Gravespotting by Moonlight

Melbourne Cemetery Tour offers insight into Melbourne and Victorian History.

Idiosyncratic though they may be, moonlight tours of Melbourne General Cemetery are a marvelous insight into the character of Melbourne as well as a rendezvous with its colourful persona, past and present.

Where else are you going to get close and personal with Sir Redmond Barry who passed sentence on Ned Kelly- and who, despite a lifetime of good works, is remembered as "the hanging judge". A man about whom Ned famously remarked: “Where I go, you go". Spookily the judge died 12 days later.

Whereas modern day Melbourne gangster Mario Condello shot to death in February,2006, after his last supper at the Society Restaurant in Collins St leaves behind a beautiful plaque in the mausoleum. His epitaph makes him sound like a lovely fellow.

The National Trust conducts these tours twice a year - two nights during the full moon in September and at Halloween. Grave spotters clutching torches and (if sensible) dressed for the cold follow their guide over pathways often narrow and uneven so the pace may be funereal at times.

Every grave has a story to tell. Folk hero Peter Lalor who lost his arm in the Eureka Stockade and later became a member of parliament and speaker of the house had a sad life. Frederick Baker (Federici) leaves behind a ghost which haunts the Princess Theatre where a box is kept free for him.

There is a special section for prime ministers with the graves of Prime Ministers Menzies/Gorton and Holt although Harold Holt was lost at sea so his body isn't there. His epitaph says: “He loved the sea"

Our guide, Celestina Sagazio, is the author of several books on conserving cemeteries, so he knows heaps and if you ever thought the history of a cemetery is a sedate and well mannered affair that is certainly not true of Melbourne . Skullduggery and jiggery-pokery has peppered its 150 years of history.

Originally designed by Ferdinand von Mueller, creator of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, the cemetery was planned with curved pathways, trees and shrubs and with pavilions where people could rest and picnic... Most of these refinements have been overtaken by pressure of space and dirty dealings.

While the cemetery was poorly administered during the 19th century there is also scandal aplenty in more recent times. Questionable practices by the governing body between the 1940s and 1970s prompted the government to seek police involvement forcing the trustees to resign en masse in 1978.

Their offences included digging up and reselling burial plots, removing monuments and filling in paths and roadways for use as grave sites.

Grave swapping evolved in the decades following the Second World War when the administering Trust was desperate for money and the immigrant Italian community which had settled in Carlton (where the cemetery is situated) had plenty. The Italians wanted their dead to be close by and they were prepared to pay well for the dress circle.

The legacy today is that the oldest and most prestigious quarter of the cemetery situated near the entrance and historically reserved for Anglicans is now occupied by resplendent modern Catholic graves.

Many of the older more elaborate graves are falling into disrepair but according to our expert guide cemetery law dictates that the graves cannot be restored without the permission of the relatives because the deceased owns the plot.

A moonlight meeting with long forgotten and well remembered dead Melbournians, rounded off with some warming Italian nosh in Carlton is a night to remember.