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 ...

 As a member of the Helping Hands gardening group, part of the volunteer group that is the Friends of Rookwood, I often get my hands dirty. Our small group meet regularly and work on various areas of the original part of the Cemetery pulling out weeds, tending to some rose garden areas, clearing areas of dead agapanthus and tidying up (or what I call "resurrecting") some graves from a jungle of overgrowth.  In real estate it's all about location and I'm afraid it's the same in death as well. The areas that are closest to the No. 1 Mortuary Station where the Funeral Train ended its journey in the grounds of the Necropolis is where you will find the grandest monuments and vaults. That relates to all the denominations designated at the time of the design of the Cemetery, Anglican, Catholic, Jewish, Independent, Presbyterian and Wesleyan. No.1 Mortuary Station located in the Cemetery - Wikipedia At the moment we are concentrating on liberating some of the monuments in...