Wierd?

My beautiful, but wacky, daughter gave to me a funeral plot at the central Victorian Hamlet of Fryerstown’s Cemetery for Xmas! My daughter has a beautiful soul; she is quick witted, only in her 20’s she has to be beautiful and she is definitely wacky - that she would ring the trustees of the cemetery and confess to them that for her mother for Xmas she wished to buy her a cemetery plot!

There were 2 criteria to the purchase. Mum being entirely disaffected from her Catholic routes was not to be buried with the Catholics and that she needed to be planted near the grave in the old part of this beautiful cemetery that moves her most.

Under the gum trees of this beautiful cemetery, in the ‘old part’ lies one Elizabeth Smart of Hobart Town who died in 1861. She lies there with 3 of her children – one 5, one 3 and one 14 days old – they died within 5 days of one another. I often stand at this grave and I picture the agony of those that lost this large chunk of a little family, burying them and then returning to the grind that was their lot in life. Perhaps death was for Elizabeth the rest that she had been craving.

Two weeks prior to her death Elizabeth, under the cover of canvas and enduring the cold of the July winter frosts, sweated as she gave birth, the only light of that night being the reflection from the campfire; her only company through out the ordeal, the woman from the neighbouring camp. The husband waiting hunched by the campfire, listening for the other children who could sleep only fitfully as their mother’s screams punctuated the night, waiting for the wail that would signify the arrival of the infant. After wiping away the sweat and swaddling the baby, it would be back to work. There is the popular image in the goldfields of the mother in her crinoline cradling her infant as she toils beside her husband. Such was their lot as they eked out a living in the gradually dying promise that was the gold rush.

In 1861 the fogs that accompany the frosts and permeate the canvas in the valleys carried the miasma of typhoid. The tentacles of the miasma reached out thru the valleys and took the vulnerable, the tired, the young and the old. It took first Elizabeth’s 5 year old then her little 3 year old the next day. After this weakened with grief, breastfeeding and back breaking work Elizabeth was taken next and then the baby. Vulnerable in his infancy, a victim of the typhoid and without a mother to feed him what chance did he stand in a canvas city in the depth of winter? The girl that had left Hobart Town with her husband and hope in her heart was buried in the alluvial soil in Fryerstown with her babies.

For us in the 21st century there is a blessing that Elizabeth and her bairns where buried in the alluvial soil of the gold fields. For since 1861 the soil has eroded but left the gravel. This has left the silhouette of Elizabeth surrounded by the children that she loved in the gravel. The 5 and 3 year old on her right the 14 day old baby on her left. It is her statement saying we were here! In an area of unmarked graves thankfully Elizabeth’s grief stricken husband put a marker and it is this and the haunting silhouette’s that move me – the mother of the wacky beautiful daughter.

So I will use my Xmas present when my time comes and will spend eternity in the alluvial soil, in the non-denominational area proud to be a stone’s throw from the brave Elizabeth Smart and her babies.