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

By Bree Harding

Oct 25, 2024

Joel ‘Bluey’ Pearce was a fantastically animated tour guide, who even had a personal story of a criminal ancestor who committed heinous crimes. Photo by Bree Harding

By day, the Port of Echuca is a lovely, quaint little tourist precinct, almost like a movie set.

Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content

By night, it can be so eerie that movie’s genre could easily be horror.

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.

Are you game to explore the historic port after dark? Photo by Bree Harding

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.

In full character and spookily illuminated by lantern light, our tour guide, Bluey, spoke a wealth of historical knowledge. Photo by Bree Harding

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.

Usually inaccessible by night, guests on this tour can see the Echuca Wharf in the dark and hear tales of its past. Photo by Bree Harding

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.

Echuca’s historic area looks like a quaint and lovely movie set in the daylight, in stark contrast to the eerie vibe it casts by night. Photo by Bree Harding

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.

The lights were low and the shadows were long. If it weren’t for the safety of a small group around me, I’m not sure if I would’ve walked this road at night. Photo by Bree Harding

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?

Though still on the Victorian side of the Murray River, we were actually in NSW at this point. Do the tour, you’ll find out why. Photo by Bree Harding

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.

Guests make their way out from underneath a pub via an escape tunnel built more than a century ago by drunken criminals. Photo by Bree Harding

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.