Having sworn off cars in London ("What's the point," I would cry, "there's always the No. 38 bus?!") I have learned that, here in Sydney, having a car is a good thing. After all, there is no number 38 bus or at least none that compares - all Sydney buses are best avoided. The woeful timetables, the impossibility of crossing town from, say, Newtown to Paddington, the decrepit vehicles, the overcrowding - I have been known to go on and on about the pitiful state of Sydney's public transport system. This is a town that had, by the end of the 1960s, under pressure from the all-powerful petrol lobby, entirely destroyed its perfectly good tram network and then forgotten to replace it with anything else. I must remember to write to Clover Moore (Sydney's mayor) before I leave, so appalled am I by Sydney's public transport. (The people who ride it and the drivers who navigate it on the other hand are unfailingly polite and London's No. 38 bus passengers could definitely learn a thing or two about courtesy from their counterparts in Sydney).
All of which means that having a car is necessary to explore and navigate this sprawling city. Without our trusty Honda, courtesy of Daniel's mother, this blog would be much impoverished.
On Monday morning I had to take said car for its annual check-up in order to be able to renew what the Australians irritatingly call the Rego (registration to you or I). Our particular rip-off mechanic of choice is just up the Pacific Highway which means that, having abandoned the car to its no doubt expensive fate, I can eschew the offered courier service to the nearest station and simply walk home.
So there I was, tramping the six-lane Pacific Highway, extremely thankful that our recent heatwave had finally broken - an ordeal which began with seven continuous days of a life-quenching 35 degrees and culminated last Saturday with a temperature of 42 degrees followed by "the hottest night in history" (see The Sydney Morning Herald, Monday 7th February. 2011). I crossed the road to turn down towards Greenwich and, on glancing back at the side of the road I'd just been walking along, noticed that I had unwittingly been following a long wall enclosing an enormous over-grown tract of land. I re-crossed the road and tried to peer over the wall and through the tangled shrubbery, following the highway until I could see more. Soon, I spotted a crumbling gravestone. And then another, and another, and another...
I'd stumbled across a hidden gem, namely the Gore Hill (Catholic) Memorial Cemetery. An enormous swathe of land, completely neglected and overgrown (apart from one choice corner of which more later), surrounded by high-rise buildings and noisy freeways, established as long ago as 1868 but with its final burial performed in 1974. A tumbledown oasis. A grassy, wild-iris-strewn remnant. A testimony to the passing of time and to the ultimate futility of life, ignored by the twenty-first century which roars by on all four sides, entirely oblivious to its charms and caring nothing for its meanings.
Many of the graves date from the First World War and most of them are of modest size and appearance. However, there are some enormous mausoleums dedicated to wealthy families and some of the monuments have exquisite carving and decoration. What they all have in common is utter neglect...
I particularly liked this bird, forever frozen mid-peck, and these ivy leaves delicately picked out on another gravestone nearby.
As for the one groomed- and cared-for corner in this fearfully under-provisioned place (shame on you Sydney), it is dedicated to Australia's first and only-recently canonised Saint, Mary McKillop. She was buried here from 1909 to 1914 but, in the way of saints, her body has been removed elsewhere and, no doubt, bits of it are distributed all over Australia by now, displayed in little caskets and cases: fragments of bones, toes, hairs, strips of skin all delicately laid-out on velvet or encased in bejewelled glass phials. Catholics are so weird...
Here's what Gore Hill Cemetery has of Mary now that her remains no longer remain:
Bloody hilarious. Face like a hatchet and hands like spades. You wouldn't want to encounter her down a dark alley, would you?
My favourite gravestone was the following and, in case you can't read its inscription, here it is:
In loving memory of Bernard Bede Kieran
Died 22 December 1905 Aged 19 years
RIP
Erected by the public as a tribute to this champion swimmer of the world.
He won his laurels by courage, self denial, and patient
effort, His achievements and manly qualities will long
be remembered in this, and other countries in which
his victories were gained.
(If you ask me, from the looks of her statue, Mary McKillop will be remembered by her manly qualities too...)
Here is a photo of Bernard Bede Kieran taken from the web.
His illustrious (and unfortunately attenuated) career began very unpromisingly, so much so that by the age of 13 he was classified as a juvenile delinquent. Consequently, in March 1900, his mother had him committed to the nautical school-ship Sobraon. (I suppose you could do that in those days...) He then took up swimming and, as the monument implies, went on to win many a competition in both Australia and the big, wide world. When he competed in the King's Cup in London in 1905 by the invitation of the Royal Life-Saving Society a spectator shouted: "He's a fish not a man!" after a sensational record-breaking 600 yards in 17.6 seconds. Unfortunately he was to die but a few months later on the operating table, having his appendix removed...A good friend of mine (Gary) will very much sympathise with this tale at this moment in time having only just survived a similar appendicectomy. The appendix. Still a problem, over one hundred years on...
Here's to Gary Carter and to Bernard Bede Kieran, and to the excellent manly qualities of both!
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