Paying our Respects

  'If a man does not keep pace with his companions

perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

Let him step to the music which he hears'.

The Beachcombers' grave - Dunk Island

This post should be titled Graves We Have Visited on the East Coast, not a morbid topic at all. Well maybe a little morbid, but it's nice to get a small insight into some of the people who have once trodden these same shores.

 

The epitaph above is a quotation from American philosopher Thoreau who inspired Ted Banfield, author of Confessions of a Beachcomber. The grave is Ted and Bertha Banfield's, two unsung pioneers of the early conservation movement in Australia. Long time residents of Dunk Island, Ted and Bertha were well ahead of the times as turn of the century sea changers after Ted retired from  his journalism career in Townsville, suffering "nervous collapse". 

 

Ted was one of the first people to write about the reef and rainforest as awesome miracles of nature to be preserved, rather than the contemporary attitude that regarded them as profitable resources to be harvested.

 

Although the Banfield grave is on the Queensland heritage register (https://heritage-register.ehp.qld.gov.au/placeDetail.html?siteId=30129), it is looking much worse for wear after recent cyclones and the inscriptions are almost illegible. We were able to visit it with thanks to the management of Dunk Island Resort. 

If you look carefully you can just pick out the inscription:

"Edmund James Banfield

The Beachcomber

Born Liverpool, England, 4th September 1852 Died Dunk Island, 2nd June 1923

If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears. "

 

"Also Bertha Banfield

Dearly beloved and honoured wife

Born at Liverpool 19th JanY 1858 Died 6th August 1933

Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge ---- where thou diest, will I die and There will I be buried."  

Confessions of a Beachcomber can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg and is not a bad read if you interested in the flora, fauna and history  of the area as well as  providing a bit of dry commentary on the practical realities of living the Robinson Crusoe/Thoreau idyll. http://gutenberg.net.au/pages/banfield.html 

The Banfields' is not the only burial site we have come across on our East Coast odyssey. Some of the most poignant graves are the unnamed ones we found on Flinders and Ingram Island of unknown sailors and fishermen, buried in isolated places far from family and home.

 

Aboriginal burial sites also abound through the far north, often in the most spectacular locations. We learnt that kinship ties, gender and a person's position in the tribe influenced the particular site that was selected and that this was based on traditions and relationships bound up in the surrounding landforms, reefs and sea. It sounds as though maybe the location of the grave itself is a form of epitaph.

Banfield was  interested in recording many of the local indigenous names and traditions for the Dunk Island area, before a lot of this knowledge was lost with the removal of Aboriginal people to the missions. 

 

Chinese shrine 1870s - Cooktown Cemetery

Tjin Ju Tsai

"Respect the dead as if they are present." 

Here is the Chinese Shrine in Cooktown cemetery.  The typical Australian eucalypt bush backdrop is so peaceful and seems so familiar to us but must have seemed so foreign and far removed from home for the Chinese gold diggers.

 

This last grave is one of my favourites. It honours Rastus, clearly the much loved dog of the Fitzroy Island lighthouse keeper. Rastus's grave has a beautiful outlook on the headland just below the Fitzroy Island Lighthouse. Happy hunting, wherever you may be Rastus.

Rastus's grave - the Fitzroy Island lighthouse keeper's dog.

"In memory of the Good Dog

Rastus.

24-11-1949.

 My Loyal and Faithful Companion

for 14 Years. M.V.R.

Men may smile  and bid you hail 

But wish you to the devil:

But when a canine wags his tail,

You know he's on the level."