Canberran Sarah Stewart on her Foreshore Ghosts and Tales tour, and the grisly history of Kingston foreshore and The Causeway

But when you think ghost stories, you don't necessarily think of newly developed suburbs such as Kingston.

Still, one Canberran is out to prove that even a suburb that looks new, can have some grisly tales to tell.

Sarah Stewart is the woman behind Foreshore Ghosts and Tales, a fortnightly tour around Kingston Foreshore and the Causeway, which shares historical stories from the area.

Stewart says that along the 90-minute tour, there are certain areas that give her an eerie feeling - such as Newcastle House on Eyre Street - and a spot that she has dubbed Canberra's own Bermuda Triangle near Norgrove Park, due to its own strange happenings.

However, it's the historical stories that have come out of the area that has really captivated people as for most, this side of Canberra was unknown.

"The ghost stories are just a bit of fun," she says.

"But the history of this era, I'm really passionate about people understanding what happened 100 years ago and making sure that we don't lose that when they're doing all this development work.

"Some terrible tragedies have gone on at the back of the railway station, and even hunting around to find the site of the old mortuary was a bit of a challenge, and Newcastle House just down the road - there are all sorts of legends and myths about that. So once I did some digging around and some people have written various histories of the area, it's fascinating some of the stories.

"I haven't got any stories about the headless ladies or anything like that, but some real tragic stories and some interesting things have happened around here."

Many of Stewart's stores involve labourers living at the camp at The Causeway in the 1920s and 1930s. In some instances, Stewart tells tragic stories of candles causing a fire within their tents.

Another story Stewart tells is of a young boy who climbed onto the roof of his family's cottage - "we would call them shacks, nowadays - just as the community was moving from living in tents to more substantial, but still temporary, living quarters.

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Because of the temporary nature of this community, the electric wiring was still uninsulated at the time. This meant that when the boy was on the roof, he was electrocuted.

It's a tragic story - that prompted a coroner's inquest which led to the wires being insulated in the area - but it's not the only sad tale to come out of that part of Canberra.

"When I started to delve into it a little bit more - The Canberra Times was of course a wonderful source of stories, even from the 1920s - and what I didn't realise about this area, particularly the causeway, was where the labourers came and lived when Canberra was first being built," Stewart says.

"These are stories [in the tour] of early settlers - there are no Aboriginal stories, that's not for me to tell. And the conditions they lived in and the conditions of the causeway, even up until relatively recently, there's some amazingly heartbreaking stories."

The next two Foreshore Ghosts and Tales tours will be on February 4 and 18, from 8pm. Find Foreshore Ghosts and Tales on Facebook or book at Trybooking.

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