The Young and The Restless | Grisly tales told by lantern light

When the sun is shining, the unsealed laneways and wooden boardwalks are a bustling hive of travellers, whose faces are plastered in carefree holiday-mode smiles.

When the moon comes out, it’s deserted.

But last Wednesday night a small group gathered, as they do every Wednesday and Saturday night, on the esplanade, awaiting Joel “Bluey” Pearce to give them access to the usually locked Port’s wharf after dark, while theatrically delivering some of the most interesting history lessons you’ll hear this side of the Murray.

I was one of the 15 or so ‘tourists’ in the hoard, following this man with blind trust into back doors of historic pubs after closing time, through gates he unlocked to let us in and then locked again behind us, down beneath the wharf where we could hear nothing but the water lapping at the mud on the riverbank’s waterline and his, at times, unsettling voice that paused for suspense and fearful effect during perfectly timed intervals.

I listened to the historian’s stories of accidental deaths, violent murders, suspected murders with no determined causes of death, big burly drunken dock workers stabbing each other, tall suited ghosts emerging from the murky waters of Australia’s longest river – right where I stood, he said.

So I took a couple of less-than-subtle steps to the side.

As we wandered, the lanterns we held lighting our path between historic buildings, dirt beneath us kicking up a dusty scent with each step, deep enough in an old pub’s cellar for the air to be musty, exiting through an original escape tunnel once traversed by drunken criminals evading police, I put my trust in Bluey.

I mean, why wouldn’t I? He was the Port’s assigned tour guide.

But he dropped a bombshell story at the end and told it in such a way that the tour might’ve been even creepier if he’d treated us to it at the start.

He is a direct descendant of someone who once was quite a notorious criminal.

Not a petty thief who found themselves on a scurvy-filled ship out here for simply stealing a handkerchief.

No.

His ancestor was a bonafide psychopath, found guilty of monstrously sickening crimes before being killed multiple ways by many men; I suspect to make sure there was no chance he was coming back.

Or, because the nature of his crimes may have struck suspicion into their superstitious minds that something otherworldly was at play.

I won’t spoil it for anyone looking to go over and see the historic port by lantern light, because I’m sure it’s one of the stories Bluey is morbidly proud to tell on every tour, given his own close connection.

You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family, so they say.

If a rello goes postal, you might disown them, but you’ve got a hell of a juicy story to tell everyone at parties forever afterwards, right?

Aside from the grisly tales of death and murder and the spooky ones about ghosts, Bluey painted detailed pictures of what life was like back in the days of paddlesteamers and river trade.

For example, we discovered there were once 78 pubs in Echuca.

This is a mind-blowing fact on its own, but even more so when you learn the population was only 5000.

Then you hear about the only classified brothel in Victoria in 1878 which was down there at the Port, where a sarsaparilla-making madam had tried to play it off as a piano bar for a while before an interesting court trial resulted in the establishment being allowed to continue its formerly illegal operations, legally.

I’ve been to Echuca more times than I can remember and visited the Port over and again.

But, after dark, after hours, after an experience with Bluey, your imagination will conjure visuals very different to the pictures of prosperity and success, of grand paddlesteamers on dominant rivers, breaking records for the most wool bales carried, that you’ve come to know.

It will go down a dark and dread-filled path of wild western mayhem.

Sometimes the naughty is so deliciously nice; usually when it’s become ancient history.

Some things don’t get left in the past though.

Like those waterlogged suit-wearing ghosts that join us still now, on the muddy banks of the Victorian border.