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Tuesday 22 May 2018

Cathedral Hotel: Robbery

Cathedral Hotel: Robbery

The Cathedral Hotel at North Adelaide
Photo: © 2017 Karen Tiller

Originally known as the Scotch Thistle Hotel in 1850, the hotel was established on the north side of Kermode Street and John Street (now King William Road), and in 1881, was moved to its present location. In 1925, the hotel's name was changed to The Cathedral Hotel, and it has continued trading under this name for almost 100 years!

In 1918, several robberies had been occurred in and around North Adelaide. The police had no suspects, until a robbery occurred at the Scotch Thistle Hotel on October 4th.
 Mr Opie, husband of the hotels licensee, was on shift, and had closed the hotel. He followed his regular routine, locking all the doors and windows, except the one leading to the billiard room. He put the till into the store room, just off the dining room, turned out the lights, and locked the exit door on his way out at 2am.

 The following morning, Dorothy Walloschick, Mrs Ethel Opie’s sister, opened the hotel. At 6:30am, she found the storeroom door unlocked and all the contents of the room strewn about the place and the kitchen and billiard room doors had been left open by the offender.
 The burglar had smashed a window in the billiard room to gain entry, which he must’ve been very quiet in doing, as the Opie’s, asleep upstairs, did not wake to the sound.
Only a couple of months previously, a store on O’Connell street owned by Mr LeCornu had several items stolen. It was reported that the front door had been left unlocked, and the investigating Constable, Mr George Wyatt, had returned the key to Mr LeCornu and then filed a report for the missing goods.

 The goods included garden hoses, barbered wire, tools, implements and paint.
Missing from the Hotel were 10 bottles of Chateau Tanunda brandy, seven-pint bottles of Heather Bell whisky, three bottles of Walker's whisky, three bottles of Dewar's whiskey, two bottles of Burke's Irish whisky, eight-quart bottles of Henke's schnapps, eight bottles of Reynella family port, and twelve half flasks of-Heather Bell whisky, also missing, £22 in money.

Continued next week!

Researched and written by  Allen Tiller ©2018

Bibliography published in next edition.

Tuesday 15 May 2018

Haunted Art Gallery


Haunted Art Gallery

The Art Gallery of South Australia, North Terrace
Photo: © 2017 Allen Tiller

On May 13th, 2005, television show Stateline, on the ABC, broadcast an episode about an alleged haunting at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The story was reported by Patrick Emmett, the following is the transcript from the episode.
Adelaide Art Gallery

Patrick Emmett: It was early one morning while he was checking the halls of the Art Gallery before opening that Trent had his first close encounter of a different kind.

Trent: I was almost in the door. It was pitch black, there was no lights on and, all of the sudden, there was this – this great burst of white light that went across the room, and it actually made me fully step back, I went “Oh, crikey, what was that?!?”

Patrick Emmett: Shaken, he checked what security cameras had picked up and what he saw surprised him even more. They showed him entering the room, reacting, but no sign of the mysterious light.

Trent: Its quite regular that you will see a frightened patron who wants to leave a particular area or a frightened staff member who has seen a ghost.

Patrick Emmett: Trent’s story is one of many you will hear from those who patrol the Art Gallery on North Terrace. There are tales of mysterious old ladies, pictures that move on their own and unexplainable spine-tingling drafts.

Female Witness: The cold comes through the floor, starts onto your legs and it goes up, and the actual hairs on your neck stand up, every hair on your body just is standing on end. As I came to this doorway I saw a flash of someone.

Patrick Emmett: The encounters can happen at anytime of the day. Staff report seeing strange people but when they search for them, they’ve disappeared!

Female Witness: I saw a dark shape go past the gallery archway and I thought “There shouldn’t be anybody down here” So I sped up a little bit, expecting to see somebody, and I entered gallery 19 and there was no-one there, and then I saw the same shape go past the archway of gallery 18. So, I came down a little bit quicker expecting to see who was here and I checked this whole gallery and there was no-one there. I looked up through the staircase to see if anybody was running up the stairs and there was no-one here.

Male Witness: I saw a lady in a long white dress of old period costume, high neckline and a bustle at the back. She had her hair in a bun and she just walked straight across the archway and I though, “Well, it’s a hot day, what are you doing wearing a dress like this on a day like”- you know, I remember it was a Tuesday and it was really hot, so I walked through just to have a quick look and I looked to me left and the lady wasn’t there. I though “this is really strange, she must have snuck into the other gallery without me seeing her”.
I walked through into gallery 20 and the lady wasn’t there either and that’s when I started thinking” hang on, what have I seen here? “

Patrick Emmett: Many of the sightings are in what’s called the Morris Gallery. A mysterious old lady in a green dress often appears, sometimes sitting in a rocking chair. Staff rarely tell their tales to outsiders, so they were dumbfounded when approached by a recent visitor.

Female Witness: And he approached me, and he said, “There’s so much energy in this room, and there is a presence” and I said “Well, that’s interesting” I said, “Can you communicate with this presence?” and he said, “Yes I can”. So, I asked him to and he did, and he said to me “There’s a little lady that lives in the gallery and she loves it here, but she’s got one complaint and that is that the gallery, this particular gallery, is very cold”.

Patrick Emmett: While the old lady might be happy in the Morris Gallery not everyone is so relaxed about her residency. Some patrons have refused to enter the room because of its atmosphere, including two Japanese tourists.

Trent: They got down as far as gallery 20 and they started really getting scared and they said, “Can you please get us out of this gallery as quickly as possible” and we got them to the stairs just here and as soon as we got them to the stairs, they ran up the stairs.

Patrick Emmett: Another visitor has warned staff that this painting is evil and the source of the unrest. It’s not clear what is the background is, but one worker believes he’s seen this woman walking the halls.
 But there are strange happenings in other galleries as well. There was the green glow in a recent Egyptian exhibition, and books and chairs sliding around by themselves and then there was the day the two guards opened these rarely used doors that look into a car park.

Male Witness: The opened them and this particular guy, he said “Did you see?” and he didn’t even get that out and the other guy said “I never want to talk about this again. I saw nothing”. And apparently what they saw was just scrub and desert outside the doors when they opened them for a few seconds and then it went back to carpark.

Patrick Emmett: Some say the hauntings are because the gallery is built on an old grave site. Others say they’re because two people were once hanged inside the grounds, and there are the cynics that say they’re just the product of fertile imaginations, but the believers say they were once also cynics, but they can’t disbelieve the evidence of their own eyes.

Male Witness: I’m not into that sort of thing and, quite frankly, I didn’t believe anything like that existed, but you have to change your mind when you see things like this and they’re unexplained.

Female Witness: They’re here. They haven’t actually hurt anyone. They just live here as part of us. It’s part of the gallery, so we just don’t worry about them.
Transcript:
Haunted Art Gallery
Broadcast: 13-05-2005
Reporter: Patrick Emmett
Network: ABC
Program: Stateline.

Transcribed by Allen Tiller

Tuesday 8 May 2018

Rundle Street Gun Shop Siege – 1976

Rundle Street Gun Shop Siege – 1976


  Michael Hooke (sometimes known as Michael O'Connor) spent a few months in Royal Park Mental Hospital in Melbourne, firstly from December 10 to December 21, 1973, and then from January 9 until March 16, 1974.
 Later that year, he decided that for his life to improve he needed a change of scenery and moved to Adelaide, South Australia.

In 1976, just after 11am on May 10th, the 43-year-old Hooke entered the Hambly-Clarke & Son Gun Shop at the eastern end of Rundle Street. He picked up two shotguns from the counter and began to load them with his own ammunition.
Hooke fired a shot inside the shop and ordered everyone to leave. The staff and customers exited through the front door, with the shop owner, Mr Hambly-Clark escaping through a back entrance.

The police arrived, the first responder being an unarmed officer, Constable G.P. Marr, who tried to reason with Hooke, only to have two shots fired in his direction. The area was quickly cordoned off, and the Armed Offenders Apprehension Group (a predecessor the today’s STAR Force) arrived on the scene.


The Armed Offenders Apprehension Group fired tear gas into the shop to try and get Hooke to surrender. About 5 minutes later Hooke emerged from the shop brandishing two shotguns.
 He was ordered to drop the guns but refused. Instead, he fired off some random shots, and then levelled his guns at nearby police officers.

A loud crack rang out in Rundle Street. Hooke felt hot steal penetrate his lower chest. Across the street in a furniture store window, sat Det. Sr. Const. Ramsden, SAPOL’s best marksman, had just taken the order to shoot.
Police set upon the wounded Hooke, and he was taken away to the Royal Adelaide Hospital in an ambulance, only to die a short time later from a haemorrhage in his upper stomach caused by the gunshot wound.
No motive was ever put forward for the siege.


© 2018 Allen Tiller




Bibliography

1976 'MAN SHOT IN LONG SIEGE', The Canberra Times (ACT: 1926 - 1995), 11 May, p. 1. , viewed 05 Jan 2018, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article131816642

Robertson D, 2014, Adelaide has witnessed several violent incidents that stopped the city before Rodney Clavell’s siege, The Advertiser, viewed 5 Jan 2018, http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/adelaide-has-witnessed-several-violent-incidents-that-stopped-the-city-before-rodney-clavells-siege/news-story/2b7d526fadcc034e3b4a67938e4fff10

1976 'Police justified in firing. the coroner says', The Canberra Times (ACT: 1926 - 1995), 28 July, p. 12. , viewed 06 Jan 2018, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article110819250


Sadler, R. K. (Rex Kevin) & Hayllar, T. A. S. (Thomas Albert S.) & Powell, C. J. (Clifford J.) 1990, Enjoying English. Book 3, Macmillan, South Melbourne

Tuesday 1 May 2018

Haunted Adelaide: Adelaide Oval Scoreboard



Haunted Adelaide:  Adelaide Oval Scoreboard


There have long been rumours that the old Adelaide Oval Scoreboard is haunted but no-one can identify the mysterious apparition alleged to have been witnessed in the old building.
 The first-hand witness testimony of people that claim to have experienced this haunting is exceptionally hard to come by with only a handful of anecdotes about sightings of this mysterious spirit surfacing in the last 100 years.
 Could it be instead, that the haunting of the Old Scoreboard is an urban legend, made up to rationalise a supporter’s feelings as to why their team is losing or lost the game?

“It must’ve been the ghost in the scoreboard that got the scores wrong!”

The identity of the alleged ghost, whether real or urban legend, remains a mystery…

History:
The first scoreboard at the Adelaide Oval was a manually operated, ‘hook’ style scoreboard used from 1879 until 1885 after which a newer scoreboard was installed. This was followed by another upgrade in 1898.
Designed by Kenneth Milne, The Adelaide Oval Scoreboard began usage in 1911, with a clock added in 1913, and later in 1930, a wind vane added to complete its look.
The Adelaide Oval has been described as “one of the most picturesque Test Cricket grounds in Australia, if not the world.”
The oval was established in 1871 after the formation of the South Australian Cricket Association. The first Australian Rules Football game took place on the oval in 1877, between the Adelaide Football Club and the Bankers (football club) as part of the South Australian Football Association, later to be known as the SANFL.

researched and written by Allen Tiller © 2016.
www.allentiller.com.au
www.eidolonparanormal.com.au

Bibliography: 

"Adelaide Oval" (Updated 10/11/2010) Austadiums.com, 10 November 2010. Retrieved 19 May 2014


http://adelaidepedia.com.au/wiki/Adelaide_Oval_Scoreboard