Gravestones

I had an appointment with a tax accountant in Parramatta, a major commercial hub, on a hot summer day in 2021.

A few heritage buildings were sprinkled here and there in the heart of Parramatta CBD. They look like lost ghosts painfully looking for an exit. The main scene is office workers on a lunch break walking by. Not seeing the ghosts. 

While walking back to the car park, I noticed a low brick wall surrounding a land, about the size of a soccer field, even smaller. The sign outside read “St John’s Cemetery, oldest cemetery in Australia, 1790”.

At the entrance I stood and read pale photocopies of info sheets hung on the cemetery’s billboard behind a glass with fingermarks. Oldest burial was in 1790 when French Revolution was one year old.  

"To the memory of William New. Died May 7th 1839. Aged 11 years he has a fond father and mother and five brothers and sisters."   

Outside, cars and buses were whooshing by. A traffic light mounted above the wall turned red. I heard the loud chirpy sound of pedestrian warning.    

 

Engravings on old dark stones weathered. Oldest ones are not readable anymore. Like in all cemeteries it is not hard to figure out who was rich who was poor, who was hastily piled up reusing the grave once grandpa was buried alone, who was adult, who was child. Tiny gravestones of children who died of famine or pestilence. Lives cut short in a strange country scourged by sun.

Someone threw empty pet bottles and trash on a grave next to the entrance. I turned and walked away.

Further up I saw a dried rose left at the corner of a stone mound, engravings not readable. 

Someone cares. 

A sudden wind shakes the branches of an oak tree. 

Dead whisper, "remember us".