogan’s Heroes, or I Dream of Jeannie?

  After long and agonised analysis, Rob nervously offered his answer: Bewitched. The word changed his life.

  Bemused by a hint of the paranormal that he had never expected to experience on Millionaire, Eddie Maguire invited ‘Elizabeth’ onto the program. She modestly refused to reveal either her real name, or to accept Eddie’s offer of a free plug (in the form of a phone number) for her psychic services. Thanks – but she had a sufficient number of clients already.

  That was easy to believe.

  The Man Who Dreamed His Own Death

  THE PREMONITION, dreadful in its detail, invaded Paul Clacher’s sleep. It came to him in the form of a dream, starker than any nightmare he had previously known. In the night vision he experienced his own violent death.

  Two weeks later, the dream’s portent became reality. He escaped the fate it had foretold for him with only seconds to spare.

  Paul, of Red Hill, Brisbane, described the extraordinary series of events to me.

  ‘I’ve been able to work out the dream’s exact date – January 14 1998. In it I dreamt in vivid detail that I was killed in a head-on collision with an unusually large semitrailer on the Mt Lindsay Highway. The crash happened at a specific corner of the mountainous section (a small cutting past Palen Creek).

  ‘The dream continued past the point of impact. I knew I’d died instantly from a blow to the head – and could feel someone’s presence beside me. I was desperately worried about my wife Lorraine and our daughter – but the entity assured me they were OK. It was I who had to go with him. He led me to a white marble building where many people were seated, as if they were watching an entertainment. Among them was my uncle who had died quite recently. I also recognised my late aunt and grandmother. My memory of what happened after this is limited – but I do remember being taken back.

  ‘The dream was so real that when I woke next morning I was frantic. I was aware that in two weeks’ time the three of us would be going on a holiday to the Clarence River Wilderness Lodge – and we’d therefore be travelling on that road. And on that highway, at a cutting past Palen Creek, the smash would happen. There was no logic to it – but I knew I had less than two weeks to live.

  ‘For the first few days after the dream I was petrified. I couldn’t discuss it with Lorraine because she’d think I was crazy.

  ‘But then everything changed. The world slowed for me and I began to see my surroundings in a new, euphoric way. Colours were brighter, smells were more intense and I suddenly felt a deep serenity. I was walking in a bubble of total contentment. It was almost a religious experience. But a cooler, more analytical part of me was considering the dates. I’d had the nightmare on Wednesday January 14. We were scheduled to set out on Saturday January 24. Not long to go. Not many days between dream and future reality.

  ‘I felt good but I didn’t want us to die. After several days of indecision I finally told Lorraine about the nightmare. She reacted predictably and sensibly – saying it had only been a dream and I should get over it. And the best way to do that would be to set out on the holiday as planned, to prove to myself that nothing was going to happen.

  ‘I wanted to believe her, so on the arranged date we headed off. Secretly, however, I still had huge reservations about travelling down that road. In parts the Mt Lindsay Highway is extremely narrow and winding. I defied the dream by driving at snail’s pace, even sitting contentedly behind a grey elderly man who, surely, was the world’s slowest motorist. But to my dismay he proved to be courteous also. When we were only about 1.5 kilometres from the dreaded corner he pulled over and waved me to pass him.

  ‘I reluctantly obeyed, then proceeded to drive even more cautiously than before – until finally we saw, descending a hill up ahead, a semi-trailer, identical to what I’d described to Lor
raine, from my dream. She was thunderstruck and began asking how I’d possibly foreseen this. But I had no time to answer. I could see the semi was in trouble. As it lurched into full sight down the slope from us it swung so wide around the corner that its wheels cut through the gutter – on our side. I slammed on the brakes – knowing that if I’d been at that corner five seconds earlier we’d have been crushed.

  That dream and its aftermath have had the greatest impact on me of anything in my life – causing me to reassess myself, the physical world we live in, and almost everything we understand to be real. Had the nightmare warned me to be careful? Or had I been given the right to alter my own future?

  ‘These questions have engaged my mind ever since.’

  THE NOVELIST and playwright J.B. Priestley was absorbed by the mystery of remodelled time. He collected numerous cases, each involving a person who precognitively ‘saw’ a future disaster, then successfully acted to avoid it. Priestley invented a name for what he called ‘this impossible situation in which the future is foreglimpsed, then changed’. He called it the Intervention Paradox.

  NUMEROUS AUSTRALIAN readers have told me how the mystery of precognition has touched their lives. Most describe flickering images of unelapsed time that seem to surface during sleep – and it’s often difficult to detect reason or purpose in them. In a letter to me in 2006 Sandra Whitford of Adelaide recalled an intriguing mosaic of premonitory experiences.

  ‘I think I started receiving premonitions in dreams during my teenage years. At first they seemed to concern mundane, trivial events...But some later dreams seemed rather uncanny.

  ‘For example, shortly before the fashion designer Versace died I had a dream in which I clearly heard an unfamiliar name pronounced. I woke, asking myself “Who was that?” Several days later, watching the TV news, I saw the report of Versace’s death – and heard his name pronounced in a way I’d only heard once before – and that was in the dream that had so puzzled me.