Fisher's Ghost

Frederick Fisher was last seen on the evening of June 17, 1826, in the kitchen of George Worrall's house on Queen Street, Campbelltown. He handed one of the men there a Spanish dollar and went out. Fisher had been transported over forged bank notes and held a ticket of leave, and by 1825 he owned four farms. He and his men lodged with Worrall, his neighbor, who held his power of attorney.

Worrall told people that Fisher had sailed for England. Within weeks he was selling Fisher's boards, horses, and a mare, and showing a receipt for Fisher's horses at £134 that witnesses at the trial said was not in Fisher's handwriting. One witness noticed Worrall wearing Fisher's trousers, which fit him tightly.

The search

Worrall was arrested on September 17, 1826. On September 23, the Sydney Gazette carried a government notice headed "Supposed Murder," offering £20 for the discovery of Fisher's body, or £5 for proof that he had left the colony.

In October, the Campbell Town bench ordered Constable George Luland to search. His deposition describes blood on a rail at the corner of Fisher's paddock, about 50 rods from Worrall's house, with "a trace of fire underneath as if to extinguish the trace of blood." Two Aboriginal trackers joined him. At a creek, one of them, named in the deposition as Gilbert, drew a corn stalk across the water, put it to his nose, and said he smelt "the fat of a white man." Farther up a second creek, a tracker pushed a rod into the ground and said, "there's something here." They dug and found the body. The coroner came the next morning, and the surgeon Patrick Hill found the skull fractured in several places.

The Sydney Gazette's report of the trial dated that search to October 20, 1826. Campbelltown's council and the Dictionary of Sydney give October 25 as the day two boys noticed blood on the fence, and the council names them as Rixon and Burrows. The council's guide names the tracker Namut, and the early learning center beside the creek carries that name.

The trial

Worrall was tried in Sydney on February 2, 1827, before Chief Justice Francis Forbes, and hanged on February 5. The Sydney Gazette reported that until about 5am on the morning of his execution he maintained his innocence, then admitted to the Reverend William Cowper that he alone had killed Fisher. Worrall said he had swung a piece of paling at a horse in the paddock and afterward found Fisher "lying weltering in his blood." He also admitted that he had meant the two other men arrested in the case to hang in his place.

The ghost

None of that record mentions a ghost. State Archives and Records NSW, which holds the prosecution papers, including a groundplot of Worrall's premises drawn for the case, notes that superstitious testimony was not accepted in the courts. The ghost first appears in print in 1832, in a poem titled "The Sprite of the Creek!" (one later account gives "The Spirit of the Creek") in the weekly Hill's Life in New South Wales. The poem renamed Fisher "Fredro" and Worrall "Wurlow."

The story Campbelltown tells has a farmer named Farley walking home one night in October 1826 and seeing Fisher sitting on a rail, pointing toward the creek, before anyone had found the body. Farley's first name is John in the council's telling and James in others. The earliest versions put the figure on the rail of a fence; later ones moved it to the rail of a bridge. The council's guide places the sighting at the corner of Queen and Dumaresq Streets, where the remains of a corduroy bridge have been found, and notes that some put it where Fisher's Ghost Creek meets Queen Street and Camden Road.

In April 1956, Mayor Jack Farnsworth called a public meeting to plan an annual town celebration. That same year, about 1,500 people gathered at Fisher's Ghost Bridge at midnight to see whether the ghost would return. The first festival named for the ghost was held in 1960.

The Festival of Fisher's Ghost runs each year from late October into November. In 2026, it runs from Thursday, October 29, to Sunday, November 8, and the council counts it as the festival's 70th year, dating from 1956. The street parade returns for the first time since 2019 on Saturday, October 31, from 2pm to 4pm, moving along Queen Street toward Mawson Park. Fisher's Twilight Streets starts at 3pm on October 31 and November 1, with stalls and performers in Mawson Park and along Queen, Lithgow, and Cordeaux Streets. The Fisher's Ghost Fun Run is on November 8.

Fisher's Ghost Creek runs through Koshigaya Park, across Camden Road from Campbelltown Arts Centre. Gallery entry at the arts center is free. The council's guide to the legend includes a map and self-guided heritage walk, In the footsteps of Fred, covering the creek and the old town sites. The Campbelltown Town Hall Theatre on Queen Street stands on the site of Worrall's house.

Fisher is buried at St Peter's Anglican Church, 12 Cordeaux Street, in a grave that never had a headstone, and its place in the churchyard is unknown.