• Home
  • Welcome
  • Latest post
  • Sydney snaps
  • Tapitallee tales
  • At the farm
  • Short stories
  • About

Kathy Prokhovnik

~ Sydney snaps: what's behind what's around you

Kathy Prokhovnik

Tag Archives: Devonshire Street cemetery

Cemeteries and skeletons

09 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by kathyprokhovnik in Sydney snaps

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Devonshire Street cemetery, Old Burial Ground, Rookwood necropolis

I imagine for everyone there’s a place where the air compresses with the weight of collected memory. A street or suburb or dirt track where a child’s eyes saw the days go by, horribly long, frustratingly swift. For me those places lie in Burwood and Strathfield.

Driving through those streets that I no longer know, trying to get to Rookwood cemetery – blocked off by highways new to me but probably 20 years old – I find myself driving down the street where I lived until I was 10. I didn’t intend to drive down there, through that storm of tiny long-gone moments. The drivers around me knew the streets better, knew when to take the inside lane, when to slow for a turn, but they didn’t know the landscape as I did. I saw a place invisible to them. I could barely see what was there, my eyes expecting children on their bikes and scooters, our old fence, our tiny Morris Minor in the driveway, the white stucco on the house that, unaccountably, I hated. And yes, the street is narrower, the houses smaller, all the dimensions of the place are reduced.

The cemetery is also changed, so neat and trimmed. I remember a wild place, of fallen headstones and rampant grasses, a place I would reach by bike to ride around and feel the emptiness. Now it is tamed and signposted, the roads all smooth and the various denominations carefully separate.  I drive past a sign indicating the War Graves section, then the Muslim section, where large shrubs and small trees turn a cemetery into a garden. Three men with clipped beards walk back to a car. Paying their respects. My turn-off comes soon after, and I have to find the right set of people in this sombre time, where gatherings of mourners mill around with heavy, soft faces.

Historically, the dead don’t rest in peace in Sydney. The first cemetery that we know of was created in 1792.

In the early days of Sydney’s settlement, most European settlers died and were buried within a mile of their place of arrival. The exact location of these first burial grounds is unknown. The large number of deaths after the arrival of the second fleet in 1790 made finding a suitable site at a distance from the settlement a matter of urgency.[1]

The site chosen, at the corner of George and Druitt Streets, was used between 1792 and 1820. In 1869 when that site was required for the new Town Hall, the remains of those whose graves were uncovered by construction were transferred to Rookwood. Subsequent excavation around the Town Hall has revealed that this exercise was far from thorough, with the discovery of many more tombstones, graves, coffins and skeletons.[i]

When the Old Burial Ground was closed, the Devonshire Street cemetery was established, but this in turn was officially closed in 1888 so that the main train terminus could be extended from Redfern to Central. Relatives were informed that they could move the remains of their loved ones to a place of their choosing. The unclaimed bodies, and their headstones, were removed to Botany Bay in 1901. But again, not every grave was relocated and last week the entire country heard of the discovery of bones – believed to be from the old Devonshire Street cemetery – during excavation work for the ill-fated Sydney light rail project.

 

[1]https://australianmuseum.net.au/burial-early-sydney-cemeteries

[i]www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/history/foundations/BurialGround.html8/8/06

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • December 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • September 2017
  • June 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • July 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013

Categories

  • At the farm
  • Climate change challenge
  • Short stories
  • Sydney snaps
  • Tapitallee tales
  • Uncategorized
  • Wildlife in the city

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

%d bloggers like this: