With impeccably neat, concentric streets and an aura of calm, Canberra seems like a byword for boredom. But the Australian capital is as murky and mysterious as the depths of Lake Burley Griffin at its heart.
Well, it appears mysterious when seen through the eyes of Elvira: a 1967 Cadillac hearse commandeered for eternity by the Sydney-based firm Destiny Tours. The hearse transports people on a 90-minute drive-by tour of the city's dark side, taking in 20 sinister sites.
'There's a bit of everything: some ghosts, some history, some unique oddball-type stuff,' says the 'crypto-naturalist' guide, Tim the Yowie Man, whose name will be forever linked to his quest for a yeti-like creature said to inhabit Australia.
In contrast, driver Allan Levinson is a soft-spoken character who calls himself the Hearse Whisperer in a nod to the touchy-feely equine movie. But Levinson enjoys the glamour: the sight of Elvira turns heads, he says. In fact, he adds, 'They twist right off.' Maybe they should, because the six-metre-long vehicle could be haunted. Some clients sense more than the statutory 10 people inside. The extra passenger, who sits behind the driver, is apparently an old man called Tom, who might have been a chauffeur during Elvira's Californian youth.
The haunted hearse stops at the original seat of power known as Old Parliament House (right). Some security guards refuse to work there, troubled by the sound of MPs debating long after hours and uncanny events from wandering trolleys to flying walkie-talkies.
In the mid-1990s, Tim and a ghostbusting team investigated the building and their electromagnetic field detector supposedly rose about half a metre above the table it lay on. Tim says the culprit may have been the clerk of the house, who died from a heart attack in the building not long after it opened in 1927.
Another official remembered on the tour is Ben Chifley. The working-class hero, prime minister of Australia from 1945 to 1949, lived in the nearby Hotel Kurrajong, then a bed-and-breakfast. Since his death at the Kurrajong in 1951, Chifley has been seen gazing from his room towards Old Parliament House; perhaps he still hankers after another term.
