Human remains of 5 people found on Sydney light rail to be laid to rest
Two years after human bones were found during Sydney light rail construction work, the remains of five people found under Chalmers St in Surry Hills will finally be laid to rest.
NSW
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Working class Sydneysiders whose bones were tossed around like toys by tradies digging on the CBD and South East Light Rail project are being returned to the earth two years later.
Rookwood Cemetery will conduct a service in the coming weeks for five Anglican and Jewish individuals found across two sites underneath Chalmers St in October and November 2018.
Further skull fragments, teeth, hips — but no complete skeleton — were found in 2019 during additional archaeological investigations at the two sites.
The private service at the Western Sydney cemetery will have five separate coffins and be conducted with representatives from the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, the Jewish Burial Society, Rookwood and Transport for NSW.
“By doing this we are giving these people the recognition that they certainly deserve,” Rookwood general manager of operations and historian Mark Bundy said.
“At least that person has that respect for their final farewell, whatever their belief is.”
In October 2018 staff employed by government contractors Acciona encountered human bones.
Footage emerged of a construction worker cracking jokes about the bones as he dug them up and tossed them out of a hole during night road works.
“Looks like a hip. Anyone need a hip replacement? Still good — only used once,” he said.
At the time, Transport Minister Andrew Constance described the episode as “some of the most horrible, I think disgraceful, footage I’ve seen for a long time”.
A year later the company was issued with a maximum $15,000 fine by the Department of Planning for “failing to comply with the Construction Heritage Management Plan”.
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The remains were found in the Jewish and Anglican sections of the old Devonshire Street Cemetery, established in 1820. To make way for the third Central Station in 1901, the remains of 30,000 people were exhumed.
“When the cemetery was closed about 5000 people were not accounted for and they were found under pathways etc,” Mr Bundy said.
He said the five people whose remains were found recently “would’ve each been the average person, the average worker”.
“Unfortunately they were the ones that, when it came to bodies to be exhumed, their poor families couldn’t afford it,” he said.
“The well-to-do were certainly well looked after by their families.”
Scientists from Sydney University’s Shellshear Museum were unable to obtain a proper DNA sample and so couldn’t determine who the people, so no relatives will be at the ceremony.
“The deposits in which the bones were located were heavily disturbed and there was no evidence with the bones that could identify their family or who they were,” Artefact Heritage Services principal Dr Iain Stuart, who investigated the remains, said.
Transport for NSW chief operations officer Howard Collins said it “is amazing that after extensive excavation for Central Station and connecting railway lines in the early and mid-1900s that human remains were found during construction of the CBD and South East Light Rail in 2018-2019”.
“It is pleasing to know that the human remains found will soon have a new home at Rookwood Cemetery where they will be reinterred appropriately and respectively and the history of the Devonshire Street Cemetery can be preserved,” he said.