Halloween in Australia: A Horror Celebration in The Making

When I was six years old, my cousins told me about a tradition in America; kids would dress up in scary costumes and go around to their neighbours who would give them chocolate and lollies. I wasn’t particularly into anything horror as a child, but the thought of dressing up and getting treats for it certainly had me interested. That October my three cousins, my younger sister, and myself got dressed up in anything we could find around the house. My dad cut holes into an old white sheet, and I practiced my “boooooos” while running around the end of our street; a cul-de-sac with plenty of houses ripe for the picking.

 Growing up in a country that is completely isolated from the rest of the world (literally, we are an island continent) has been an interesting experience. Cultural diffusion takes its sweet time getting here and we are often a few years behind. Despite this country being colonised and invaded by pagan believing Scots and Celts; Samhain was a tradition that did not manage to disseminate through the colony quickly. According to Hallozween Magazine, the first ever Halloween celebration in Australia was in Castlemaine, Victoria, 1858. Newspapers distributed during the Gold Rush report events such as the Scots Halloween Ball at Red Hill Hotel, hosted by puddlers (those who mixed the wash dirt and slurry from machinery digging up gold) . The halls of hotels and pubs would be decorated in orange and black decorations and guests would dress as ghosts and witches whilst some were adorned in kilts.

Following this Halloween balls began being hosted in smaller towns across Australia--Northern Territory, Launceston, Williamstown, and Alice Springs--where Scottish colonists had established their homes. Apparently these balls remained popular until the early 20th century, the commercialisation of the tradition not hitting the shores until the late 2000s’ at least. The arrival of American soldiers during World War II saw the introduction of the capitalist and Americanised version of the holiday. Halloween as a tradition has been celebrated here for at least 160 years; however, it hasn’t been the holiday that we know and love for as long as we think it has.

The consensus in Australia would be that pop culture has been the heaviest influence on the way in which we celebrate Halloween in this country. With more television shows and movies featuring the holiday, there has been an incredible interest in taking part in the celebration. Over the last three years, there has been a significant increase in Department stores stocking Halloween decorations. It’s only become commonplace in these years as previously Australians were rather resistant to the idea. I would speculate that this has to do with the commercialisation of the holidays and people here became sceptical of being Americanised, this detracting from where the origins of the holidays began. Now, when we enter our department stores, we are overwhelmed with gigantic skeletons, ghosts, and ghouls galore, and all of the spiderwebs you could possibly imagine.

In my early twenties I started going to clubs with friends, most notably Hot Damn. This club was hosted every Thursday night at Sydney’s dearly loved and missed, Q-Bar. When Halloween rolled around there would always be a themed night of drunken celebrations that included ridiculous costumes and drinking until 5:30am. One year I had a friend dress himself in a wine cask, that was it, that was the costume. I didn’t really care about the tradition of Halloween, but I absolutely loved being able to party with friends while the veil between life and death hung over us like it was our last night (and left us hungover the next morning). Halloween impacts us that way. In 2012 I went to a Hot Damn dressed as a cheerleader, my best friend a jar of Vegemite--I don’t remember the night very well, but I remember that we talked about our costumes for weeks.

In my mid-twenties I met my current partner Ned, he is a lover of all things scary and adores celebrating Halloween. It’s a holiday that we both get excited about even more every year as we get older. Our first Halloween together was spent at Wet ‘n’ Wild Halloween Horror Nights hosted by Sydney Radio Station, KIIS FM. There were rides galore and so many scare actors, this event was my first experience with scare actors since I had been on a haunted ghost train when I was eight. Everything was elevated to scare, the zombies terrifying and I struggled being overwhelmed by the people and the screams. This night of horror showed me exactly what I want out of Halloween, I wanted to bring scary and family tradition together. As the descendent of a 4-foot, red headed and green-eyed Scottish woman from Edinburgh (my great-grandmother Benstead), I wanted to pay respect to the pagan ancestors who celebrated this wonderful tradition of Samhain. And I believe that I am on my way to achieving that. One aspect that I have recognised is that Australian’s have their own way of doing things. Our Halloween is celebrated amid Spring, significantly different to the fall that the Northern Hemisphere is acclimatised to during this time of year. We can’t always put out pumpkins because they rot incredibly quickly, and they attract small visitors in the form of possums at night. Our houses will have a decoration that lets our neighbours know if we have candy, some houses will leave the light off and refuse to answer the door—there’s always one Halloween naysayer in the street, but they are forgiven for their trespasses.

In 2020 the lockdowns across my local health district managed to cut off my household from my sister’s only 20 minutes down the road. When we were able to start visiting each other, Halloween had started to roll around. My nieces have always had a keen interest in the holiday and knew that I would be up to celebrating with them. I went to my local department store and bought all the decorations that I could possibly find. I decorated our living room, hung up balloons, covered my front door in spiderwebs, and even bought a step activated doormat that shrieked and screamed when stepped on. To make the event special, I created some VIP invitations in Canva and sent it to them via a Messenger app. They arrived on Halloween to a fully decorated house and me dressed in a ghoulish dress with heavy black makeup. that yeah, Lucy dressed up as Wonder Woman and Luna, dressed up as a ghostbuster, we held hands and visited our neighbours as they had all gone in on the spooky season two. One house had gone as far as to build a miniature made in the alcove of their home, Luna didn’t take a step in, but Lucy was all about it. On the walk back home while eating our Zooper Doopers, we discussed the origins of holiday and where our family came from. I told them that Nanna Benstead had moved here from Scotland and how her ancestors celebrated the holiday with a wonderful feast to celebrate their harvest. It felt so comforting to be able to share a piece of our heritage with one another.

This year my nieces and their parents are excited for Halloween, they have their costumes ready to go. Luna, the youngest, is going as a witch and the eldest Lucy, as a character from her favourite anime (this is a rotating roster so Halloween is when we will find out who it is this time). They are preparing to decorate their house. My brother-in-law always keen to show off his skills at hanging the skeletons the right way to scare trick-or-treaters. This year, Lucy is sharing the tradition with her friends and is taking them out to trick-or-treat together. I hope that she tells them all about her heritage and how much Halloween meant to her ancestors. In the years to come, I hope that Halloween is a celebration that continues to dress Australian houses in cobwebs and broomsticks, tombstones planted in front yards, and pumpkins creepily carved on porches.