| Hunching my back beneath a brolly, I wove my way through Kew Cemetery, a jam-packed cemetery, yet respectable and middle-class, a touch old school, of sardines and cement. With the coordinates scratched on a scrap of paper crunched into my coat pocket,I was aching for a headstone, a monument provided certainty. The previous day at Springvale Botannical Cemetery, I had located resting places for the two sisters of my great-grandfather, Charles Wilkins Cole, but they lay beneath turf, minus any headstone, any message from the past. One of my jobbies whilst in Melbourne, was to record for my family tree, these last resting places. Now, following a totally different ancestral line, I tried to make reality fit the diagram. I was searching for the eternal resting place of my great-great-grandfather, John Dunstan Tonkin (1912), and my great-great-grandmother, Jane Forrest Gibson Tonkin (1899). They were here somewhere. Some plots were mossy, some rugged. Some numbered, some not. Here was 669, so 888 and 889 could not be far away. |
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| Using my trusty walking stick, I gingerly negotiated a 180 turn ... and there it was ... T.O.N.K.I.N ... right before me. Solid. Grey. Granite. Respectable. Named. Befitting an iron-monger. My friend was as chuffed as I, and our joint whoops and hollers were fit to wake the dead. Almost. The two plots were within the one memorial, raised up and defined by a wrought-iron fence. JDT and JFGT, two infants (William 3 months and Percival 3 weeks), and one young adult, George aged 24 years. Plus their faithful daughter, Jane, who kept and cared for them, and joined them in 1930 aged 75. I will transcribe the weathered inscription, and faithfully add the details to my tree. I will share the images, and the exact location, with cousins. And, when I visit Melbourne next, I shall have gained permission to plant the grave with perennials. Some colour, and my own warm touch upon cold, hard stone. |  |
| This is my contribution to the Taphophile Tragics community. |