ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

The Children of the Goldfields
Maureen Clifford © The Scribbly Bark Poet

There’s J.A .Hayes aged seven days and Brierley , Hugh James.
Just two out of two hundred dead, most graves here bear no names.
They’re the children of the Goldfields – on God’s Acre now they stay,
their little graves are shallow - barely two foot where they lay.
Their families are long gone now, lost in annals of time,
most never scraped a living out from digging in their mine.
The gold was sparse and hard to find, the ground rocky and hard
and many children’s lives were lost, the price for every yard.

A scant acre of ground they spared, above the Pennyweight flats
so named because the gold yield there was sparse. Gold wasn’t at
this place, they claimed a pennyweight of gold would not be found
though one acre of soil be dug. This place was barren ground.
They knew the miners would not dig to find the golden ore
in this desolate patch of ground – a cemetery they saw.
A place to bury their children, and some were young indeed
their little bodies planted in depressions like small seeds.

A pick and shovel could not break that hard rock littered soil.
Made barely an impression despite many hours of toil.
Above ground, stone mounds now defined each young child’s resting place
with most lacking a headstone to even show a trace.
And down below this tragic, sad and isolated hill
were many excavations and people toiled until
each ounce of soil from round and square and wide holes deep and narrow
had been thoroughly cradle rocked then dumped into a barrow.

In 1857 the last small child was interred.
I thought I heard their voices but was only leaves that stirred.
Wind soughing through the eucalypts playing a mournful dirge
and none were there to hear it except me and my ears heard.
And when I closed my eyes, my mind’s eye saw again this place
just as it was in 1855 – a baby’s face
angelic in repose, with handmade lace around its brow
with blue veined eyelids closed in death – forgotten until now.

And once again I wept and shook, and beat my breast in vain.
And once again I felt despair and soul destroying pain.
How could that be? Surely it was an outpour of emotion
from one whose heart had just been touched by events set in motion;
too much heartache and sun, tiredness, imagination;
for I had never known this place so why such perturbation?
And as I walked ‘tween sandstone mounds in Pennyweight Cemetery
my heart welled with such sadness. Not a happy place to be.

Those little scattered rock-piles left me with a sense of awe
I thought about the parents whose children had passed before
their time on earth had been fulfilled, these children of the fields
dying from typhoid, whooping cough, and frail small bodies yield.
There’s J.A .Hayes aged seven days and Brierley, Hugh James
just two out of two hundred, for out here graves bear no names.
Their bodies rest at Pennyweight flats – and who pray mourns them now?
These children of the Goldfields, long forgotten until now.

In these days of high tech paediatrics we forget how the loss of several infants in a family was once virtually the usual part of family life. They had hard times, they needed to be tough in many ways.

I've been there on a freezing, windy day and it's a very sad place Maureen. Some of my family were gold miners not far from Castlemaine where the cemetery is.

Heather

Neville - sadly your comment is so true and we also overlook the fact that still indigenous childrens deaths are on average 2% higher than non indigenous childrens even though there has been an 33% reduction in those figures between 1991 and 2010. Indigenous children are still doing it tough.

My friend who sparked my interest in this story also told me Heather that the feeling at the graveyard was very eerie - she felt as if a thousand eyes were watching her - no doubt there are many little lonely spirits lurking there. Apparently the place is all but forgotten these days apart from the odd tourist who passes by.