Bundoora Homestead staff have investigated the ghosts that are said to haunt it. The homestead, built in 1900, is now an arts centre but had previous lives as a horse stud, convalescent farm and mental repatriation hospital. It used to reside in the former Shire of Whttlesea but is now located in the corner of the Shire of Darebin and City of Banyule. Homestead director Jacky Healy says the ghosts that haunt the homestead and Bundoora Park are a wonderful connection with the home’s past.
“All heritage houses of integrity have ghosts,” she jokes.
The homestead has two ghosts. The “human” one, George, was a World War I veteran and a patient at the convalescent farm in the 1920s.
Although she has never seen George, Healy says she has heard stories that defy explanation, including accounts of nurses at the Mental Repatriation hospital seeing all the doors in the upstairs wing closing simultaneously.
A builder at the homestead who was helping to renovate a few years ago also had what he believed was an encounter when the electric kettle turned on by itself.
Ghost hunter Sinton says there’s also a ghost horse at Bundoora Park, previously the grounds of the homestead. Apparently the ghost of a horse named Lurline, the stablemate of champion thoroughbred Wallace, still wanders the park.
Lurline was accidentally shot dead by the stray bullet of a rabbit hunter.
Sinton and Healy both say people sometimes hear the ghost hooves of Lurline, who is said to visit the graveside of her beloved Wallace.
