Rookwood Cemetery Discoveries

  It's New Year's Eve so let's reflect on who has been revealed in Rookwood Cemetery Discoveries in 2023. The year has been filled with many published blogs about people who chose a life of service helping others as well as those who chose not to; tragedies that were heartbreaking and secrets and scandals that shocked us. A view of the Old Catholic section - author's own collection  My most popular blog was the one devoted to Lucy Farrow, mother of John Villiers Farrow, Hollywood producer and film maker and grandmother of Mia Farrow. The next most popular was that of the murder of Leticia Frances Cavanagh and followed by the Banka ferry disaster and slaughter of innocents. You also liked the story of the "bad" mother of Macdonaldtown, Sarah Makin. Henry Shiell, the City Coroner, was a popular read as was one about the secrets and scandals found in Section One of the Old Anglican Section. It seems I will need to find more titillating material to engage ...

  Islands attract ships and some of those ships are lost. There have been many shipwrecks in the seas surrounding Australia and today's blog relates to one of New South Wales' worst peace time maritime disasters – during a terrible year of such disasters - with a link to Rookwood. THE KEILAWARRA DISASTER OF 1886 In December 1886 the 784-ton steamship the Keilawarra, built in Scotland eight years prior, was heading from Sydney to Brisbane loaded with food stocks, casks of various alcoholic beverages, tobacco, paint and special cargo including two bulls and a heifer, a box of bees and two racing horses. There were also passengers and crew totalling about 80 under the command of Captain Buttrey, a man with some twenty years' service with the Australian Seam Navigation Company. Heading in the other direction was the smaller steamer the Helen Nicoll under the direction of Captain Fraser carrying far fewer passengers and crew. SS Keilawarra - NSW Department of Environment -...