Echuca ghost tours: After dark at the Port of Echuca, Victoria

The Port of Echuca Discovery Centre’s Port After Dark tour offers a good combination of history and ghost stories. These Echuca ghost tours also visit secret tunnels under the historic Star Hotel.

The Victorian town of Echuca is best known for its paddlesteamer cruises, but its history is fascinating too. The Port of Echuca Discovery Centre is the single best place to find out about Echuca’s past as an inland wool and timber port.

Your Echuca checklist

Combine a one hour Murray River paddlesteamer cruise with lunch at Morrison’s Winery.
Book a nature-focused guided e-bike tour.
Or an extended three hour e-bike tour with a winery visit.
Find the best deals on Echuca accommodation.

That closes at 5pm, but there is the alternative option of taking the Centre’s Port After Dark tour. Running on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings once the Echuca weather has cooled down, these Echuca ghost tours cost $19.50 and straddle the border of information and entertainment pretty well. It’s equal parts Echuca heritage and ghost stories.

Bridge Hotel Echuca on Port After Dark tour — The historic Bridge Hotel in Echuca is where the Port After Dark tour first stops. Photo by David Whitley/ Australia Travel Questions

Echuca ghost tour: The Bridge Hotel

The tour kicks off at the Bridge Hotel, which was founded by Henry Hopwood. In 1859, his wife Martha died during the construction, and Henry remarried, taking Charlotte Waters from Bendigo as his wife.

There is no death certificate or place of burial on record for Charlotte, and it is thought she might be ‘the Lady in Blue’ who has been seen by several people haunting the Bridge Hotel.

The historic Star Hotel, Echuca

The nearby Star Hotel, which was founded in 1865, is directly across from the Wharf, and in the 19^th century would have been full of hard-drinking wharfies and railwaymen. When Echuca had a 5,000-strong population, it had licenced premises, so no wonder it had a rough and ready reputation.

In 1897, the temperance movement kicked back and succeeded in having the Star closed down, allegedly because of smugglers operating from the basement bar. And the basement was largely forgotten about until 1980, when the hotel was renovated.

Echuca ghost tour: The haunted pub?

Shortly after the staircase was uncovered, mediums visited and reported the ghostly presence of two murdered young boys. But the rather more surprising discovery was a tunnel, leading out to a back alley. The tour heads down here, but leaves you with more questions than answers. Did the previous owner just keep the pub going after it was closed down, building in an escape route for the secret drinkers in case the police came knocking?

Stories like this combine with the handsome, carefully restored look of the town – all arcades and colonial-era buildings – to make Echuca more than a place of faded glories. Cafés, restaurants and outdoor gear stores now occupy the old warehouse buildings. Though the wool and timber trades have long gone, there’s a new lease of life in tourism.

It’s this ability to keep the history going that makes Echuca arguably the most attractive of the Murray River towns. And a ghost tour is an added ingredient that the likes of Swan Hill and Albury can’t match. The drive from Melbourne to Echuca takes around two-and-a-half hours.