Daylight in a cemetery is never as haunting as when its decaying gravestones retreat into the silent hours of night. Of course, for some, this is enticing — so addicting you’d be forgiven for thinking that the mist rising from the graves tastes like blackberry ice.
If you’re familiar with intimate Inner West escapades, you’ll know that there’s nothing that gets an Inner West eccentric going like the thrill of hooking up in Camperdown cemetery (especially when it makes its annual reappearance on a newtown.affirmations bingo card). During the daytime, you’ll find an assortment of oddities amongst the gravestones: dog walkers, discarded lighters, tour groups, empty nangs, dead vapes. However, when night pulls itself from its tomb, so do the ghosts, and the laboured breathing or soft moans you’ll hear may not be emanating from those trapped between worlds.
Camperdown Cemetery and its surrounding areas are infested with ghost stories, supernatural apparitions and quirky-ly dressed people looking to fuck. Perhaps some might turn their noses up at this past-time, but which two subject matters are more taboo than ghosts and sex, and why not consummate that marriage? This is not to say that Camperdown Cemetery should become a spectre of sexual debauchery. It’s vital that we pay respect to the dark history of the place, particularly the countless Indigenous people and paupers buried in unmarked graves there.
So, how do we balance fucking with ghosts and respecting the dead? We figure out who can get fucked.
But before we delve into the vile and virtuous buried in Camperdown Cemetery, we have to understand its past, and why only 2,000 gravestones remain of the estimated 18,000 people buried there. The decision to resume the area as a public space is a horror story in many ways. To begin, the decision was made as a consequence of the 1946 discovery of the body of 11-year-old Joan Norma Ginn in the long, overgrown grass that covered the area.
Even before this tragic incident, stories had been circulating about “bad air” rising from Camperdown Cemetery for decades before. So, after the girl’s death, half of the gravestones were removed — many of which now line the concrete boundary wall of the remaining cemetery — and a foot of soil was placed on top of the area now known as Camperdown Memorial Rest Park (yes, that does mean that every picnic you’ve ever had at Campo has been on top of the bodies still buried there).
As for the remaining graves? Those buried closest to the church often had the funds to afford a resting place that was, well, more set in stone. But, as we know too well, having funds in the early years of the colony of so-called Australia often came at the price of others.
Some frankly heinous, as well as morally dubious people are buried in Camperdown Cemetery, but this list includes some impressive ones too. Therefore, consider this map a sexual smoker’s area — a sort of ‘well, if you’re going to do it you may as well do it here’ zone, and a guide to getting to know some of the other bodies you’ll be intimately close to.
1. Thomas Mitchell (1792 – 1855) — on May 24, 1837, Mitchell was on an expedition near Lake Benanee when he encountered a large group of Aboriginal people preparing for the sacred Dreamtime ceremony known as a caribberie. Mitchell killed several warriors that day, before returning three days later to kill another 10 Aboriginal warriors.
2. William John Dumaresq (1793 – 1868) — from 1830, Dumaresq was a magistrate of the Hyde Park Barracks Court of General Sessions, in charge of sentencing and punishment. Dumaresq was considered the harshest magistrate of the barracks (and that’s a tough title to achieve) with the punishments he handed down so severe that, following his death, the position was removed and new legislation protecting prisoners was passed. Dumaresq and his brother, William, were also responsible for forcibly removing local Aboriginal people from squatting runs.
3. Isaac Nathan (1792 – 1864) — considered by many as the “Father of Australian music”, Nathan was the first coloniser to study and appreciate the value of Aboriginal Australian music, though he would later misappropriate it. Nathan was an abusive father, and his violence would see his 13-year-old son (Charles Nathan (1816-1872), also buried in Camperdown Cemetery) run away from home, cut off contact with his father and eventually become a founder of the British Medical Association in NSW. After years of cruelty towards his family, Isaac Nathan became Australia’s first ever tram fatality.
4. Bathsheba Ghost (1809 – 1866) — first of all, can we appreciate that name? Bathsheba is one of the more well-known ghost stories of Camperdown. She was an ex-convict, forced to move to Australia and leave behind her husband and three-year-old son, and would later become the Matron of Sydney Infirmary and Dispensary. Her memorial stone in the cemetery is a round bollard taken from the present local hospital. Her son followed her with his own family, and she died a wealthy and admired woman. Many continue to report seeing Bathsheba in her matron uniform tending to her patients inside Cemetery Lodge and around the graves.
5. Thomas Watson (1795- 1859) — the harbourmaster of Port Jackson is a focal character in one of the attached ghost stories (look for the one marked by the Dunbar shipwreck, as he has an eerie and awful connection to one of the many victims buried there). Watson was also responsible for the commission of two statues of Cook (boo), including the one in Hyde Park.
6. Eliza Donnithorne (1821 – 1866) — Camperdown’s very own Miss Havisham, of Great Expectations fame (Charles Dickens, 1861). Donnithorne is rumoured to be the inspiration for Dickens’ famous jilted character. On Eliza’s wedding day, the guests were assembled, the wedding breakfast was ready, and Eliza was dressed in her gown, but her groom would never come. She spent the next 30 years shut inside her home, and when she eventually died, those who found her described the scene in a fantastical phantasmagorical way: dust and grime caked the building, the wedding breakfast had been uneaten and mouldered into dust, and Eliza was still wearing her bridal gown.
Camperdown Cemetery has many secrets lurking with the horny teenagers and 20-somethings amongst the headstones. Some have made efforts to reveal these secrets, though many attempts have been underwhelming, like with the one memorial vaguely dedicated to ‘every Aboriginal person’, which cannot begin to represent the countless persons buried there without markers. However, there is one memorial close to the gates that stands out to those visiting the area, whether that be to learn a little more about history, or simply just to fuck.
It reads: “In memory of the many humble, undistinguished, unknown, unremembered folk buried in this cemetery, whose names are not written in the book of history, but are written in the book of life.”
So, next time you feel like getting freaky, consider taking a minute to understanding which ghosts don’t deserve to be fucked with, and which of history’s truly horrifying individuals can get fucked.
