The White Hat Guide to the Old Melbourne Cemetery

Garryowen tells us:

"The first men hanged in the colony were the two Van Diemonian black murderers, on the 20th January, and the next batch three white bushrangers, 28th June of that year. The condemned burial-ground was close by the north-eastern corner of the public cemetery, outside the fence. Herein were deposited the remains of the blackfellows, and nothing further was heard of them for more than five months, when they were joined by the white fellows, and shortly after, on certain nights of the week the most unearthly doings were indulged in by the ghosts of the five defunct individuals, who had the outside graveyard to themselves, but who, so soon as the night was well in, jumped out of their graves and plunged into vagaries of a most astounding character, a species of pedestrianism which might be termed a combination of corroboree and hornpipe.

The blackfellows in opossum rugs, and the whites in shrouds, romped about in wild confusion, kicking and sparring at each other, prancing along by the northern boundary, westward to where the Melbourne pound was situated, and back to the starting point .... Persons engaged here at unseasonable hours declared that they witnessed such exhibitions."