Wyrm: Kapunda has some truly weird stuff, as do most of the Copper Triangle towns. I used to go to a Celtic music and culture festival up there fairly regularly, and you'd see some quite strange things wandering about the town late at night. The neighbouring town of Burra was equally weird. I think this was partly because the landspirits in the area were powerful, and since a lot of the early settlers there were Cornish miners who were generally respectful of them, the land is still alive despite having been heavily mined. Back in the mid 1800s whole villages came out here to work the copper, and brought their culture with them. It's why the area still has a lot of Cornish-style druids, and hosts a Gorsedd every two years.
Where I used to live in Walhalla in Gippsland also retained a lot of Cornish lore which the goldminers there had kept in their culture. Interestingly, they had adapted their culture to the local landspirits, and the landspirits mostly cooperated. In Cornwall they had mine spirits called Knockers, which would give warning of caveins, gas and, in Walhalla, flooding, to the miners by knocking on the rocks. When you heard a rapping noise you got out, carefully but fast. The local Niols did the same thing, especially in the Long Tunnel Mine and the Little Joe. As back in Cornwall, the miners would speak politely to them, thank them for a warning, and leave behind bits of their lunches, or sometimes a small pasty or applecake made for the purpose. They had a sense of humour - one of the visiting cityfolk who had been loudly sceptical of their existence was much chastened by being lost in a short stretch of straight tunnel for some hours. Elsewhere in Gippsland the Niols ranged from neutral to downright dangerously hostile - some mines had to be abandoned because of them, and there were mines and caves even I wouldn't go into.
In Walhalla also was the ghost of Kitty Kane. She haunted the old hospital, which had been the hotel and brothel back in her day. She also turned up at the new hotel sometimes, or at her own trackside grave. I didn't mind her -I've slept in both of her old rooms, and she never troubled me, but some of the guys were scared of her. She was pretty feisty in death as in life, and if you swore or were dirty and unkempt in her room she would throw things. She didn't mind the miners coming in grubby, but she'd get restless pretty fast if we didn't clean up. The new hotel also had a room which was haunted by a maid who had died there in suspicious circumstances. I would never sleep there, she was one of those smothering ghosts.
Caves in Gippsland were often dangerous. As were pools, especially pools in caves, because of bunyips, water things with attitude and a hunger. Like the lake-dragons of Europe, though, if you could get one talking and avoid being eaten, you might well learn something. Bunyips would try to eat you, but the really dangerous ones were the rivergirls. They also might well eat you, but especially if you were a handsome youth they had other intentions as well. Think packhunting Näkki, but beautiful all over and looking like beautiful girls.
Gippsland also had the Grey Woman, a spirit of mists and snows who inhabited the high mountain tops, walked in the fog and rain, and if you intruded on her territory, or worse, made noise in her cold silences, would touch you. Her touch, if you were lucky, induced permanent sadness. If you weren't lucky, freezing, petrifaction and death. She could turn intruders to stone or into plants. There's a native story about the origin of spider orchids, a weirdly beautiful Australian flower, which I must get around to telling on Crossroads sometime.
The Snowy Mountains also have were-dingoes. And of course Australia has a multitude of human ghosts, but they are a whole other story. One of my uncles was a doctor at the leprosarium near Broome, back in the day, and he had some interesting tales. And being Australia, we have highway ghosts all over.
Aierdome, your Cracow dragon sounds a lot like the Lambton Wyrm from England. There's a ballad about that one which is distinctly creepy, though the commonest variant nowadays is played for laughs. Story was that back in the Middle Ages, young Sir John, the heir of Lambton, went fishing on a Sunday, which wasn't considered proper at the time, because he was supposed to be in church. So he caught this weird eel-like thing in the river. He'd never seen a fish like it, so was carrying it back to the village to ask the priest what it was, when he realised that if he did so he'd be busted for missing church. He chucked it down the village well instead, and forgot about it.
Some years later he went off to the Crusades, and while he was away the Wyrm grew too big for the well, emerged and started eating things, at first small stuff like 'bairns and lambs and calves', then started on the adults. When Sir John came back from the Crusades and realised what had happened he resolved to make amends for his deed and went out to fight the Wyrm, only barely getting out alive. So when he recovered from his attempt he went to the village blacksmith and had razor spikes welded to his armour, then tried again. By this point the Wyrm was huge, the ballad describes it as wrapping itself 'three times round Lambton Hill'. So he walked up to it and let himself be swallowed, and cut the Wyrm apart from the inside. In some variants of the tale he even survived!
