Old Balmain Cemetery

Perhaps the children's playground was built up, rather than dug down.

Old Balmain Cemetery conducted its first interment in January 1868, and its final interment in May 1912. It was converted to the Pioneer Memorial Park during World War II. It covers 11 acres, and all told 10,608 people were interred there.

The bandstand is an unusual design with its own solar power.

As the conversion from cemetery to public park progressed, descendents were encouraged to make decisions about the remains of their ancestors. Very few people were exhumed and moved elsewhere. I will tell you about one such tomorrow on Taphophile Tragics. All the headstones were removed. Some were used to 'adjust' the surface of the park. Some were used in retaining walls. There is none left in situ. About 30 headstones were removed to Camperdown Cemetery. Others were used as historic markers where requested. The headstones of two ex-ministers were removed to St Barnabas' Church on Broadway. However, this is just the headstones. The vast majority of bodies remain interred beneath the rolling green of the park.

The war memorial was moved from elsewhere in Leichhardt to its prominent position within the park.

Graveyard Tragics

Tomorrow I launch yet another meme into the blogosphere: Taphophile Tragics!

Today, I thought to take the opportunity to provide a preview for any of you with a similar predilection. "How to play" is explained on the Taphophile Tragics blog which I link here, but also link in the side-bar of Sydney Eye.


These images were taken on a meander through the Gore Hill Memorial Cemetery, on the north shore of Sydney. Dedicated in May 1868, the first burial, that of Elizabeth Dalton, occured on 22nd February 1877, but headstones dated earlier than this were placed in the cemetery when the Devonshire Street Cemetery closed prior to 1906 to allow that site to be redeveloped into Central Station.

Gore Hill cemetery was closed to burials in 1977 - the final burial, that of Francis O'Brien on 24th February, 1974 - and placed on the State Heritage Register in 1986. A memorial garden for the placement of ashes was erected in 1991. Saint Mary McKillop was initially buried in the Gore Hill Cemetery (1909), until she was moved to her own chapel in North Sydney in 1914.

Gore Hill Memorial Cemetery is beside North Shore Hospital, within easy walking distance of St Leonards Railway Station.

If this tweaks your interest, come over tomorrow to Taphophile Tragics, read my first post, and consider contributing a post of your own. This week's link will be open until Friday night, Sydney time.

Botany Cemetery - Statuary

Botany Cemetery is dominated by fresh-air and sunlight. It is open and it is expansive, not in the least maudlin and dark.


As befits the Australian self-concept, I found it to be an egalitarian graveyard. There are maybe half a dozen mausoleum(s), but mostly graves are unpretensious. It goes without saying, therefore, that the statuary is not of a personal nature. It is of this ethereal, heavenly bent. Unlike somewhere like Pere LaChaise which is replete with representations meant to aggrandise the individual.


All four photos were taken on the same day. The deep blue were facing to the south, the grey was facing to the north - towards the city.

Botany Cemetery - Grave adornments

Having long been a 'graveyard tragic', this week provided an opportunity to explore yet another cemeteryy, this time Botany Cemetery on the shores of Botany Bay, otherwise marketed as Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park. It is both burial ground and crematorium, with the first burial in 1893. It does contain a heritage section, but all these graves have been removed to Botany from inner city burial grounds destined for 're-use'.


Except for the first one, these grave adornments are usually ceramic or porcelain. Artificial flowers like this were much used in each of the Parisian cemeteries that I visited last month: Pere LaChaise, Montparnesse, Montmatre and Passy. The use of REAL flowers in and around graves in Australia is nowhere near as frequent as in the Parisian cemeteries. In comparison, our cemeteries here in Sydney are uptight - well kempt and regular, sprawling laterally rather than vertically.


The first image in this post is a 'bandaged bear' used by hospitals to raise funds which appears to have been deposited by some sort of 40 day flood.

Watching for the ferryman

Botany Cemetery and Crematorium overlooks the entrance to Botany Bay, a stretch of water that resonates finely with the start of European settlement in this wide, brown land. This is where my immediate and extended family gathered on Wednesday to farewell my father who took his last breath in the early, dark hours of last Monday.

I returned yesterday for a tour and discussion of the options available to me for a lasting memorial to him. I would think that a view like this would be to die for.

Port Arthur: For the term of his natural life

Van Dieman's Land was hell-on-earth and the centre of that godforsaken cess-pit was Port Arthur named after the Governor of the Colony Colonel George Arthur. The lush, green, serene memorial that stands today bears stark contrast to the conditions that existed during its active years - 1830 to 1877 - of initiation, incarceration and punishment.


John Barnes: a 17 year old labourer from Northampton who received 15 years transportation for burglary. His last record shows him to be an invalid in Launceston in 1890.

William Curtis: house painter and brick layer from Bristol. Transported in 1844 at the age of 22 for stealing. In 1856 sentenced to life at Port Arthur for murder. After two sessions in the Separate Prison, was released in 1875.

James Foley: A city sweep from Cork who was sentenced at the age of 26 to transportation for stealing. Later charged with being in a brothel and stealing. While at Port Arthur he was charged with a number of offences including neglect of duty, flour improperly in his possession, and misconduct in talking to an officer's son without authority. He was released in 1875.


Port Arthur is a mesmerising memorial to the past of our country. I spent two entire days there: it is open from 9am to 5pm and the Bronze Ticket-of-Leave is good for two days and for return visits within two years. An Introductory Walking Tour came with the Bronze ToL as did a cruise around the harbour. To this I added a guided tour around the Isle of the Dead. There are information panels scattered throughout the buildings and grounds together with old photographs some occupying half a wall. Thankfully there are no reenactments or blaring commentaries. There are audio guides which few people were using.


John Kerswell: A Welsh plasterer transported in 1828 at the age of 20 years to 15 years for stealing. Absconding four times and charged with being drunk three times, granted ToL in 1856 and Conditional Pardon in 1857. However, he received 20 years imprisonment for attempting to stab a policeman. He was released from Port Arthur in 1875.

William Forster: At age 17 years was transported for ten years for stealing a box writing desk. Misdemeanour followed misdemeanour and sentence added to sentence until in 1864 he was sentnenced to life for robbery under arms. The last mention of him is in 1872 when he was sent to the Separate Prison for misconduct.

Alexander Woods: A soldier with the 17th Regiment, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Woods (aged 30) was transported from Canada to Port Arthur for 14 years for desertion.
Returned to Hobart with a ToL in 1853 but returned to PA again in 1865 for 15 years for burglary. He was a church attendant in 1869 and was discharged in 1875.


As I wandered around this memorial to power and man's inhumanity to man, I began to wonder if these men had not been better off here than in the tepid swills that passed for streets in London, Dublin and Glasgow. I wondered this as I read their life stories, gazed at their bedgraggled portraits, walked through their row upon row of cells, through the penetentiary, around the hospital, between the asylum and the Separate Prison. It was when I got to this last that I stopped wondering: the instant I stepped into one of the cells and the door closed behind me ...

Mortuary Station

Close to the western edge of Central Station there is a singular line servicing just one platform, the Mortuary Station aka Regent Street Station.

Opened in 1869 it ran special funeral trains to Rookwood Cemetery to the West, to Woronora Cemetery to the South and to Sandgate Cemetery to the North. It ceased this function in the mid-1930s, being used for animals until falling into general disuse. It has been restored and is listed by the National Trust - but stands idle. Locked. Patrolled.


These two images were printed in the Sydney Mail in 1901 just as the cemeteries were being "dismantled" in preparation for the 3rd incarnation of Central Station. On the left is the main entry to the Presbyterian Section which fronted Pitt Street and on the right is a view across the cemetery from Devonshire Street. The cemetery occupied the area bounded by Devonshire, Pitt/Regent, Chalmers and Eddy Avenue. Eddy Avenue is only 200m long and was named in 1898 after the recently deceased (1851 - 1897) Commissioner for Railways, Edward Eddy.

I can find no association between this line (built in 1869) and the Devonshire Street Cemetery (Brickfield Hill) which operated adjacent to it from 1820 until just before 1900. But the proximity is just too coincidental.