Dead Central exhibition tells story of Central Station’s buried past
Before it was the linchpin of Sydney’s public transport network — where people are glued to their mobile phones — the site of Central Station was a vast cemetery. Its story is about to be told.
- Historic building welcomes Sydney’s new steakhouse
- ‘Like waiting for royalty’: new light rail milestone
Before it was the linchpin of Sydney’s public transport network, the site that would become Central Station was the dead centre of down — literally.
Between 1820 and 1900, more than 30,000 people were buried in the sandhills bordered by Elizabeth, Pitt and Devonshire streets in its former life as the city’s cemetery.
To this day, some of the bodies remain unaccounted for.
“They don’t really know the actual numbers,” Elise Edmonds a curator of the Dead Central exhibition, opening at the State Library of NSW on Saturday.
“Even though the gates closed in the mid 1960s, if families still had vaults were entitled to make internments in the 40 years after.”
IN OTHER NEWS
When in 1901 the State Government announced plans to clear the largely abandoned cemetery, which was officially closed in 1867, husband-wife duo Arthur and Josephine Foster began documenting the site through pictures and written records of headstones and inscriptions.
Ms Edmonds said the inscriptions took “you back to a different kind of Sydney” when people died young or, as one headstone read, “inhumanely murdered by their own servants”.
The Fosters’ work forms the centrepiece of the Dead Central, which runs until November 2019.
“The exhibition is telling the whole story of the cemetery, from consecration to its clearing and the completion of what we now know as Central Station,” Ms Edmonds said.
“When you are at Central Station now, everyone is busy. It’s amazing to think it used to be this quiet, semi-abandoned place in the middle of the city.”
The story is told over seven chapters in audio form, unearthing the hidden stories of Sydney and the many layers of what came before.
Ms Edmonds said when Devonshire St Cemetery was closed, the government of the day paid to exhume and move bodies to a cemetery of their family’s choosing.
But only a fraction of them took up the offer, as some of the deceased had either been forgotten or had no living relatives.
“They encouraged relatives of people who were buried there to claim their relatives,” she said.
“Only about 8000 of them were claimed. The remainder were moved to the Bunnerong Cemetery at Botany.”
The remains left behind were placed in new coffins, shipped onto trams and taken south to Botany. Some of the imposing headstones still stand at Bunnerong Cemetery today.
In November 2018, a worker on Sydney’s light rail project discovered bones under Chalmers St, Surry Hills — proving not every body made it out alive (or dead).
Details: https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/
Sydney’s skinniest waterfront has eyewatering price
Sydney’s skinniest waterfront is about to hit the market to kick off the year in real estate and it has a jawdropping price tag, despite its size.
‘Massive mistake’: Waterhouse’s plans for $100m home spark outrage
A plan by the former daughter-in-law of a late bookmaking legend to subdivide one of Sydney’s most expensive trophy homes has sparked a planning row among neighbours in the harbourside suburb.