For my great-grandmother, Mary Ann

It was a clear, late autumn day, the sun warm enough to shed the coats we had worn out of respect for the occasion. A haze of smoke from the smouldering stubble on the farms lay low on the horizon and faint smell of burning hung in the air. The conversation from the crowd gathering at the cemetery gates was muted, broken occasionally by a chatter of welcome as people identified friends and relatives not seen since the last Kerneweek Lowender. The neatly-lettered sign on the cemetery gatepost had been freshly re-painted, sharply black against the whitewash of the post: 'Victoria Regina AD 1862. No 19. Act for the Regulation of Cemeteries. The Town of Moonta.' My great-grandfather Stephen had re-surveyed the cemetery in the 1890s. The cemetery, still in use, has been declared a National Trust heritage.

I found my cousins Brian and Glen in the crowd and we greeted each other warmly as if we had known each other a lifetime. In fact, we had only met since the Festival two years ago. There was an excited babble of greetings as I was introduced to Brian's sisters, seven other descendants of Mary Ann Quintrell (nee Datson). Despite our common ancestry, we had never met. We were gathered with others with similar purpose, to honour our ancestors. For us, it was in memory of our great-grandmother, who had lived almost her entire life at Moonta Mines. She had arrived at Port Adelaide on the 'General Hewett' when she was only three years old and, after a brief period at Burra, had moved with her parents to Moonta Mines. In 1865, she had married Stephen Quintrell with whom she had thirteen children. She died in 1934 at the age of 89.

As 1.30 pm approached, the crowd had swelled to about a hundred. Some were dressed in period costume: the women in long black skirts, knitted shawls over white blouses and jenny caps or straw hats decorated with flowers; and the men black-suited, with waistcoat and cloth cap or top hat; and the children in long, floral-patterned skirts with matching caps and black boots. Two children amused themselves walking along a line of limestone that marked the edge of the paths, teetering as if on a tightrope.

Two peals of the bell forged from copper that had been the core of the area's economy from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth centuries stilled the chatter of the crowd which parted to allow the symbolic funeral procession to approach the cemetery gates. A pony pulling a small trap bearing the floral tributes led the procession. The 'undertaker' led the way, resplendent in top hat and tails, accompanied by the 'parson' in black gown. 'Pall-bearers' in waistcoat and caps carried a mock coffin.  Children and adults in traditional dress completed the procession. A single violin played a hymn that reminded us of a simple faith—'Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.'

The procession paused at the gates as a statement of the meaning of the ceremony was read. With a creak of its hinges, the gates opened and the crowd flowed into the cemetery behind the formal procession. We paused at the site of the children's graves, our throats tightening with emotion as we recalled how hundreds had died in epidemics in the 1870s and 1880s, from diphtheria, whooping cough, typhoid, dysentery and scarlet fever, often courtesy of the drinking water which was collected in underground tanks and contaminated with polluted surface run-off. A quartet sang the soulful 'Abide with me, fast falls the even-tide', and the sadly longing 'I love the white rose in its splendour'.

We moved slowly to each of the allotted grave stations, hearing of the courage and stoicism of the pioneers of the district: mine captains and miners; the illiterate and the teachers; wives dying young in childbirth and husbands injured in mine explosions; and of those who endured grief and hardship. Then it was our turn. Brian and I stood at the edge of our great-grandmother's grave as her citation was read.

'… thirteen children … three died in infancy and a fourth in adolescence … widowed in 1913, so bearing alone the grief of the death of three sons in the Great War … her brother Hugh dead in a mining accident  …'

Brian and I bent and placed the wreath on the grave and stood in silence. I waited for some swell of feeling to rise, but there was only a sense of quiet reverence. I pondered on the difference between the life she lived and the one I enjoyed, and acknowledged the debt I owed to her fortitude and endurance. Somewhere in me, the same ability to endure must exist, but it has not been put to the test as it was for her.

  The procession moved on to the next station and I gathered with my newly-discovered relatives and their wives and husbands for family photographs. Released from the solemnity of the occasion, we broke into laughter and excited chatter and had to be shushed into silence as the formal proceedings at other gravesites were still in process.

Dispersing, we wandered in the cemetery, noting the names of other ancestors. I had relocated my mother's and father's grave markers to the niche wall at Moonta and I mused on the continuity of existence. A hundred and seventy years ago, no European would have stood here and the local indigenous people would have occupied this place undisturbed for centuries. The arrival of Europeans at Glenelg in 1836 would have gone unmarked by them but when, less than twenty years later, someone recognised the green tinge of copper in the rocks of the area, their lives were changed forever. The hunger for the world for the metal brought people flocking to the Copper Triangle, and our ancestors in Cornwall decided that the risks of sea travel and starting a new life from scratch were worth chancing.

  We stood in the afternoon sunshine, suddenly aware of the blood and bone that connects us as we paid tribute to the courage of our ancestors that has gifted to us riches they could not have imagined, and which we—sometimes unthinkingly, sometimes with wondering gratitude—accept as our due. And on this quiet autumn day, we acknowledged our great-grandmother, her courage, her strength and her gifts to us.

  Neil Quintrell   : June 2005

 

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