Some people just don’t learn from horror movies…..

Just a quick bit of Australian history with a lovely sting in the tail for everyone.

Most ships take a hard left when they enter Sydney Harbour, to make their way through the massive, wending waterway that Govenor Phillip swore 200 years ago could hold ‘a thousand ships of the line’. But it wasn’t always this way.

For the first century of colonial rule, ships with human cargo of all stripes swung to starboard when they breached the heads. Anchor was weighed and crew and passengers would be boarded for inspection. Those who were thought sick, or in some cases simply morally questionable, were sent to the North Head Quarantine Station.

The Quarantine Station lurches down the hill, buildings scattered as if thrown like a handful of dice. There are tours a few nights a week, you get given a torch and the batteries and checked before you leave. The staff all have great stories that they laugh about, but few of them wander the grounds alone at night. Thousands, literally thousands of people died at North Head, some wracked with the pain of disease, others of wounds from voyages that were septic when the inspectors came calling. Still others from venereal diseases. Sailors and settlers from every corner of the globe. Dead.

Hands-down, this place has come first in every single Australian ‘most haunted’ list ever written.

And now they’re planning to tear it down. Primo real estate, hell has harbour views and all that. The local council has passed the lease over to a building consortium. The area that was set aside for VD-wracked sailors is going to be an extension of the Police Training College. And guess what’s planned for the main area, including the massive infirmary?

That’s right. A luxury hotel.

Thanks for reading. I thought this was just too good to not share. And it’s all true!