You can go to Ginninderra to see dinosaurs, but all of them are motionless.
The same cannot be said for the ghostly spirits, that are seen there on a regular basis.
After the dinosaurs came the Aborigines, who ground grooves with axes into the outcrops of
indigenous rock adjacent to Ginninderra creek, several hundred years, or perhaps several thousand,
before European settlement.
The Europeans established several sheep stations in the area, and one was called Ginninderra
from the Aboriginal word for the creek, translated as: "sparkling with rays of light".
On the fringes of the capital of Australia, Canberra, the suburbs sprawl here now.
Dividing them in twain is the road known as Ginninderra drive, of which one short kilometer
just happens to be haunted.
If you are driving alone along that small portion of road that parallels the creek,
the wee hours of the morning is the best time to experience an apparition.
Through the mist one might see a white figure walking on the roadside.
She wears a flowing, diaphanous dress,
and she seems to be veering in the wrong direction
as if she is following a different road, which no longer exists.
Or you may see her male counterpart, dressed in a dark overcoat and wearing an old hat,
of a style which went out of fashion 125 years ago. Whether you see the female or the man,
the result is the same, because their crooked path will lead them in front of your moving
car.
The car may pass right over the figure, or it may be a near miss, yet when you look in
your rear vision mirror, the spirit will have completely vanished.
Multiple sightings have been reported, of a pair of legs walking the road,
without a body! At first you may think the fog is obscuring the upper torso, but as you get closer,
only the lower torso, can be seen, and of course, the animated legs.
All settlement here naturally straddles the creek. But it was not until 1926, that
the resources were found to build a bridge across it. Prior to the bridge, all traffic crossed
the creek by means of a ford. Fording was the practice of walking, or driving a carriage,
or driving sheep, across the water, at one location, which was determined to be the most shallow.
This was safe at most times of year, but when the Ginninderra creek swells in the spring,
fording it became a necessity which was also a mortal risk, and this is how we know some
of the candidates, who may well be the ghosts of Ginninderra.
In the late 1870's a young man with very few years of experience attempted to ford the
creek with a herd of sheep, just as the flood waters were rising. The young drover lost
his footing on the slippery bank, and lost consciousness when his head hit a rock.
The next day his lifeless form was found by a search party of station hands and sheep shearers,
half a klick downstream where he was tangled, and half buried in a pile of woody debris.
The more experienced have also fallen. After crossing the creek without incident
for more than 20 years, in 1892 on a stormy night, Edward Crace was being driven in a coach across
the water when his driver lost control. Mr. Crace was a pioneer who owned 30 thousand
acres of land, where today the suburbs lay. Farm hands eventually found the bodies of
the two men, and the body of the horse that was harnessed to the buggy.
The coachman remains nameless to this day.
One man successfully ran across the creek in 1903, but as he reached the other side
he was shot in the back by the constable who was chasing him, because he was identified,
mistakenly, as a wrongdoer.
The very site where the creek once was crossed is where the haunted kilometer stretches today.
"I have seen some of the experiments, shown in this film, actually carried out."