West Terrace Cemetary - Sagas over the Cemetery Wall
On the edge of one of the best planned cities anywhere, there was a disaster over the cemetery wall. Col. Light's designated place for a graveyard has seen rows raging ever since. Yet its heritage riches and tourism potential are undeniable, and so I invited our Postcards viewers into West Terrace Cemetery this week. It proved anything but morbid. Rather, it is a beautiful and surprising walk.
The latest cleanup by the new managers, The Enfield General Cemetery Trust, has yielded pleasant results. The old turn-of-the-century manager's residence, now much more visible from West Terrace, is a Museum space. "Beautiful Burials - the Ancient Egyptian Way" is currently on display.
With this year being the 160th anniversary of keeping records here, it soon became obvious that some big names came for their last ride through the gates. From close by traffic lanes, for instance, you can see the great sarcophagus, or stone coffin, of Sir John Langdon Bonython. He certainly left his mark. As proprietor of "The Advertiser", he lived at Carclew on the North Adelaide hill. A century ago he was preparing to become a member of the first Commonwealth Parliament. With a substantial gift, he ensured the completion of Parliament House on North Terrace - it had waited 50 years, and The University of Adelaide's Bonython Hall at the end of Pulteney Street rose from another gift.
There are plenty of other big names in West Terrace Cemetery tooÖJohn Martin, of department store fame for instance. He probably just rolled over in his grave with its demise. F.H. Faulding is buried here, the pharmacist who created what has become an international company. There's a vault for Sir Henry Ayers and family. Several times Premier, he is the Ayers of Ayers Rock and Ayers House on North Terrace.
On the northern edge of the cemetery, only the entrance gates remain to a South Australian first. The slate once led the way in cremation. In 1902, Australia's first crematorium was built here, and it remained the only one in the new nation for more than twenty years. Another raging debate preceded its construction.
The Catholic Church though it was the work of the devil, but hey were having trouble with the "six-feet-under" traditional burial method. Walking amongst the ornate clusters of headstone and monuments, it was hard to imagine the winter scene here with the water table coming within thirty or forty centimetres - a foot or two - of the ground level. Coffins floated during the last rites. It's no wonder one newspaper in the 1800's blasted the main cemetery as "a serious evil in our city".
The hard-fought-for Catholic section has its own separate entrance, which leads to the small but beautiful gothic Smyth Chapel. In this section, as with all of them, there are surprising and different headstones. A marble bass drum, for instance, sits over the grave of a young musician killed in a Devil's Elbow crash. And hiding by the olive-tree-border, a beautiful piece of stone-carving on a headstone for a jockey. He sits in his colours on the horse from which he fell.
Not so long ago, the grass grew up to your ears in here. They even had an animal burn-off until about thirty years ago. Now, there's still a tumbleweed tangle occasionally amid the tight grave sites, but the area is much cleaner. It's a quick place for a fascinating stroll where grand and delicate memorials mingle.
For a few years, West Terrace Cemetery stayed within Col. Light's oval plan in the western parklands. It eventually spread, however, down to the railway lines. Before that, on the old edge on the rise, thee was a "Grandview Graves" group of memorials. Standing among them today, you can imagine visitors looking all the way to the coast. Captain Lipson's tombstone is thereÖthe colony's first naval officer, he had served with Lord Nelson. The colonial architect and surveyor, Kingston, and the great federationist, his son Charles Cameron Kingston, are buried in a family plot.
Some of the oldest graves, however, are scattered, and that was because of a particularly wayward first administrator. I invited State historian and cemetery history specialist, Robert Nicol, to explain.
"John Monek didn't know what a straight line looked like", he told us by his well-preserved slate memorial. The first section came out with the first colonial chaplain, buried a few paces away, and was involved in several scandals.
"What about the draining story?", I asked. Robert responded with the grisly tale about Monek dropping departed destitutes bodies onto the new gravel base of the drains (to diminish the waterlogging) and then back filling the earth on top of them. Robert Nicol is on the Trust that runs the cemetery, and he takes tours as he can fit them in.
While the nineteenth century marble angels and stationary that abounds was almost all imported from Italy, the stench was entirely local. Unfortunately, West Terrace Cemetery was blamed for every pong this side of the black stump. "Deleterious exhalations!" That's what they called them in the Victorian era, and they seriously believed they could catch something deadly from the vapors. Rest assured, you'll catch nothing more than a desire to return when you come in for a walk.
The stories in the vast graveyard are endless. There are about thirty thousand memorials. Under a gum tree, for instance, there's a touch of the French Revolution. The gravestone of Georgianna Thomasina Desvignes Poole notes that her grandparents' heads rolled, literally, as they were guillotined along with Louis XVI.
On the memorial for young James Breen is an "action-carving", depicting his fatal fall as he took part in a fox-hunt at Stepney. And there's a verse, too.
"Mark the brief story of a summer's day At noon, in youth and health he rode away "Ere night had fallen, death quenched his life A desolate home. A mourning wife".
There are guided tours monthly on Sunday afternoons, and the on-site office has the details. In Victorian times, it was all the go to perambulate - to stroll through the cemetery on a Sunday afternoon to admire the fine memorials. This, the 160th anniversary of official-record-keeping, would be a good year to revive the custom in the very historic and fascinating West Terrace Cemetery.
Details:
West Terrace Cemetery
West Terrace,
Adelaide. SA 5000
Phone: 08-8231-2062Open every day during daylight hours.
For more information you can email info@postcards.sa.com.au
