Tag: Woodend

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Intuition series: An example of intuition or why doesn’t anyone listen to me?

Hanging Rock

I don’t scare easily.

In spite of me ignoring my intuition on certain things (such as relationships I wanted to pursue because I didn’t like that answers I got), I have generally listened to it in the past when there was no emotional attachment involved, and I didn’t care about the outcome.

I’ve stated that you can’t always just explain intuition away rationally, so I thought I’d share a story about how intuition can warn you when there is potential danger, even when there is no reason behind it.

As mentioned in previous blog entries, I used to go up to Hanging Rock on a regular basis in the late 80s and early 90s.

It would be either just me and my then friend, Paul, or a group of us in a couple of cars. It was always at night, and we’d always go to both Hanging Rock itself (because the gates would mostly be left open after dark) and Straws Lane, which is a place of weird anomalies that cannot be dismissed as just illusion.

In the early 90s, we had been there quite a number of times. Sometimes we climbed the Rock in the dark and there was even one time when we came back down to find the gates had been padlocked closed. (We got out because I happened to have a hacksaw in my car that day.)

Never once did any of those things bother me. Never once did I sense anything bad might happen, and nothing ever really did.

Except for this one time.

Because memory can be such a fragile thing, I’ve decided to just post an entry from my diary at the time (and edited to remove irrelevant details.)

This entry was written on Sunday  22nd March, 1992.

Yesterday was not quiet the equinox but we decided to go up to Hanging Rock anyway.  Paul also asked a bunch of his mates and around eight of us went up that night.

We took two cars. Normally I take my car but Paul felt it was his turn.

It was night, but everybody to climb the rock again.  I wasn’t against it but somehow I felt we shouldn’t do it. As we were driving up, Paul remarked: “I’ve got the feeling nothing going to happen tonight.”  

I didn’t agree and said so. The uneasy feeling was growing.

We arrived and made our way up to the gates.

I once again stated that we shouldn’t climb the rock. Paul asked why not and all I could say was it was a gut feeling.

The gates on one side the grounds were open. We all got out of the car and heard this unearthly howling sound coming from the direction of the rock.

“That was no animal,” said Paul.  After a couple more times, it stopped and everyone promptly forgot about it.  I kept it in the back of my mind and kept bringing it up as an argument why we shouldn’t go in.

We also saw lights and heard some sort of music.  A bit more investigation revealed there were people inside. 

Still, everyone wanted to go inside and climb the rock, regardless.

Once again, I argued against it.  I was adamant that we shouldn’t do it.  Somehow I knew I wasn’t going to convince them. 

I then suggested that the gate could be closed when we come about out and I wasn’t about to climb over barbed wire.

We drove around to the other gates and found those were closed.  One of the guys used his keys on the lock and found, to my horror, that it opened it.

“That’s one of your excuses gone,” Paul said to me. 

“I still feel we shouldn’t do it.”  I replied, with a sinking feeling. No one listened and we drove in through the open gate and down into the car park.

I reluctantly accepted that they were going to climb the rock and I decided to go with them.  I felt the rock itself that wasn’t the problem:  there was something else. 

In any case, I felt they would be safer with me with them. (I always had a sense that I could protect others.)

We started to climb but barely a few minutes later, we saw headlights drive into the car park and stop where the cars were. The lights went out for a few seconds and I heard a door a slam. Then they came back on and a four wheel drive drove up and shone his headlights up towards the rock.  He must have seen us for he sounded his horn

We made our way back to the car park and Paul said to what must have been the park ranger: “Is there a problem?”

“Can’t you read,” he said angrily.

“The gates were open,” Paul replied.

“Wake up to yourself. Get out of here,” said shouted back.

He drove off up the track and sat there waiting for us to leave.

“He knew he was wrong.  That’s why he didn’t hang around,” said Paul.

But I wasn’t so sure.

When we got the cars, we smelled a strong lime smell that seemed to be strongest in the car.  I thought it was odd and could find no rational explanation for it.  As we were driving down the road, the driver of the other car, Dean, said on this UHF CB that there was something running down our back window and boot. We stopped to take a look at it and found someone had poured some sort of acid and brake fluid over the boot (trunk) and it was burning into the paint work. 

We rushed back to Woodend as fast as we could and pulled up at an all-night service station where they proceeded to wash the acid off.  Dean’s car wasn’t too bad and I think we just managed to save Paul’s but it would need a cut and polish to restore the finish. 

We spoke to the service station attendant who described the man we met as the park ranger called Guido.  He was adamant though that he knew Guido and he would never do something like that.

“You get all sorts of weirdos going up to the rock,” he said. “They have satanic rituals up there and on Straws lane. I even had some guy ask me at midnight were the graveyard was.”

My strong sense was that we were lucky that night. Possibly the ranger scared off whoever had the acid, and even more possibly, my delays may have just been enough for him to call us back before we disappeared from sight on the rock.

Certainly sounds like a plot from a bad horror movie.

My intuition was very clear on what to do, and what not to do, and the important thing to note that, even though it started as a normal journey, I was already feeling that something would happen, and as I said, I don’t scare easily.

Next: When intuition changes.

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Paranormal experiences series: The road along side Hanging Rock or this was no picnic.

Rock Formations - Hanging Rock, Victoria, Aust...

I’ve discussed two incidences where songs I remember were never produced in the way I remember them to be.

Now, it is reasonable to put such things down to faulty memories, and let’s face it, who hasn’t mis-remembered something they swore they knew happened?

However, this particular incident is very hard to explain away.

There’s this rather famous book by Joan Lindsay called Picnic at Hanging Rock. It’s about the disappearance of three girls back in Woodend, Victoria, Australia, back in the early 1900s. During the 70s, it was made into a movie.

Hanging Rock is a real place near Woodend, and is a tourist destination. It is a large rock, which can be climbed and explored.

I used to go there a lot during the late 80s and early 90s and it’s fair to say I’ve had my fair share of unusual experiences there.

I would usually go at night with my best friend at the time, Paul. Like me, he had a fascination for unusual places.

Hanging Rock had two main roads on each side of it. Both continued straight from the highway to the dirt roads on the other side.

Me and Paul would go up there at night: Sometimes by ourselves, sometimes with friends.

One night we drove there and the trip was uneventful as it normally was. It wasn’t until we started to drive up the road leading to Hanging Rock that I began to feel that something wasn’t quite right. Something about the road didn’t seem to be real and I commented on it. Paul felt it as well.

The night was mild, the moon was waning, but it still shone plenty of light.

There are huge steel gates that allow entry to the park where Hanging Rock is, and you can’t really miss them, but somehow we did.

We kept on driving and soon came across a dirt road instead of the sealed one we were driving on. It took me by surprise since I had come a lot further than I thought I had. In fact, I went straight through a give way sign.

“Oh well done,” said Paul, “But, I suppose it’s late.”

“I didn’t think that we’d come this far,” I said. “Did we pass the gates?”

“We have, but I didn’t see them. Nor did I see the sign saying 100 meters to Hanging Rock. This is the dirt track that I once went up with some other friends. We went up it three time and we still couldn’t find the gates.”

We drove on for a bit and I decided to turn back since the road didn’t seem to be going anywhere of interest and Paul was feeling a bit uneasy about continuing. Instead we decided to go back and find the gates.

And find them, we did as we went back down the road. They were closed. Sometimes they were left open, and we’d go in and climb the rock. (Even if it was at night.)

Paul suggested we check the other side to see if the gates were open there, and I agreed, so we did. However, there was something totally wrong about the road.

“This is a dirt track. It should be a sealed road,” I said.

“I know, go on,” replied Paul, rather calmly. “Continue up it.”

I saw the sign that said Hanging Rock Tourist Road, and soon after we came across the gates on the other side. They were also closed.

As I continued down the road that led from the gate back  to Woodend, I saw a car coming towards us in the distance.  It then turned and disappeared. About 30 seconds or so, later, I got the where the car had turned. Now I had been up that road many times. It’s a straight road with barely any turn-offs. Paul, who was far more familiar with the layout of the area also knew that, too.

“Left turn, Gary,” he said.

I stared incredulously at the road. “There is no ‘T’ intersection on this road,” I stated.

“I know,” he simply said.

“So why is there one now? And what road was the car on that was coming towards us?”

Paul had no answers, but he was unnervingly calm about it, too. Mind you, from his own stories, this was not the first time something like this had happened to him.

I turned to the left and the soon made a right hand turn and found myself on the proper road again.

This road had appeared out of nowhere. It didn’t look new, and even if it was, it had been put there in a matter of weeks. If you know anything about Victorian roads, it takes months, or even years for anything to be completed.

Somehow, the layout of the area had changed around us.

What was even more interesting was when I asked friends who were familiar with the area about that road; they would describe the T intersection. They didn’t remember the road being straight.

There are some things you just can’t explain away with logic.

Next: Other inconsistencies.

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