There have been times through the last four years as I have tended to this Blog that I have wondered if doing so appeals to some narcissistic tendency which hides deep inside me.
By nature I’m not particularly vain. Quite the opposite in fact but I think deep down inside we hide a part of ourselves that likes to be well thought of and admired. I try to hide from the world as a rule but here I am again today, working the keyboard, putting my thoughts down on the screen, leaving myself open to ridicule and criticism, something I usually avoid in my regular life.
I suppose it all comes from self-esteem, never my strong suit but I guess it is linked to my desire to find out about my personal history. Where I am from. Who I am related to. To place myself in this crazy world and understand why I am here. And where I am going.
The photo above was taken in January this year at the Greta cemetery in North-East Victoria. The cemetery is 25 kilometres or so from the major regional centre of Wangaratta where I born. In colonial times the main road from Sydney ran through Beechworth and on down through the old township of Greta until the railroad was routed in a different direction and the town died as a result. It’s no longer there. Just a beef stud and ghosts of those who once inhabited the place survive.
Greta is most famous of course for being the home of one Edward “Ned” Kelly, outlaw and legend who lived at 11 mile creek, a few miles along a dirt road from the site of the old township. Ned’s uncle was notorious for burning down the Greta hotel-with a young Ned and his family and others inside it at the time! They were wild times in a frontier society and although it is now well and truly off the beaten track there is no doubt about it’s historic place in Australian history.
Greta cemetery is a about five kilometres or so from the site of “old” Greta. It’s situated on a crossroad which I am sure has caused many a hasty driver a panicked moment as it appears out of nowhere through the haze thrown up by the sunburnt fields which surrounds it.
My great grandparents and great uncle are buried in the cemetery and it is their grave over which I am hovering in the photo at the top of the page. Obviously they died well before I was born and I really know little about them except they lived and worked and died in district and I feel it’s only right to pay respects to them as I pass through on my way to somewhere else.
Ned Kelly, his headless remains exhumed from a nameless grave at the old Pentridge jail was re-interred in Greta cemetery a few years ago as per his final wish. His mother, sisters and brothers lie here too all in unmarked graves which gives them a privacy which they weren’t afforded in life. Let’s hope they all finally found peace.
I guess the crux of this post is that by writing my blog I am leaving my own little footprint on the world. No one much reads it. No one much cares for it but in pandering to my own vanity I am leaving a mark. I’m not going silently into the night. My name and my legacy is here for others to find. I don’t know much about my relatives and I often wonder what they were like. Would I like them? Would they like me? Would they be shocked by the world as it stands today, a world which has moved on and left them behind. I hope my descendants, if they choose to, may have a sense of who I was if they choose to read what I have written. I hope they want to find me.
Have a great weekend.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 