Rockley (Jumpers Flat) Cemetery

Today was Rockley's turn after setting the alarm for 9.30 am and getting up at 11.00 am.  I got ready, fed the animals and took Nik and myself out for another drive.  Took me a little while to find the cemetery once I arrived at Rockley and ended up just driving out the other side of the town with the hope I would find an unsealed access road, off the Triangle Flat Road at Rockley.  

A couple of minutes south of Rockley on the road to Trunkey Creek, it is just the Rockley Trunkey Road on Google Maps and I could not see any kind of signage to tell me I was on the right road, but just as I was thinking I had gone to far I came to a sign pointing to the Rockely Cemetery.

Road leading to the cemetery off Triangle Flat Road

So the cemetery is literally in the middle of no where.  I drove up and over that hill, down to the right where I came across my first gate.

Gate One

I left the car at the first gate and decided to walk the rest of the way as I felt conspicuous in my vivid yellow car and felt it was less intrusive to walk.  

Gate Two entrance

After passing through gate one, I walked down a bit further and found gate two and the entrance to the cemetery.  Much to my relief.  At one stage I was looking around the huge site wondering where the entrance could be!  I made sure I had closed both gates behind me as I was after all on private property.  I was lucky I wasn't exploring the cemetery with the field full of cows but spent my time avoiding cow droppings getting there.

A little history.  The cemetery is still in use and is very large by rural standards, with wide spread groupings of headstones, most facing east in the traditional way.  Headstones date from 1864.  At least 260 burial sites were recoded in this cemetery with over 15% of this unmarked and now 'unknown'.  Most just have a small steel spike marking where the grave is.

There are a lot of Hanrahans in this cemetery dating back to the 1800's.  I was fascinated by the bottom two images of the two Mervyn Hanrahans.  Both dying very close together and only their middle name was different but were known as Merv and Pop.