Bali the holiday from Hell 147And can you verify that ALL cameras were turned off. If that was the case then it is YOU that is looking for a conspiracy theory. Question. Why would anyone go to...
Seeing plight in grave ends of tunnels
Jack Waterford (T2- Canberra Times, 30 Jun 2005)
"I wonder whether we should chip in to buy the monumental mason of this place a spirit level", I murmured as we solemnly planted my late uncle at Coonamble cemetery on Monday.
The dead centre of Coonamble has a population of about the same size as the town, about 3000, but those of them with statues, headstones, plaques or other outdoor furniture have a pronounced tendency to lean. It's not the monumental mason's fault. It's because the residents share their accommodation with rabbits. After a season or two, the most lovingly placed headstone will tilt to the left.
The grave, left undisturbed until the mound of soil settled, then lovingly given a patio of granite, and sometimes even a fence, will look very fetching for a year or two. Then the patio will break its back as the rabbits resume occupation (generally above the box) and they, and the very occasional drop of rain, create little landslips. Soon almost everything is noticeably skew-whiff. It's very distracting as one is trying to be solemn as last words are being said.
Mind you, it was easier being solemn this time than a few years ago, when my uncle's mother, a World War I digger (the last NSW one west of the divide) was planted when, finally, cigarettes and alcohol cut her life short at 95.
After the Catholic prayers and incantations, the RSL president shuffled forward for the RSL ceremony, stopped, started, mumbled, fumbled, lost his place and got the music wrong, leading one of my aunts to yell out, "If you come to my ceremony, Frankie, I will bloody well haunt you."
The rabbits, rain, rust, drought and a 50-degree range of prevailing temperature of a year nicely work with traditional agents of decomposition to make dust of men and women around Coonamble. If they want to be remembered forever, their sepulchre is not the place to start.
By my rough guess, a wooden cross will look like driftwood, with all painted or carved details obscured within 10 years; the life of lettering inside granite, basalt or concrete is about 25 to 50 years, depending on whether anyone at all tends to the grave, and flourishes of any sort (fences, stone or concrete outlines, pebble beds etc) 100 at best. Gold lettering, presumably at a healthy premium, is a complete waste.
Statues, no longer in great vogue, survive longer but increasingly tend towards Mecca or Jerusalem, rather than the heavens.
Cemetery at LeichhardtThere is a park in Norton Street, Leichhardt, not far from the Town Hall, which was the site of an old cemetery. I used...
One of the best known pieces of graveyard finery, a Celtic Cross at Louth on the Darling River in honour of Mary Matthews, first wife of a vague relation, Thomas Matthews, is so skilfully placed in relation to the sun that its reflection shines in the Matthews house at sunset on the anniversary of her rest about 130 years ago. The cross was so long in arriving, by boat during a drought, that Thomas was on to wife three by the time was positioned.
A good many graves are effectively unmarked. My sister has lain at Coonamble about 49 years, and I and my sibs would buy a headstone for her grave of only anyone knew where she was. There's a statue for her in a convent in leafy Wahroonga, in Sydney, but, things being as they are in religious communities, I expect that the convent will be sold soon for real estate development and the statue will end on the mullock heap.
Actually Coonamble cemetery is in far better nick than many a country graveyard, since it gets enough continuing business to warrant caretaking, though not to aspire to being a lawn cemetery.
AUS. 66th BattalionHi Jean, includes Royal Australian Regiment buttociation as at 21-4-04 After WWII the 65th, 66th and 67th Australian Infantry Battalions were formed as part of the Occupation Forces in Japan. In...
Heaven forfend: keeping it green would drain the Castlereagh River. In the smaller towns, graves go back to the earth very quickly, and, where there are small graveyards on properties, recognisability after about 50 years depends entirely on fencing and at least casual tending. Indeed the most permanent marker, favoured by poor Irish and Aborigines, is to put old bottles upside down in an outline of the grave. The dirt may, of course, end up covering the outline, but neither it, nor a rabbit is likely to disturb the shape, which is quite unmistakeable even to an ignorant trench cutter, or ploughman. The seasons wear even the bottles, though not usually by breaking them as it breaks everything else. Rather the sun gradually colour the glbutt, ultimately (usually) to a blackish-green. At that point, the greatest risk is of its being souvenired by a bottle collector.
