Even before I started picking apart the family tree, I have spent a lot of time creeping around cemeteries. It was a part of the ritual every time I would hit the homelands - going to the Alice Springs Garden and General cemeteries, calling in on the family, and reflecting on the times I got to spend with each of them. It's actually generally one of the first things I do when I touchdown in the homelands, and am heading into town.
The same didn't happen for my maternal side. In truth, not knowing an awful lot about them, and having not met the majority of them, the connection wasn't there. We also don't have a resting spot for my "Cocky" (pop) Ernest. A tragic turn of events means that the urn containing his ashes was stolen in a house robbery and the contents disposed of in ways unknown. As I have constructed the branches of the family tree, I have placed so many people from my mother's childhood who she remembers clearly, but had no idea where family members. Those familial ties were not necessarily constructed for her in the mix that was the Clifton Hill/Collingwood area in the 1950s, even though it seems she grew up surrounded by family. I have postulated that this is probably a little due to privilege - my Arrernte family, in the face of legislation, has had to fight just that much harder to keep together, and so knowing who was who became infinitely more important.
I have been trouping around my local cemetery for years. It is very close to my place, and due to it being teeming with rabbits, it's an excellent place to walk my Jack Russell x Kelpie. She's never allowed off the lead - I would lose her down a warren within seconds. The local cemetery historical society has marked out some key graves of community figures, complete with a storyboard, so it has become to me a place of stories. I walk through, reading the headstones and seeing how people have reflected on their loved ones. Hagiography is obviously a thing - I am yet to come across a headstone that says "the dude was a bastard and I am glad he's no longer tormenting anyone" - but everywhere you look, you see vignettes of lives lived.
It was very recently that I found out that this local cemetery was not just a convenient dog-walking park for me. Rather, it contains part of my story. There is an unmarked grave in the south-western section of the cemetery that contains my great-great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Croker Waldron, together with one of her sons. Buried under the name of "Elizabeth Jenkins", Elizabeth arrived in Australia in 1863. She first married a John Sanders, and their oldest daughter Amelia is who I descend from via her marriage to James Emanuel Waller. Following his death, Elizabeth married a man named Henry Jenkins and had a further child, living to the nice old age of 89 years old. She died in 1925.
This particular section of the cemetery is full of damaged and unmarked graves. Apparently, over the decades, it has been prone to flooding, therefore making the ground unstable. Locating Elizabeth has really just been guess work - I believe I have marked out where she is, and I have used a couple of cemetery vases to highlight the area. I have contacted the cemetery trust with regards to putting a marker up, have found out that Elizabeth is still listed as the owner of the plot, and therefore by descent, I potentially do have the right to claim ownership of the site and put a marker up. The problem is proving this - from her to me inclusive, there are six generations. Therefore, I am but one of quite a number of potential claimants, and I am certainly not a senior claimant. The rules of the cemetery trusts, I will return to shortly after this next story, but here's a photo of how I first marked Elizabeth's spot.
The second story I have is of my great-great-great-grandfather James George Waller. As previously mentioned, researching this line gave me a lot of joy as it was via this that I found out that my maternal side was not completely white, and that I was the direct descendant of a Dutch-Burgher revolutionary. James becomes an example of someone who was legally a British subject, but who was actually a non-white migrant who got into this country prior to the White Australia Policy and my theory here is that this history was allowed to be forgotten so as not to inconvenience family members during decades of racist policies.
James George Waller was listed as "unknown" regarding his burial site on findagrave. He also didn't appear in the cemetery trust search engines. I didn't see how this could be the case - he died in Melbourne and it was likely he was buried here. I tried a different tack - I searched my great-great-great-grandmother Caroline Waller (Hodges). I came across a gravesite at St Kilda cemetery from the correct death year, and then did a further search on this cemetery for the name "Waller". In the same grave, I realised that a man listed as "John George Waller" was interred. I immediately shot the cemetery trust an email listing a potential error, while a friend did a reconnaissance job for me on the site. He found it to be marked out, but in disrepair and with no headstone confirming the identity of the inhabitants.
The cemetery trust officer was lovely and helpful. She informed me that there was a third occupant of this site - an Elsie Coventry. Through my research, I was able to quickly identify Elsie as their infant granddaughter via James and Caroline's daughter Hariet and her husband, Ebenezer Coventry. From there, I obtained a copy of James' death certificate to confirm his death date and resting site details, sent it to the trust, and after 115 years of incorrect records, we finally had a resting site for James - the grandson of Quint Ondaatje.
It was when I enquired about placing a monument to mark this spot for other descendants after so long that I hit a road block. According to, at least, the two main cemetery trusts of Melbourne, all burials are conducted "in perpetuity". In addition to this, all burial sites are also purchased "in perpetuity". So the person who owns a grave site can be completely different to the person who is buried in a site. This was the case for James and Caroline - the site remains the property of Ebenezer Coventry as he purchased it, and he retains this ownership despite dying in 1935. Despite me being a direct descendant of two of the interred people, I have no claim to this site as I am not a descendant of Ebenezer. I could get the site ownership transferred to me, but to do so, I would have to find a legal beneficiary of Ebenezer alive today, get them to prove their right to claim the site, AND then get them to also transfer their right of ownership over to me. In other words, I have buckley's. We're talking hundreds of people, countless legal wills, and so forth.
There is no flexibility in these rules, even this many generations down the track, and no common sense allowances. I did write to my local MP outlining what I saw as a problem, and his office was incredibly helpful. Unfortunately though, they passed me to the Ministry of Health, and all I got there was a woman from the office repeating everything to me I already knew, and completely missing the point of why I contacted in the first place. I was not looking for an individual path of what I "might" be able to do, I was looking for governments to consider revisiting cemetery trust legislation in a bid to give some common sense allowances so a direct descendant, after a certain passing of time, may have some ability to claim a site and mark it. One remedy she offered included asking the trust if I could spend the money to put a temporary monument on the site with the understanding that if an owner does eventually claim the site, I would remove it. In the end, I just got frustrated with this woman and said "perhaps I can just put a makeshift wooden cross on these sites with the names on it like I have seen others have". She said "that would be illegal", to which I replied "yes, and that's my entire point for contacting, here".
On one hand, these laws are great. They mean folks won't just be exhumed when the cemetery feels like it. On the other hand, they are ridiculous. More people are undertaking family research than ever before due to the availability of technology, and there is no way for us to ensure our forebears are remembered, and others who come to this spaces can see these people existed.
Finally though, yesterday, quite by accident, I came across an anomaly. I visited many family burial sites in Fawkner cemetery, and the majority of these sites were unmarked. In my great-grandfather, Cyril Purser Tuttleby's, resting site, he lies with an infant son named Raymond, and...a complete and utter mystery woman who appears to be of no relation at all. I have contacted the cemetery for clarification here, as this woman's death certificate gave no insight at all as to why she would be connected enough with my family to have access to be buried here, 30 years after Cyril's death. Perhaps they will have something for me, but if not, what this means is that while I may not have the right to claim Cyril's site and erect a headstone on it, a cemetery may have the right to inter a random person in a burial site. I await their information eagerly...
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