LOSING THE PLOT

I was intrigued when I first arrived here and heard that there was perhaps this early, forgotten pioneer cemetery right on the waterfront. Really - right on the city's main beach? I'd never seen it. They'd dug up some things they weren't expecting, it was said. Was the story true? The common lore is that headstones were found during construction of the Wollongong Entertainment Centre. As it turns out this story is nothing more than Chinese whispers.

You will find Andrew Lysaght Rest Park tucked around the back of the WIN stadium on the road that travels along the sea front, the cafe looks out over it to the horizon on the water. Named for a well-known and respected family of the local area, the artefacts of the rest park were actually held in storage for around thirty years by local council depot. I was under the impression, and thought I had recalled reading at the park's memorial wall, that the graves were exhumed in the 1970s and moved to Wollongong Cemetery, so there was no "discovery" to speak of, let alone any gruesome ones.

That said, I uncovered an act of 1969 regarding this issue of which part 10 clearly states:

" Remains not to be disturbed. The Council or the showground trustees or any person or body of persons shall take due care not to unearth or disturb the remains of any person who is buried in the lands described".

And section 7 states: "... remove from the lands described all headstones, grave enclosures and similar surface structures that are, in the opinion of the Council, not reasonably capable of being preserved and dispose of them at the discretion of the Council, and remove and re-erect in new positions on the land described in the First Schedule to this Act.The representatives of any person who is buried may, at their own expense, and with the permission of the Council, remove the headstone, grave enclosure or similar surface structure, and may, at their own expense, and with the permission of the Director-General of Public Health, remove the remains of that person to another cemetery for burial".

How many people did that? One family, who re-interred two or three members. It was a poor working class town that could probably barely scrape together enough for the shebang the first time around. Clearly the council did not see fit the "discretion" to replace anything at the time. A poem published in The Illawarra Mercury of June 17th, 1879 was already bemoaning the loss of and disrespect towards the site:

Headstones uprooted and prone.

Coffins exposed to the light.

Neglected, forsaken, forlorn.

A fearful and wonderful sight...

...The Dead on the beach disinterred.

I don't know if the muse carried the author away on potent romance, but it is true by then that it was already "old". It is the site of the first Roman Catholic cemetery in the area and burials date back to 1805. In 1914 the cemetery discontinued interments with, coincidentally - and somewhat ironically - the fourth and final member of the Lysaght family, after which the park is named.

The memorial wall in the Rest Park contains the names of 314 people known or believed to be buried on site. Among the names are some of the first residents of Wollongong including Jane Rose, who arrived with the First Fleet in 1788, and Andrew Lysaght, the parliamentarian of which the park now bears moniker.

They're sort of considered one of the "founding families" here. Andrew Lysaght Sr. became a local sporting and hotel identity as well as parliamentarian. He was the son of Patrick Lysaght, a convict who was transported to the colony arriving onboard "Mangles 2" in 1822.

Andrew's son Andrew Augustus (1873-1933), after which the Rest Park has been named since 1998, is the more "famous" one involved in politics and also had a very successful career as a barrister, specializing in industrial law and representing major worker's accident compensation cases. I keep running across his name during research on the book I am writing, in connection to the Mount Kembla disaster, in which he represented the miners before the royal commission in 1902-1903.

The common misconception is that the park is associated with the Lysaghts who were also a very well-known, and wealthy metal manufacturing family. The Lysaght family had brought the business with them from Britain in the 1850's. Post the gold rush they had already made their fortune here. Corrugated iron, wire, copper, structural, and roofing were some of their well-known products. The company eventually became BlueScope, which today is one of Australia's largest. There's also hotel, respite (Peoplecare) and credit arms of the company that are still going.

The photograph above of what is known as the "Orb" logo, I took in what is a disused core sample shed for the old Nebo Mine. It is on private BHP Billiton land but I had permission from the Mount Kembla Heritage Society to be there and look around inside. Amazingly most of the workaday ephemera is intact with trays of stone cores all labelled and neatly stacked in custom-made wooden trays where they were left nearly 70 years ago.

The Lysaght markings were all turned inside during construction so had survived from that period. the family left the area for Campbelltown at some point but to this day when people hear the name they immediately assume they are one for "success must breed success", and that the revamped "park" is to do with them. Let's put that to rest for good, excuse the pun.

There's not that many graveyards I know of that have been "recycled" in Australia. Thomas Rest Park in Crow's Nest is one I can think of, with a small museum and what headstones that could be salvaged grouped amongst the landscaping or moved to the sides to clear most of the area. There's Camperdown Memorial Park, taking the significant area around the drastically carved down remains of St. Stephen's Anglican graveyard. The Victoria Markets in Melbourne still has about ten thousand individuals beneath it. Both Town Hall and Central stations in Sydney are former cemeteries. I guess we're just not "old enough" or "crowded enough" to need to reclaim land most of the time.

The area has been reconfigured into a series of slick, modern courtyards with raised garden beds, in juxtaposition to the fusty artefacts from the original cemetery. It is quite strange to see the remaining headstones have been placed into a wall. The Lysaght memorial has been re-erected and the flagstones interpret the plots numbers with carved digits dotted about, while the rustic steel wall is decorated with surnames of the long-term "tenants".

People don't believe me when I tell them about it - but once they have seen it, it makes sense. Already somewhat illegible, I have to wonder how long those ancient markers are going to last in the salty sea air though.

Thanks to Carol Herben , historian, from the Illawarra Historical Society and Convenor of Friends of Andrew Lysaght Park; Clare Curtis, genealogist, from Mount Kembla Heritage Committee for their assistance with research. Also Phaedra Nunn-Smith for her childhood memories of visiting the Lysaght family.

All photographs © Darian Zam, 2010-2011, excepting vintage photograph of original cemetery, which is courtesy of Australian Cemeteries Index http://austcemindex.com/