Great Australian Mysteries: Spine-tingling tales of disappearances, secrets, unsolved crimes and lost treasure

by Graham Seal

Australia's master storyteller Graham Seal brings to life the enigmas and puzzles behind famous unsolved crimes, long-held secrets, buried loot and strange phenomena from the bush and the city.Australia has always been a land of mysteries. Some are ancient, some are historical, and many continue to perplex us today - and will probably continue to do so tomorrow.More often than most of us would like to think, things simply vanish, and people disappear without explanation, leaving a trail of heartbreak across generations. Australia also has its fair share of buried loot and fabulous riches gone missing - somewhere.Master storyteller Graham Seal has gathered mysteries from around Australia. There are riddles of lost explorers, unexplained phenomena, and yarns of fish, frogs or pebbles falling from the sky. There are unsolved crimes and long-held secrets; hidden tunnels and wartime enigmas; and hair-raising tales from the bush and from the city. 'Graham Seal brings to life stories of missing treasures, shipwrecks, First Nation legends, mysterious happenings and the occasional murder... I had often wondered what happened to Cook's vessel the Endeavour, Ned Kelly's skull and The Pyjama Girl's murderer. Graham's book answers most of these queries but, as with any good mystery, raises further questions and makes you think.' - Rob Willis OAM, National Library of Australia Oral History and Folklore Collections

Genres: Nonfiction, Audiobook, History, True Crime

284 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 30, 2021

Reviews

[Rowan MacDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book sent me down some rabbit holes. I think you can sometimes judge a book by the actions it causes you to undertake in life. In the case of Great Australian Mysteries, it had me pulling up maps, planning summer trips and sharing stories about various Australian mysteries to anyone who would listen.

I consider myself fairly well versed in Australian mysteries, yet I hadn’t heard the majority featured in Graham Seal’s book. I loved being able to discover new mysteries and puzzles about my own country; in particular those featuring my home state of Tasmania. Seal divides the book into 8 sections; the ancient, maritime, lost treasures, war, outback, mysterious places, disappearances and unsolved crimes.

The short, concise stories act as a great stepping stone to doing your own research. If one story doesn’t capture your imagination, then there’s always quickly another you might enjoy. They often leave you wanting more. Thankfully, there is a wonderful notes section featuring various resources and references should you want to delve deeper.

Graham Seal writes in a down to earth style. It’s like sitting with an uncle around a bonfire, as he shares various yarns. He captures an Aussie way of life and storytelling that is all too frequently being lost to social media and modern society.

Seal sometimes features mysteries that are solved; providing the answers and explanations along the way (Min Min Lights). Occasionally some entries lacked the mystery factor altogether and resembled a basic Australian story instead - this didn't detract too much though. Some of the most famous Australian mysteries start making appearances towards the end, featuring such puzzling ones like:

- Our Prime Minister that disappeared; Harold Holt
- The Somerton Man/Tamam Shud
- The Maree Man
- MH370
- Ned Kelly’s Skull

This book really excels in highlighting the more unknown mysteries though. One mystery in particular made me want to grab a metal detector and map, and to search nearby beaches for lost treasure. It featured a ship called Hope which wrecked in 1827 (near where I live). It was said to be carrying gold and silver for the Hobart garrison. Two soldiers supposedly took the chest ashore, buried it and planned to later recover it. But fate intervened and they never got the chance to retrieve it. One soldier apparently drew up a ‘treasure map’, which resulted in an Irish farmer traveling across the world to Tasmania in search of the treasure. He didn’t find any. It could still be out there.

Great Australian Mysteries is quintessentially Australian and features an Australian sense of humour too. Randomly featured among stories of our ancient lands was hilarious mention of “small hairy folk”. These are supposedly “handsome little fellows” who sometimes follow people in the bush for “a taste of honey”. Don’t worry, bunyips and yowies also get mention, along with Australia’s version of global phenomena like haunted highways and raining fish.

“Thankful it didn’t rain crocodiles” said a relieved NT local after a 2010 fish rain event.

Great Australian Mysteries succeeded in making me laugh out loud and bamboozling me at the same time.

There’s lots of Indigenous content here, with the featured mysteries spanning literally thousands of years, all the way up until very recent times. When it comes to the more well-known mysteries, Seal provides the most updated news on them instead of just rehashing the same old stories. I'm curious how many of the mysteries here will be solved in the years to come.

The notes I took while reading this quickly spiraled out of control. It stimulated my imagination and made me feel like a kid again. It also succeeded with increasing my ‘to-read’ pile of books. Great Australian Mysteries has inspired me to learn more about my own country and get out to explore it fully; whether it be haunted houses, or sites of disappearances; Tasmanian Tiger hunts or searching for lost treasure. It has been a great read that covered a lot of ground in a short, easy to digest style.

Australia is truly a land of mystery.

[Ian Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

GREAT AUSTRALIAN MYSTERIES by Graham Seal
This 350 page book is exactly about what it says. 2-4 pages about every mystery leaves all of them just that, mysteries, though some are sort of cleared up.
While reading it I couldn’t help but conjure up the titles of two other books, A Book of Bits or a Bit of a Book (Spike Milligan) and Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Both would seem appropriate in this case.
You start each item getting interested, emotionally hoping for a solution or ending, but they don’t happen because they are, after all, mysteries.
Very early Australia, sea borne mysteries (never a shortage of those), wars, the outback, vanishings and some unsolved crimes feature in the chapter headings. There are those some of you will be familiar with, particularly towards the end where a couple of potential criminal cases are, even today, still mulled over and researched with the hope of some sort of finality.
Graham’s C.V. is writ large with other books of Australian stories so, for some of the chapters here, he didn’t have to look very far, already having written about them previously but this is an unusual format in modern times which I felt made a nice change.
It’s also a bit of a page turner as one story is over almost as soon as it begins and you find yourself wanting more. A good addition to his other titles.

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unassuming on the surface and didn't expect much but really quality varied research and writing within. Good stepping off points for further reading. The accuracy of coverage on a few of the niche topics I knew about lends credence to the rest

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of yarns about missing people, ships, treasure and water. About mysterious deaths and murders. Some in long past history, some more recent times. Some familiar, some unknown (to me anyway) Many still unsolved.
An enjoyable read.

Australia's master storyteller Graham Seal brings to life the enigmas and puzzles behind famous unsolved crimes, long-held secrets, buried loot and strange phenomena from the bush and the city.
Australia has always been a land of mysteries. Some are ancient, some are historical, and many continue to perplex us today - and will probably continue to do so tomorrow.
More often than most of us would like to think, things simply vanish, and people disappear without explanation, leaving a trail of heartbreak across generations. Australia also has its fair share of buried loot and fabulous riches gone missing - somewhere.
Master storyteller Graham Seal has gathered mysteries from around Australia. There are riddles of lost explorers, unexplained phenomena, and yarns of fish, frogs or pebbles falling from the sky. There are unsolved crimes and long-held secrets; hidden tunnels and wartime enigmas; and hair-raising tales from the bush and from the city.

[Rose · Rating 1 out of 5]

dropped. it gratingly stopped to add a story in nz that was not much of a mystery and mostly seemed to be for the point of shocking the readers about cannibalism, including a whole long and very obnoxious racist song from victorian britain about the event. the narrator sounded mocking and I do not think he pronounced māori very well.
it was also otherwise disappointingly boring.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strangely disappointing. This stuff is usually my jam, but I found myself getting bored in places and wanting to skim.

[Kylie Young · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boooooring!

[Jaq · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable series of tales.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I personally didn't really like it. Only some parts were interesting reads. Each to their own really when it comes to this book.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of stories from Australia. Some true some myths. I listened to this audio book and found it interesting but not riveting.

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd have thought a book like this would be just the ticket for my interests. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons I cannot entirely put my finger on, I just found it a chore to get through. Admittedly, there are some good parts - a few stories, legends or conspiracies I found kind of cool. But these were scant against the higher number of boring aspects.

For starters, I couldn't care less about buried treasure (or, if I were an American, I "could" care less, which to my ears sounds the exact opposite of what it's supposed to convey, but I digress). I also found the section that dealt with ghost stories to be curiously unscary. Like, go back further to similar books by Australian writers such as John Pinkney, and you'll see that even a broader-appealing, less genre-specific exploration into earthbound spirits can still be perfectly spooky to a seasoned reader of the subject. This book wasn't. It was literally all "clanking chains" and comically floating, ethereal bodies like something out of Scooby Doo. That just ain't gonna cut it, mate.

Finally (and, as I always say in the case of an audio book, this is not the author's fault exactly, but still ...) the narrator kind of grated on me. He was all wrong for this project. It's not like he had a stuttering problem, or couldn't speak fucking English, or kept screaming obscenities hither and thither or any overtly obvious thing like that. Rather, it was that he seemed to think anyone who picked up this book was intending only to titter and giggle at the absurdity within. I don't know if it was just his accent (I could not quite decide whether it was Australian or Kiwi), but to me it just sounded like he found the whole thing so unbelievable that he teetered on the edge of lolling most of the time. Then, he also had an annoying habit of ending the final clause of a sentence in a lower, barely discernible voice. Too many times was I like, "Eh?" before taking my eyes off the road, rewinding the CD a few seconds, and only narrowly avoiding becoming an unwitting agent of roadside population control.

Oh, and there are too many long-winded quotations of silly folk songs. They weren't funny or endearing or necessary to include in their multiple-page entirety. Unless you are J.R.R. Tolkien, don't you dare pull that shit on your readers. Hell, even when that legend does it (let's be honest with ourselves), it does soon grow old and irritating. Effing, I swear Return of the King was 20% a Middle Earth karaoke party.

[Todd Horner · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this quite disappointing. While some (more accurately, very few) of the stories I found fascinating, a large majority of the tales I found uninteresting and bland. I also found most of the tales to be very similar (especially the damn shipwreck stories), which made most of them unmemorable. I thought I would love this book, but I found it a genuine chore to finish.