Loremen Podcast - S5 Ep1: Loremen S5Ep1 - Spiritualism Down Under with Bec Hill - Part 1

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

James and Alasdair are joined by the hilarious (and crafty) comedian Bec Hill. Series 5 (series 5) begins with tales of Australian apparitions, antipodean seances and the scariest monster of all... Scotsmen. With cameos from Arthur Conan Doyle, the pseudonymous Demonax and the Wizard Bombardier of Ballarat. And this is only part 1! Join us next week for the levitating Mrs Guppy, the unsettlingly buxom Katie King and (inevitably) the scores. Check out Bec's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/BecHillComedian And her podcast A Problem Squared: https://aproblemsquared.libsyn.com And join... us... at the Cheerful Earful Podcast Festival - 31st October https://www.designmynight.com/london/pubs/balham/the-bedford/cheerful-earful-podcast-festival-day-1 LoreBoys nether say die! Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 @loremenpod youtube.com/loremenpodcast www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shakeshaft. And James, it's Series 5! I know! legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore i'm alistair beckett king and i'm james shakeshaft and james it's series five i know i think we need a record scratch here to recap we've come so far first series back in 1986 i think it was was only eight episodes long the second series was 13 episodes long those were all put out on cassettes wood i think it was wood in the original series wooden cassettes series three bit of a curveball 107 episodes on laserdisc what global events were happening there i don't know and now we've come to the

end of series four with a nice round 57 episodes just to irritate people and now it's uh now it's series five which might just be one episode long let's just annoy people let's make it at least two okay well what a two it's gonna be we've got we're opening with a two-parter we're opening with a bang and that bang comes from tnt in an australian gold mine and that gold mine will feature in the story, but he's also, figuratively, the comedian Beck Hill. She is brilliant. She's a gold mine of jokes and niceness.

So, on record scratch, we can go back into the episode. So here is Deputy Lawperson Beck Hill and the Spiritualists Down Under. James Shakespeare, hello there. Hello, Alistair Beckett-King. The listener will want me to ask you, how are your ears? They're very good, thank you very much.

Are they okay now? They've moved past the blocked phase. They're currently in the slightly itchy phase. Oh. And then at some point, I'll just sort of hear a weird noise and a massive bit of earwax will have fallen out of my ear whoa oh what fallen out are you getting q-tips in there which you should not do um officially no well james i am a doctor and i say that you should do that because it feels really nice what on earth other reason do they have to exist in such numbers?

What are they? Originally, I think they were cocktail sticks. The first one was a cocktail stick with a bit of cotton. So what's good about that is it's like nice, nice, nice rub. Rub too much. Punishment is coming in the form of a pointy end of a cocktail stick. Right. Sorry.

I thought you're saying they were like they were an accoutrement for a cocktail. They were used of a cocktail stick right sorry i thought you're saying they were like they were an accoutrement for a cocktail they were used like a cocktail stick like you'd have them in a 70s party yes oh that's worse than when wax came out of your ear oh but it's like the it's like the you know the the sort of the um the trope of finding a very long hair in the middle of your forehead it's like well that must have grown it's how did this big bit of wax get so close to the edge of my ear to fall out by itself how long has it been there what's it been doing what's it seen what does it know i mean this is a spin-off podcast i think yes this is like a long form eight episode let's answer those questions someone knows

they better uh james i'm horrified to tell you that all of that stuff that you just said was yeah it's been completely private and no actually no allow me to spring this on you i've been recording the whole time and not just that we've got a guest deputy law person sitting right here oh yes listening into what i frankly just disgusting account of your own inner ear it was pretty grim to be honest sitting right here. Oh, yes. Listening into, frankly, disgusting account of your own inner ear. It was pretty grim, to be honest. It's Beck Hill, the comedian.

Hello, Beck. Hello, Beck. Can I just apologise for James? Can I just apologise for James? No, not at all. It took all of my effort not to make some sort of noise just then because, oh, oh boy, do I love stories of people getting stuff out of their ears.

I do. That is why I invited you on the podcast. I knew you would enjoy that. And thank you for coming. End of the show. Yeah. The end. The end.

So, Beck, you're not just a creepy oddball who likes things being squeezed out of people. You're a prolific comedian. I think listeners might recognize you from your paper puppetry videos that have gone viral numerous times. Yes, probably. The Je Ne Regrette Rien one. Is that the big one? Is that the most famous one? Yeah, that was for a long time probably the most shared one.

And now a lot of the Misheard Lyrics ones tend to do the rounds a lot, especially on the Facebook. They're very big on Facebook. And people on Facebook really like it if I reshare them. Like I've reshared them every now and then and I'll get a huge influx of fans and you'd think there'd be loads of people going, I've already seen this. And a lot of the comments are just people going, I love when this comes up on my timeline.

And I'm like, great, because I'm going to keep reposting them because I haven't done anything new for ages. Well, I think the first time I saw you doing that, it's rare. Obviously, every time I hear someone doing a good joke, I'm angry that I didn't think of it. But I saw that and I was like, oh, I wish I had invented that entire thing. Because I was consumed with envy, which is obviously the way several other people on the Internet felt, because they have just stolen it from you and done it. It's such a good idea.

Other people have gone, I'll have that. Yeah, well, I mean, I've seen a lot of people do misheard lyrics. I don't own that. I didn't invent misheard lyrics. In fact, I've got a genuine lecture that I do at an evening of unnecessary detail sometimes, which is about the psychology of misheard lyrics and the history of it. But the paper stuff is, yeah yeah that's very much stuff that i

self-taught and came up with and occasionally people have have tried to to do it themselves um and best of luck to them and those people are all dead now by paper cuts as well weirdly yeah yeah thousands of them well no clues here and you've also um as a as a book writer i can say this you are also an uh an author you've written a series of horror books for children called horror heights now why would you why would you try and scare children what a horrible thing to do why would you do? I think kids love being scared. And I like that was, I mean, that's what I liked to read when I was that age. So I think I just never grew out of it.

Did you have point horror when you were, did you have that in Australia? Bex Australian, by the way, listener. We did. I think we did. I was a goosebumps kid. Goosebumps. Yeah. Wait a minute.

You're in the perfect Venn diagram. Do you know the books of paul jennings mate paul jennings gave me a quote on my first book no way oh my god and for the listeners who aren't sure who we're talking about um paul jennings uh was is probably better known in the uk as the creator and writer around the twist yeah all based on his short stories now my gasp is a genuine gasp so i didn't know him by name of course of course we all love around the twist who's your favorite bronson it's impossible to decide how scary is the scarecrow quite very scary oh i mean yeah there was i i was once at a party when I was living back in Melbourne

and there was a woman there who I immediately was like, hey, I haven't seen you in ages. And she was like, oh, and then we were chatting for a while. You know when you like see someone that you know and you're like, I don't remember your name, but I know that we know each other. And so you just kind of try to suss it out. Be like, what have you been up to the last few years or whatever what have you been up to and

what is your name yeah and after a while it dawned on me that we don't know each other she was linda in series uh series three no series two around the twist oh and uh and as soon as i realized i was like you're in too deep back oh no you have to go with that but i still i didn't want to be like oh i've just realized we don't know each other because she was doing that i was so convincing in the like what have you been up to that i think she was a bit like yeah we must have met at some point and so we just had the cast has rotated so many times you could probably have pretended to be in one of the seasons yeah right you could probably just work your way and i was in that one with the scary thing i was also one of the lindas i was the ice i was the ice maiden i was the ice sculpture that he kisses and gets his lips stuck to such a good series so good but beck as an author you join

the pantheon of uh friends of the show because we have a bunch of friends of the show who are people who've written books some of whom are no longer with us it does be clear they all died before we started recording the podcast it's not like everyone we mentioned on the podcast dies james don't imply that yeah we were we were not implicated paper cuts again one of our friends of the show is a folklorist um called christina hole her name has spawned the exclamation christ in a hole it's christina hole whereas you're the antithesis as you are be chill is beck hill yeah that's that is the opposite of christ in a hole christ in a hole yeah and be chill we are really getting a good library

of exclamations so i i like to go down under or as aust call it, here, and tell you a Victorian story in two senses. Now, we do loads of Victorian tales on this, but this is double Victorian because it takes place in the part of Australia that is called Victoria, which is really confusing to me. The Victorian is temporal and geographic. And a cake. And pertains to cake.

It's got so many meanings. I want to take you to the Australian city of Bendigo, Victoria. Before I tell you my tale of spiritualism and mediumship, I want to throw to Beck for a second, because your new book, I think, is about a ghost showing up in photographs. Is that right? Yes, yeah.

It starts showing up on a phone screen. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, I forget that these days with you kids, Beck, you and the Gen Zers are all taking photos on your phones these days. That's right. That's all that. I got a manual camera for Christmas because I asked for it and I was testing it out and my i took a photo of the

family and then my niece put a hand out and said can i see it and i passed her the camera and she looked at it she's like how do i see the photo and i was like you wait about six months when i've remembered to use up all the film but no ghosts no ghosts appearing in any of those pictures uh no no i mean they're very blurry because it's been a long time since i've needed to use a manual camera and it turns out that i got one of the settings wrong so i started looking into australian spiritualism and australian spirit photography but before i dive literally into a hole because that hole is a gold mine again literally a gold mine not not a narrative i'm not being figurative before i do that beck you threw me a curveball by asking if i had heard

about ghost hoaxing yeah the victorian practice of ghost hoaxing and my answer was a resounding no please tell me about that well also how much does ghost hoaxing sound like a hashtag TikTok trend? Yeah, it sounds a lot more like that than something that started in the late 1860s and into the early 1600s. It does sound, it's quite a lot like when everyone was dressing up as clowns for a bit just to freak people out. It's like the Victorian version of that. It so is, though. So this was like quite big again around um bendigo and

other areas of victoria there was like an excerpt from the bendigo advertiser from 1903 that says another ghost is appearing in ballarat in the neighborhood of the woolen mills a figure clad in flowing white robes has during the the past few evenings, entered the yards of several residents in the locality to the great alarm of women and children. It's kind of understood that these weren't actual ghosts. I like that. Good Aussie blokes not scared. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, just the women and children. The blokes were fine. Yeah, just the women and children. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Let's just make that clear. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

They're all, oh, struth. There's another ghost. What I love about it is, so it's very clear that no one really seemed to believe that these are actual ghosts. Everyone seems to understand that these are people who would dress up at night and then behave strangely and be like, I'm a ghost. and then it was just an excuse for them to to play up really it's basically it's like camden but at night i would never go to camden at night the quote that i read i think this comes from a ballarat historian called david waldron um it was about a guy called the wizard bombardier in ballarat who dressed like a wizard with a sugar loaf hat which is a tall hat with a cone on top he'd throw things and yell and holler at

people in his white wizard outfit before making his escape yeah what a what a guy there was a there was another one called herbert patrick mclennan who referred to himself as the ghost oh yeah and wore a white bodysuit, knee-high rubber boots. Nice. What do you guys call them? Wellington? Wellington's. Sounds like wellies, yeah.

A long white frock coat, a white slouch hat with a feather and a mask. You know how ghosts wear masks. And so he took to the rooftops of Ballarat exposing himself and assaulting women. Oh, no. So, yeah, sorry, this is Ballarat, exposing himself and assaulting women. Oh, no. So, yeah, sorry, this is Ballarat, not Bendigo, but it was reported by the Bendigo advertiser. And it reached a point where the Ballarat City Council offered a reward of five pounds for the capture of a ghost

in Ballarat City Centre, which was quite a lot of money. Apparently, he was eventually caught and jailed for a year and it was discovered that he was a well-respected senior clerk. Not for long. This is the intersection between ghosts and perverts. Is it fair to say? You don't get many ghost perverts, do you? Like ghost flashers.

There's that scene in Ghostbusters. And you do often hear of people marrying ghosts. And that must have, you know, maybe not necessarily perverse, but there must have been some sort of shenanigans. That's sort of like saying flashes, like actual alive real life flashes are the same as people who marry people. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

Yeah. It's not a question of degree, is it? It's a question of type. It's a different type of thing. Marriage isn't just very consistent rhythmic flashing for you but you tend to you don't marry someone who hangs around in your house all the time kind of thing because it's not i think these like you can't marry a ghost that haunts someone else's house you have to marry a ghost i would guess that haunts your house i house, you have to marry a ghost, I would guess, that haunts your house.

I think I'm getting too deep into this. I just feel like, James, the angle you've taken here, which is marrying ghosts is normal and cool, actually. I just don't think we're going with it. No, no, fair enough. Fair enough. That's how you get them to move in.

I remain unbesuaded. You get them to move in first and then you marry them. Make sure it's working out. There's a lovely quote from Mr. Waldron about how one of the ghosts ended up, I'm going to quote him again, apologies for the Australian accent. We're known on this podcast for our excellent Australian accents.

I apologise for mine as well. Thank you. At one point, it ended in vigilante youths using shotguns to try and shoot at him. And then he returned fire and a bystander. And a bystander. I don't know how to say that in an australian accent a bystander got injured yeah you got it and i think this is i love there's just something classically australian about the next bit which led to a bit of a rethink

i love that we're not going to abandon trying to shoot the ghost but we are going to have a bit of a rethink the ghost tried to shoot back so maybe we're doing this wrong the ghost also has a gun so he's got a ghost gun but the kind of the kind of ghosts we're going to talk about um in bendigo are are weirdly quite corporeal we're talking about manifestations what i don't think i realized about spiritualism was you visualize like modern seances where people sit around and then um maybe the medium talks in different accents. But at this time, in like the 1870s, when spiritualism was new, it was about producing like spirits

that appeared in front of your very eyes and did stuff. I'd like to start by introducing you to none other than Sir, Sir to you, James, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Oh. The famous spiritualist and creator of Sherlock Holmes. Yes.

It's so famous, I don't think you need to say that. That's annoying to have pointed that out. But there might be one person out there who's like, why does that name sound familiar? Who is Arthur Conan Doyle?

And you've just done them a solid. Sherlock Holmes' dad. He's Sherlock Holmes' daddy. I'd like to read this. Now, he was Scottish, so I'm going to do a Scottish accent. Apologies. This is like watching a medium do a Scottish accent.

I was going to say. In fact, I'm going to channel Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Are you there, Arthur? And this is quite a long passage, but he is also quite a good writer, so I feel like it's justified. Fair enough. He went to Australia. It's Wednesday the 13th, the spookiest day of the year.

October 1920. Arthur Conan Doyle is on tour in Australia doing talks about spiritualism. And he goes to Bendigo, which is a big mining town, big gold mining town by that time. And he gives his talk. And then afterwards, they give him a tour of the mine. And this is what he has to say. I had a full haul at Bendigo, and it was packed, I am told, by real old time miners. For, of course, Bendigo is still at the centre of the gold mining industry.

On the morning after my lecture, I found myself half a mile nearer to dear old England. A phrase that I don't think any Scottish person has ever said. For I descended the Unity mine and they say that the workings extend to that depth. Perhaps I was not at the lowest level, but it certainly was a long journey in the cage. It was a weird experience, that peep into the profound depths of the Great Gold Mine. We were rattled down in pitch darkness until we came to a stop at the end of a long passage, dimly lit by an occasional guttering candle carrying our own candles and clad in miners costume we crept along with bent heads until we came suddenly out into a huge circular

circular hall can't say it which might have purple burglar alarm which might have sprung from dore's imagination the place was draped with heavy black shadows, but every here and there was a dim light. Each shadow showed where a man was squatting toad-like, a heap of broken debris in front of him, turning it over and throwing aside the pieces with clear traces of gold. It was strange indeed to see these squatting figures deep in the bowels of the earth, their candles shining upon their earnest faces and piercing eyes, and to reflect that they were striving, that the great exchanges of London and New York might be able to balance with Boolean their output of paper. This dim troglodyte industry was, in truth, the centre and mainspring of all industries without which trade would stop. Stop. Stop? Dunno. We now know that the old alchemists were perfectly right

and that one metal may change into another. Is it possible that under some conditions, a mineral may change into a metal? Why should quartz always be the matrix? Some geological Darwin will come along someday and we shall get a great awakening, for at present we are only disguising our own ignorance in this department of knowledge.

So, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the kind of guy who did not accept the mainstream narratives about quartz. Let us be thankful once again, I think he's a very good writer, but let us be thankful that he didn't have Twitter in those days for his weird opinions about things. Because we all know that gold comes from alchemy oh yeah it comes from alchemy but not quartz that's too much no quartz is the matrix quartz is the matrix i'm always saying it get it on a t-shirt guys

bendigo was a mining town gold was found there i think in 1851 1851, and it wasn't really a town before that. And some say that the seams of gold, the veins of gold running through the quartz, gave it great spiritual resonance and made it the perfect site for Antipodean mediumship. So the main character of my story is a colonist named william dixon campbell denovan denovan disappointingly not donovan i think and i you know james i have searched for a minogue or a kylie yeah in this story and then they were not available but denovan is the best i can do you and i think we can agree that's the most disappointing part of a colonist this this guy gets if you think he sounds bad now wait till i give you some information about him because he gets worse uh he was a gold miner uh and a politician in

you mean like someone who mines gold not like a a child made a golden child yes a little gold boy no he was. Yes, a little gold boy. No, he was the opposite of a little gold boy. He was a Scottish man. And he came to Australia in the 1850s and came to Bendigo in 1852, I think. He wrote a 698-page book called The Evidences of Spiritualism, which was, according to all the reviews I can find long, every, every account of it. It's just like, and he wrote a 700 page book, you know,

there's no sort of, we read it by the way. It's just like, this is a long, long book. He was just, he was nicknamed Bishop Denovan because he was a great speaker. It says WDC is one of those speakers who write their speeches and commit them to memory, a class the reporters have great affection for. He speaks as befits so great an oracle,

slowly, and as if gold dropped out of his mouth. He is also a broker and a spiritualist, so the reader can see how many parts he performs. He has done well in mining.

Whether the spirits give him the tip, I know not. And in those days, giving him the tip obviously meant something different. So just... Yeah, he should marry those spirits. Yeah, that's the only respectable thing to do.

That was Scripopolis by Demonaxe. What? Which, yeah, unfortunately, a nom de plume of Donald Cameron. Just a quite rubbish name. These sound like albums that I didn't buy in the 90s. Scripopolips by Demon Paps. Yeah, yeah. It's an account of a week in Sandhurst,

which is what Bendigo used to be called. I have no idea why it's called Scripopolis. Or indeed why he's writing as Demonax. But, you know. As in like the weapon axe? Or axe? Demonax. It's like the word demon

followed by the American spelling of axe with no E. And it's the name of a philosopher, I think, from the old days, but not one of the big ones that we've heard of. You're Plato's, you're Aristotle's. Demon Axe is he's not even Democritus, let's be honest. Did he spend more time with his garage band

that was self-named Demon Axe? They would be legendary. Yeah. No, we won't turn it down, Mum. As quoted in the Mount Alexander Mail, here's an account of Donovan's first seance with the medium, Mr George Spriggs.

The wonderful gentleman who produces these manifestations in the colony at present is named George Spriggs, and we are bound to say for him that he does not make mediumship a business, and earns his livelihood by his own honest manual toil and takes neither fee nor reward. Whether the manifestations are genuine or not, and we pronounce no opinion on them one way or the other, he gets nothing by them. And what would happen with mediums is they'd usually be placed inside a cabinet, but this being Australia, I get the impression they didn't have any cabinets.

The town was quite new at the time. I don't know what you're talking about. Right, so a cabinet, think of a small wardrobe. You must have seen some in England at some point. Oh, you mean a wardrobe. A wardrobe. Presumably due to a confusion around a ward out they used a curtain drawn across a doorway as their cabinet and the medium would be placed

behind the impenetrable curtain and then from behind the curtain things would emerge the idea of putting a medium in a cabinet it does sound like you're chucking them under the sink doesn't it like they're just gonna squat in the cabinet yeah yeah or like one of those glass ones that you put little curios in oh yeah a little wade whimsy that's the name of a type of little twee animal porcelain animal wade whimsy i thought that was the name of a famous medium or something yeah wade whimsy hi i'm the marvel universe so there's an account here now see you know james i like i'm trying to bring you as many ghosts as possible but it's hard because let's be honest most of the mediums were just out to hoax people no better than a ghost with a gun all i've got is someone behind a curtain yes so far someone's behind curtain, but it's about to get pretty compelling.

And then see if you can spot the point here where I am disappointed. Do they pull back the curtain? The person's vanished. You're not getting nobody. You're getting more people. Oh. Gradually, the curtain was drawn aside

and several attempts were made by a figure robed in white to show itself. Wait a minute. What do they, what do you mean by that? Is this another flasher? After we've had the old flasher on the roof. It is.

Let's be honest. It is a little bit sexy. The whole thing. Like it's, it's loads of uptight middle-class Victorians getting into a dark room and then having experiences. It is a little bit like sort of high school party. I think.

Oh, it's seven minutes in heaven. I don't know what that is, but yes, I think it's that. It's when you put Teen Wolf in a cupboard, isn't it? Yes. Yeah, that sounds supernatural. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. A tall spirit named Zion appeared in full view of all and bowed to us. Next came the form of a lady, short but very graceful in her movements and clotheded in ample folds of white drapery, and, I should say, a very fine texture. This was said to be the departed wife of our venerable host. The figure, while inside the circle, bowed to him in a very marked manner. After this lady came Mrs. Gilbert. This venerable lady had resided with Miss Finlayson, one of the other people present, as her guest for some time, and was devotedly attached to her. one of the other people present, as her guest for some time and was devotedly attached to her.

All present recognised the spirit. Her features were not visible. What? But, yep, that was the point where I checked out of this, the bit where you actually can't see their faces, but we can tell who they're supposed to be. Yeah, but those are her clothes, mate.

And you couldn't put on her clothes if you weren't her. But her form and movement were unmistakable. Who else would answer to the name Mrs. Gilbert? Yes. I, this is Denovan, I recognised her by them at once. I don't know why I'm giving him an English accent. He was Scottish.

They had a Native American spirit named Swiftwater, forgetting, I think, that they were in Australia. And a little one called peter with a squeaky voice oh my favorite he wrote his name and he wrote god bless us james would you like to give us an example of a cute little spirit saying god bless us god bless us lovely do you want to make it a little more australian a bit more aussie there god bless us that's good that sounds a bit sad. It sounds like my little brother. It's quite creepy. I feel like what's happened at this party

is they've run out of characters, so they're just now taking them from a Christmas carol. He's very Tiny Tim-ish. No, he's not Tiny Tim. He's the non-copyright-infringing Small Peter. Non-alliterative. The Peter as big as me, sir. Non-union alternative to Tiny Tim, he's the non-copyright infringing small Peter. Non-alliterative. The Peter as big as me, sir. Non-union alternative to Tiny Tim.

I think I'm starting to understand why this was a curtain across a door and not someone in the cabinet. It's quite hard to get all your mates in and out of the cabinet. Well, also, then a woman came out and her name was Charity and she ran around the whole place giving people pillows and just picking objects up to demonstrate that she was solid, which was what was impressive. But that's the opposite of a ghost and that's what most people can do. Well, I mean, yeah, arguably, this could quite easily be performed by one person with several puppets. A cynic might say, before we grow too fond of Denovan and his tales, let's confront the fact that he was an Australian colonist.

And there are some various ethical issues pertaining to that. But also, I think he's even bad by Australian standards. Australian colonist standards. The annoying thing about this is I want to make fun of him as an Australian, except that he was Scottish because none of them were Australian,

because Australia, as a nation, as we understand it now, was new. One of the big things he was involved with early on in his political career was a monster meeting, as they call it, in the town in 1854. Was Little Peter there? Where all the miners got together. Not that sort of monster. It was too big a meeting. They couldn't have had a small Peter.

They gathered loads of people together to complain about the influx of chinese miners into the community in 1845 according to the bendigo historical society's pioneers of bendigo in 1845 an agitation was inaugurated to prevent if possible the wholesale influx of chinese miners mr denovan who at the time was recognized as one of the leaders of the Diggers, headed the agitation. Now, bear in mind, this happened in 1854, and he arrived in Bendigo in 1853. And Bendigo had been a town since 1851. Something must be done. The character of the town, which I have been in for a year

and which has existed for three years, is changing too fast. Bearing in mind that the town as it was then was just like some wooden buildings it was like now now we're going to do something about that and the other thing we have listeners who get upset every time i mention being vegan or say something left wing um so for those people just skip ahead 10 seconds 20 20 seconds skip thing uh we should acknowledge that the the place where bendigo is um was and is inhabited by the people and what's extraordinary reading the first-hand colonial accounts is just how how absent indigenous australians are from from what they're writing about you would think that the land had been empty obviously i've read mainly things that are about spiritualism but it's it's

it's so odd how not there they are in the accounts yeah they just rewrite history basically and unfortunately there's still australians that hold those sorts of perceptions the only thing i can do to make myself feel uh slightly less to blame is to point out that there wouldn't be white australians if it weren't for you guys so we're all in this together yeah that's the that is the really the most annoying thing here is i want to i want to be judgmental of australians but all of these people are so far are scottish really and english and so really it's it's scottish people who are to blame which really hurts me english loving scloving Scottish people as well. Yeah, English-loving Scottish people, the worst kind of Scottish people.

A big source for what I'm going to show you next comes from a talk by Dr. Martin Jolly, who, that's a delightful name, but he's alive now, so we can't make fun of it. Okay. He is an artist and a lecturer at the australian national university school of art and design and he's an expert in fake photography and magic lantern shows and that sort of thing because 20 years after the the i was going to say kerfuffle after the racist kerfuffle about chinese miners it's 1873 spiritualism hits bendigo denovan is right at the forefront of this he forms the energetic circle and these are the people who think that the veins of gold underneath bendigo

are giving it a sort of a spiritual battery there's a guy called william terry he's english not scottish and he runs a spiritualist shop in mel, importing all of the spiritualist publications and images of spirits captured on film, James. Can you imagine such a thing? Real ghosts, real and crucially, very realistic images of ghosts. Oh, I can't imagine such a thing. If they're not opening or shutting fire escape doors, I can't imagine what a ghost looks they're not opening or shutting fire escape doors I can't imagine what a ghost looks like that's my favourite video of a ghost by the way

it's not it's just a person walking through a door James what a cliffhanger how on earth are we going to resolve that? Probably by scores. Yeah, yeah. We'll probably do the scoring, probably, yeah. Just a quick thank you to all the people that came out to the live show at the Bill Murray. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And those that join us on YouTube, if you want to catch up with it, it is still there on YouTube. You can have a little watch of that. I think of it as our tube. Oh, that's nice a bit weird don't forget to join us on Halloween oh yes

as part of the Cheerful Earful podcast festival yes and see you next week I guess for the second part right even on the tv guide when i see that that program i don't want to say the name of because it makes me feel physically ill just seeing the name of it makes a lot i this is how long it's been since

i've watched terrestrial television i didn't realize there is a tv program dedicated to blackhead removal there's a tv program of of that that mister i'm gonna call a mister i thought they were a doctor well that's exactly i'm disrespecting them because i don't think they have a phd in pimple popping can you i don't think you can you can't can you i thought dr pimple popper was a woman i uh that is that's very sexist of you james to cancel myself talk about them on youtube and i i i can't put i can't pop these pimples because it's my son oh i've just shown myself up to be a terrible person i've tried to cover it up with

a reference there but wow wow the problem is the reference was so funny that we had to leave your accidental everyday sexism in to tee it up. That's kind of annoying.