I recently had the opportunity to take a road trip, visiting family and friends along the way. All up I was away from home for 11 nights, and covered more than 4000km in the car. Plenty of music, plenty of podcasts, and plenty of time to think.
The main purpose of the trip when I set out was to catch up and spend a little time with family (and extended family) members, and a few friends. As far as that goes, mission accomplished. I missed one friend along the way as the timing didn’t work out.
But on retrospect, this trip covered a few more profound moments, apart from the pleasure of meeting and eating and drinking with loved ones.
I was in Ballarat just before All Souls Day and Dia de los Muertos, which both fall on 2nd of November. In the Catholic tradition of All Souls Day, deceased family members are remembered and prayers are said for them. Unless, that is, they have been officially declared “saints” in which case their day is 1st November, All Saints Day. The Latin tradition of Dia de los Muertos remembers and celebrates the lives of the deceased. Allied with all this of course is the idea that one dies twice: once when you stop breathing, and then again when no one is left who remembers you.
Thinking along those lines, I decided to find the grave of the grandmother I never knew: my Dad’s mother, who died in 1935 when he was just 6 years old. A little research at the Ballarat New Cemetery, and then a little more because I had her name slightly wrong, and there it was. While I have been assured I had visited the grave previously, I have no recollection of that at all, and I found a sense of some relief and completion that I had now seen her final resting place; the place my Dad used to ride his bike to every Saturday morning when he was a youngster, to talk with her.
My Nana’s grave (my maternal grandmother) is surprisingly close to where my parents are buried, in the same cemetery. It was nice to catch up, and leave behind some flowers, so that others can see these people are not forgotten.
Ballarat is also home to some impressive formal and informal memorials. The Loud Fence movement began in Ballarat in 2015, during the Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse, as a way of showing support for victims and survivors of abuse in the Catholic Church in Ballarat. The fences are a simple, but moving and profound memorial. A couple of times, the ribbons have been removed, and the response has been loud and dramatic each time. And the ribbons reappear, quickly. I think they might be there to stay as a very public reminder of some shameful behaviour, still very raw, especially in Ballarat.
Ballarat is also where the Eureka Uprising occurred in December, 1854. Despite some re-positioning by journalists of the political right, Eureka is an incident of profound meaning in Australia’s modern history. There is a fascinating back-story, the event itself, and the aftermath in the both the short and long terms - it all adds up to an incredible tale. So, I took the opportunity to visit the Eureka Centre in Ballarat East, where the original Eureka flag is displayed, and the monuments to both the diggers and the troopers in the Old Ballarat Cemetery.
As an aside, while I was at the Old Cemetery, I wondered how far back some of these grave memorials would reach. Knowing that the first European setlers came to the area in the 1830s, and then the gold rush from the early 1850s, I was curious to see if I could find any gravestones that remembered people born in the 1700s. And yes, there were a few.
Ballarat’s war memorials are special, too. Along with the Cenotaph in Sturt Street (every town has something similar), there is also the Ex-Prisoners of War memorial in the Botanic Gardens, and the very grand Arch of Victory and Avenue of Honour, with the Garden of the Grieving Mother close by.
One of the places I had specifically planned on visiting was in northern New South Wales, and I visited there on my home from Victoria. The Myall Creek Massacre memorial, near Bingara, remembers an appalling incident and its aftermath that occured nearby in 1838. This particular incident, one of many, many massacres and murders of indigenous people that occurred as Europeans required more land for farming was different in that the perpetrators were made to face justice, and a number of them were executed. You can read about the incident, the precursors and aftermath here.
I was the only visitor on the site during the hour or so that I was there. It is a peaceful place, and the work done to tell the story is moving and compelling. The memorial itself looks out over a beautiful rural setting.
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