Kerima-Gae Topp does. She’s an authority on headstone symbolism and the meaning of inscriptions from past eras,many of which have slipped out of our collective knowledge.
The churchyard whisperer explains some of those mysteries in Talking Tombstones,a tour of the Mays Hill cemetery in Parramatta as part of the Australian Heritage Festival,which starts next week.
Parramatta’s Mays Hill Cemetery in 1979.Fairfax
Coincidentally,Topp spoke toThe Herald after attending the funeral of a colleague from community radio station Alive 90.5 FM,where she has played rock and roll requests for 30 years.
“It’s terrible when you go to someone’s funeral,and you learn so much more about them than you never knew when they were alive,” she says.
An interest in history and the role of treasurer for several cemetery groups in Parramatta qualified Topp to start outdoor churchyard tours when COVID and social distancing curtailed her day job as a bus tour operator.
The graveyard whisperer,Kerima-Gae Topp,does graveyard tours and Talking Tombstones lectures as part of this year’s Australian Heritage Festival.Steven Siewert
“There are three main words that appear on the older headstones,the oldest at May Hills cemetery for free settlers coming to the area dates from 1843,” she says.
“On the gravestone of Elizabeth McKay is the wordobiit,from the Latin ‘he or she died on’,followed by 9 October 1843. Her husband John arrived here as a valet to governor Gipps before he became licensee of the long-gone Australian Arms Hotel in Parramatta.
“After the date,it has the wordaetat,which means aged or at the age of,it has ‘aetat 34 years’. Another grave uses the wordrelict,again from Latin,the wordrelectus,which means left behind,so when it is put on a headstone,it is an archaic word meaning widow.”
Some graves are adorned with carved stone ivy,an evergreen that means keeping or clinging to the person’s memory. Urns on top of graves,she explains,are symbols from classical Roman times when people used to cremate bodies and put the ashes in urns. Daisies on a grave represent innocence,acorns mean faith and endurance,and a lily displays purity.
An angel guarding a grave at Highgate Cemetery,LondonIstock
A grave,Topp says,is also a good indicator of the wealth of the family of the occupant.
“The cemetery at Mays Hill is very simple. When the fashion became for marble,and the[bereaved] didn’t have the money but wanted the headstone to look like marble,they painted them white. At one stage,it was called the wooden cemetery. Compare that to Waverley cemetery in Sydney,the grandeur of some of the graves there with angels and carvings is totally different.”
She visits churchyards when she travels abroad and is a fountain of knowledge about churchyard trivia. Did you know escapologist Harry Houdini visited the Rookwood grave of William Davenport,who,with brother Ira,found international fame in 1854 with a supernatural box illusion calledThe Mysterious Cabinet?
Online reports say Houdini found the grave to be in disrepair and arranged for it to be fixed up.
Two cherubs on a stone gravestone in a graveyard in Suffolk,England.Getty
Perhaps the most famous epitaph? That on comedian Spike Milligan’s grave in the grounds of St Thomas’ Winchelsea,East Sussex. It includes the phraseDúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite:Irish for “I told you I was ill”.
The,organised by the National Trust,includes talks on razor gangs,the Parramatta Female Factory,the whaling station at Mosman,a ghost night at Old Government House and much more statewide.
Chief executive Debbie Mills said the National Trust was “delighted to invite the community to join the celebrations. The festival has been uniting the nation for over 40 years now,so the 2024 theme ‘Connections’ is very apt.”
The starts on April 18.