“I love a sunburnt country,
a land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror-
The wide brown land for me!”
(From the 1904 poem “My Country”, by Dorothea Mackellar)
I’ve got a question, one which I’m fairly sure I’m not alone in pondering; can a place or object be cursed? Could an ancient curse be the reason for the 21 recorded deaths at an innocent-looking waterhole in a humid jungle in the tropical far North of Queensland, Australia? Could disregard for an old maritime superstition be the reason so many people who have come into contact with an old shipwreck in Western Australia- a wreck with a sinister reputation- have suffered bad luck, and some even death?
These are questions which warrant further exploration, and the locations pertaining to those questions are intriguing indeed, as are their stories. This country, although a “young” one in terms of European colonisation, has a history that stretches back into the dim reaches of time, with its Indigenous custodians, the Australian Aborigines, having arrived here well over 40,000 years ago. It also has a more recent history related to its use as a penal colony, one marred by bloodshed and brutality, and accordingly, abounds with ghost stories. The following two tales, however, are not so much about ghosts- although these are mentioned on occasion. These are stories of two places said to be cursed, and of those who were, perhaps, their victims...
THE “DEVIL’S POOL” - BABINDA, FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND
Deep within a verdant tropical rainforest in Babinda, Cairns, in Far North Queensland, lies a deceptively peaceful-looking pool of clear, invitingly cool water. But visitors to this location should avoid the temptation to swim here, and warning signs have also been posted prohibiting swimming; doing so has cost many an unsuspecting traveler their lives. This is the Devil’s Pool, and it has a sinister reputation. Over the past 60 years, roughly 21 people have lost their lives in these waters- most of them male, almost all of them white. Old newspaper reports indicate that there may have been more lives lost there before official records began, but the official death toll alone is enough to have raised both curiosity, and speculation that something was...wrong...with that part of the creek.
BACK IN THE DREAMTIME
Babinda is an Australian Indigenous/Aboriginal word, and comes from the words “Bunna” (running water) and “Binda” (shoulder or rock), and is known to the Indigenous people in the area as a sacred place, but also, or at least to some, it is a known as a cursed place- an evil one. There is an old Indigenous “Dreamtime” (creation story) legend attached to the Devil’s Pool, which tells of a beautiful young woman named Oolana from the Yidinji tribe, who was promised to an elder from the same tribe, Waroonoo. A neighbouring tribe arrived in the area one day, and Oolana soon fell hopelessly in love with a handsome young warrior from that tribe named Dyga. Realizing they would be punished by their respective tribes for their adultery, the young lovers fled into the valleys, but were soon caught by the tribal Elders. Rather than face harsh punishment at the hands of the angry Elders, the distraught Oolana broke away from her captors, and threw herself into the calm waters of the creek of which the Devil’s Pool is part, screaming for Dyga to join her.
According to the legend, as soon as Dyga hit the water, the tranquil creek erupted into a rushing torrent, and in a section of the creek now known as the ‘washing machine’, the wailing Oolana disappeared among the huge boulders that lay scattered about submerged in the rushing water. Since that fateful day, Oolana’s spirit is said to be heard on occasion, crying out for her lost love, and is said by some locals to seek him still, by luring young men to their deaths in the Devil’s Pool; a story similar to those of the Lorelei of the Rhine river, or the fabled Sirens of maritime lore. The waters have thus also earned a haunted reputation, and tourists and travellers are warned not to swim there. However, according to some Indigenous locals in the area, there is a belief that those of their culture are quite safe to enter the water, and remain unharmed.
The rumours of Oolana’s spirit could likely be attributed to hearsay, as no confirmation of any encounters with her apparition are to be found, but the paranormal connotations that surround the site have nonetheless persisted for quite some time, as illustrated by the story of Patrick McGann...
PATRICK, IN THE POOL?
In the carpark adjacent to The Boulders, a plaque memorializes one young, white, male victim- a nurse from New South Wales named Patrick McGann who, as the plaque poignantly states, “came for a visit on 22/6/79...and stayed forever”. The small, sad memorial was installed at the behest of Patrick’s father Terry, who almost lost his own life in the same spot as his son while assisting local Police in the search for the body. In an article published in the Australasian Post newspaper on the 2nd of March 1991, Terry spoke about a photograph, taken for Police records, which he strongly believed that the photograph contains an image of his departed son, saying:
“It (the photograph) was for police records and when it was developed the sergeant at Babinda took me quietly to one side. There was Pat’s face in the water. He looked exactly the same in both photos, even to the cigarette in his mouth. I’ve spoken to many priests about it and one told me ‘there’s a lot of things in life we will never understand. This is one of them.’”
While the image taken of the area where Patrick McGann drowned may to some show only rocks and churning water, the comfort the image brought his father- that of believing his son’s spirit continues after death- is not to be doubted, nor belittled; nor does it negate the possibility of something anomalous having occurred at the Devil’s Pool. Is that something a curse, a ghost, both of the aforementioned? Or, as is commonly believed and has been proven repeatedly, is the Devil’s Pool, with its strong underwater currents and watery hidden caverns, merely a treacherous place to swim? To the Indigenous locals, it’s a combination of both. Perhaps the priest who spoke to Terry McGann was correct, that there are things that can never be understood- and perhaps the mystery that surrounds the Devil’s Pool is one of those.
THE ALKIMOS: YANCHEP BEACH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Jutting in rusted, time-worn pieces from jagged rocks a short distance from the golden-white sands of Yanchep beach, about 56 kilometers north of Western Australia’s capital city, Perth, are the remains of what was once a ship with a long history filled with misfortune- and apparently also home to a resident ghost. Divers and fishermen are wary of the wreck, and some avoid it entirely. Tourists who visit the beach to photograph it have sometimes found that their cameras won’t work, and upon attempting to leave the beach, some have had their cars refuse to start. The story of this ship is unusual to say the least, and she has become the stuff of Australian maritime- and paranormal- legend.
BAD LUCK FROM THE BEGINNING?
Now known as the Alkimos, her story began in America in October 1943, when she was known as the George M. Shriver, and was one of the 2,750 ships collectively known as Liberty Ships. Often named after influential American public figures of that time, Liberty ships were known for their rapid construction, with a new ship completed in about 10 days, and mostly without any issues, but the Alkimos apparently proved an immediate exception to that rule, with her construction rumored to have taken six weeks to complete. This was only the beginning of the series of misfortunes that would plague the ship until the end of her seafaring days.
An old maritime superstition maintains that to change the name of a ship is bad luck; and yet the George M. Shriver, only 9 days after being launched from the dock at the Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyards in Maryland on October 11, 1943, and upon being reassigned to the Norwegian Shipping and Trade Mission on October 20th, was renamed the M.V. Viggo Hansteen, after the then-prominent Norwegian lawyer, politician and labour activist who was executed by the Nazis two years previously. This re-christening seemed to mark the beginning of the ship’s almost endless bad luck.
WAR WOUNDS
The Viggo Hansteen’s first wartime mission was as part of a convoy to Bandur Shapur, via the Mediterranean and the Suez canal, and in early 1944, she set sail with a crew of 47 members comprised of Canadian and Norwegian members. Soon after she steamed, somehow unscathed, through a convoy of German U-boats in the Atlantic, many of the ships around her were destroyed. However, this seeming good luck was to be only temporary, and the Viggo Hansteen beached herself on an uncharted reef shortly after. The next morning, however, she was mysteriously floating free again. Upon her return to New York soon after freeing herself from the reef, the ship was loaded with a cargo of ammunition and gliders, and a 28-year-old Canadian radio operator named Maude Elizabeth Steane joined the crew. She served on the ship for only a few months, then while the ship was unloading gliders in Piombini (or according to some reports, Naples), Italy, on August 14, 1944, Maude Elizabeth Steane was shot and killed by the ship’s Norwegian gunnery officer, who then turned the gun upon himself. Due to the horrific nature of the incident, the Military concealed the true cause of her death, and instead listed her as the first Canadian woman to die in active service, killed by enemy fire.
The rumour that the ship was jinxed began to circulate at this point, and the ghost of Maude Steane was held responsible. Then came the repeated, unexplainable breakdowns and mechanical faults, which saw the ship deemed a danger to the other vessels in any convoy she was part of. The Viggo Hansteen, at one point, was apparently in drydock more often than she was at sea. Crew turnover between missions was reportedly close to 100%, possibly due to numerous accounts of paranormal activity on board, and the belief held by crew members that the ship was cursed- a belief that seemed to be reinforced by the misfortune that touched a great many who had ventured on board the ship. An improbably large amount of crew members are said to have suffered injuries or illnesses, and others had family members die unexpectedly, or commit suicide.
NO PEACE IN PEACETIME
When peace was declared in 1945 the United States sold off its Liberty ships, and the Viggo Hansteen was sold twice more, with the first sale (to an S. Ugelstad from Oslo) occurring in 1946. In April 1952, she ran aground off the coast of New Zealand, suffering slight damage, and it was at that time that reports began circulating of sightings of a hulking figure dressed in oilskins, rubber boots, and a green seaman’s coat, being regularly seen on the deck. As is somewhat common with frequently sighted apparitions, the resident ghost was given a name- Henry.
After having run aground, the damaged ship was sold to owners from Costa Rica, who had her repaired, and then in 1953 she was again sold, this time to a Greek trading company, who acquired the ship at a bargain price. Once more, maritime superstition concerning changing a ship’s name was disregarded, and the ship was renamed the S.S. Alkimos, which was both the name of a Greek god, and their word for “strong”, and is the name she bears to this day. Under this name, the ship travelled the world’s oceans without incident for nearly a decade, until March 20th 1963 when, during a voyage from Jakarta to Bunbury, Western Australia, she hit Beagle Island Reef, near the city of Geraldton, north of Perth, Western Australia’s capital city. Having suffered heavy damage, the ship was towed to Fremantle (also in Western Australia), where she underwent repairs for two months.
After settlement of a dispute concerning payment for the repairs, the Alkimos left Fremantle under tow by the Hong Kong-based tugboat Pacific Reserves. Only a few hours out of port the tow line snapped in the rough waters, and the Alkimos was driven by the strong currents towards the shore. Although intact, the ship could not be refloated at the time, so she was beached north of Fremantle, filled with water to secure her in place, and left in the charge of an onboard caretaker, the first of a succession of people who were employed to stay on the ship to guard her. That first caretaker, an American exchange student named Wayne Morgan, later told staff at the hospital he was admitted to after his experiences on the ship, of the terrifying days and nights he had spent on board, often cowering fearfully in his cabin, too afraid to open the door; of witnessing an immense, misty, human-shaped figure stalking the decks; and of cabin doors being opened and closed unaided by human hand. He quit, terrified, and was succeeded by a married couple, who also quit after the pregnant wife fell while on board the ship, later giving birth to a stillborn baby.
SALVAGING SCARES
The Alkimos remained stranded north of Fremantle until early 1964 when, on February 28th, a tugboat from the Philippines, the Pacific Star, arrived and managed to refloat the ship. However, shortly after the return journey began, the captain of the tugboat was arrested and detained due to money he owed to a company in Manila. As the Alkimos was no longer legally allowed to be towed or offered aid by the Pacific Star, she was set at anchor between the reefs of Eglington rocks, roughly 4 kilometers south of Yanchep beach, where she was left abandoned. The Pacific Star was mysteriously set ablaze while in port awaiting legal proceedings, and the doomed Alkimos broke anchor 4 months later, drifting onto Eglington rocks, where she remains to this day.
Over the following years, a number of salvage crews and caretakers lived on board the Alkimos as they attempted to save what they could of the ship, but each of those attempts were in vain. The first salvage attempt was cut short after a fire somehow broke out on board and all work had to be ceased due to the ship having been more damaged than was first thought. Soon after, the Alkimos was sold by her owners for scrap. Numerous further attempts at salvage were made over time- twelve in total, but none were successful. In 1969, one crew of salvage workers were driven off the wreck after yet another mysterious fire, and it was becoming increasingly apparent, at least to those on board, that the ship was haunted. Workers reported having had their tools moved by unseen hands, and spoke also of tools vanishing, only to reappear later. Salvage crews would stay on board 24/7 while they worked on the Alkimos, and many would refuse to leave their cabins at night if alone, for fear of what they may encounter. Those that did muster the courage to leave often reported hearing footsteps following them. The sound of someone climbing one of the ladders to the deck above was also heard on one occasion, when all the crew members were accounted for. The sounds and smells of food being prepared in the galley were reported too, but these would cease when those brave enough to investigate them would open the galley door, only resuming after the door was closed again. These experiences terrified several men to the extent that they quit their jobs rather than face another night of fear on the ship.
Now permanently stranded, the Alkimos was bought and sold again and again. Each new owner experienced misfortune of some sort. Several declared bankruptcy, others became seriously ill. Once they sold the ship, however, they were apparently no longer plagued by bad luck. Years passed, and attempts to salvage the Alkimos stopped. Her partly-dismantled remains sat in several metres of water, gradually being claimed by the sea, and a source of great interest to the curious onlookers who would frequently gather on the beach...and the legend of the cursed, haunted ship only continued to grow.
HORRIBLE HENRY
Cray (crayfish) fishermen in the area soon began to report seeing an extremely tall man dressed in oilskins on the decks of the Alkimos, and at first it was thought he was a hermit who had taken residence on the ship, but when the ship was searched, no trace of human habitation could be found. Talk of a curse was further fueled by the discovery of a human skull, found to be that of champion long distance swimmer named Herbert Voigt, who vanished in March, 1969, while attempting to swim from Cottesloe to Rottnest island. An extensive air-sea search failing to locate him. According to some reports, his skull was found four years later lodged in the hull of the Alkimos, and although how this discovery was made has never been adequately explained, it only added further weight to the case for a curse. Curiously, Voigt’s planned route was to have taken him nowhere near the ship. A number of people who have been on the beach near the ship are said to have slipped and fallen, or have become ill after their visit. Horses ridden on the nearby beach would become nervous, some riders would claim, and would either bolt in terror, or even refuse to pass the ship.
JACK’S JINX?
The most impressive documentation of the strange occurrences on board the Alkimos comes from Jack Sue, a renowned diver in Perth, who was so affected by his experiences on board the Alkimos to such an extent that he wrote a book about them, titled “The Ghost of the Alkimos” (Wong Sue, J., 2001, Jack Sue WA Skindivers Publication). Originally having no belief whatsoever in the paranormal, Sue had his mind changed when, accompanied by a film crew and several fellow skindivers, he spent a hair-raising night aboard the now-notorious old ship, as host of the Australian television program “Down Under”. Soon after they set foot on board the ship, determined to prove that nothing paranormal was taking place, a series of strange and terrifying events occurred for which they had no explanation. Multiple people reported listening in sheer amazement as the sound of sneezes, accompanied by footsteps, echoed from an area below deck known by everyone to be empty. One skindiver felt the sensation of something large brushing past him, and then watched in abject terror as the figure of a towering man, clad in oilskins, passed through a solid steel bulkhead. Sue, while attempting at some point to sleep below deck, reported having heard what sounded like someone rolling over in an adjacent bunk- one which he knew was unoccupied at the time.
Several of those who spent the night aboard the Alkimos would later regret their adventures, as they too would suffer illnesses, misfortunes, and tragedies. Jack Sue collapsed the day after he set foot ashore, and was hospitalized for almost a year, with doctors unable to diagnose his illness; another man lost his business, and yet another lost his girlfriend in a plane crash. In 1997 Jack Sue, despite swearing decades earlier to never have anything to do with the Alkimos again, ventured to the beach with the clearest view of the wreck, and soon after this he suffered a severe stroke. In an interview published on the 18th of January 1998 in Sydney’s Herald Sun newspaper, Sue said of the ship whose malignant influence had touched so many unfortunate people:
“It’s probably just coincidence, but you never can tell with the Alkimos. I can’t help thinking of the number of people who’ve driven down that beach in four-wheel drives to photograph the wreck and had their cars break down, or their cameras fail, or their watches stop. That ship is bad luck”.
CURSED QUESTIONS!
Stories of “cursed” objects and locations can be found in countries and cultures worldwide. We’re left to consider the nature- the possibility (or lack thereof)- of the existence of such things as curses. Could it be that a “curse” is an accumulation over time of energetic “traces” left behind by successive events charged with emotional energy- akin to that which the well-known Place Memory/Stone Tape hypothesis championed by T.C. Lethbridge seems to suggest? Could a series of many negative events, such as those linked to the Devil’s Pool and the Alkimos, leave negative energetic “traces”, and could these then accumulate? Could this energy physically impact someone, and if so, how, and by what mechanism? Does a person have to believe in curses for one to work? Could events that are blamed on a curse all be simply unfortunate coincidences, and misperception of events which could have an alternate, non-paranormal explanation? Whatever the answer may be, and whatever the explanation for the events at both of the above locations, their stories of curses and ghosts remain intriguing to many today, and are perhaps two of the most fascinating in Australia’s paranormal history.
