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 ...

  I couldn't let the month of July pass without a tribute to some of those who gave their all on the battlefields on the Western Front in 1916. They never made it home to Australia but are remembered on family headstones scattered throughout Rookwood cemetery. After the horror of the Gallipoli campaign, many were patched up and sailed to France to join British and other Commonwealth nations troops for arguably worse horrors. The name Fromelles reminds many of the battle that caused the single the greatest number of dead Australian troops in the Great War. There were 5,533 casualties, including approximately 1,900 deaths. The number of dead included 15 sets of brothers and one father and son. The British Division suffered 1,547. The Germans around 1,500. All the more shocking when you find that this happened in one 24-hour period; 19th July 1916. If that was not bad enough, those that survived the bloodbath of Fromelles were then subjected to the Battle of Pozieres which ran f...

 On ANZAC Day it is fitting to honour the fallen. Today's blog is about a young man who played an integral part in rallying the troops - he was a bugler. ROBERT FRANCIS CROTHER WILKINSON Robert was born in 1894 to James Simpson Wilkinson and his wife Helena of Auburn and was one of six children. Robert enlisted on 28 August 1914 under his first name only - just 18 days after Australia entered WW1. He was the first young man under 21 from the Auburn area to enlist. His enlistment papers show him to be a Tinsmith (a maker or repairer of sheet metal). He was 5'4" with light brown eyes and dark hair and he held the position of bugler in the 1st Battalion band. A bugler had a necessary role to play in the military. The bugle was used to indicate daily routines of camp. Historically the bugle was used in the cavalry to relay instructions from officers to soldiers during Battle. They were also used to assemble the leader and to give marching orders to the camps. WW1 recruitment p...