Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 25. No. 12. 1962

Lawlor on Cemetery

Lawlor on Cemetery

Went with my father to tidy the grave at the cemetery.

"The cemetery was the Mount Street one and the grave that of my grandaunt. This old burying was a place of the arboreal serenity Gray's 'Elegy'. The many paths pebbled with small white .stones branched out from the Mount Street entrance, most of them running steeply downhill Any sounds in the city below were but a t murmur through 'be trees enclosing the grounds .The trees were ! many, beautiful and wild. Some, I remember, with yellow blossoms, possibly Kowhais. The graves were enclosed with wooden or iron railings and nearly all the crosses or memorial slabs were made of wood."

Such is the old Catholic Cemetery behind the S.U.B. as Pat Lawlor, author of the recent popular "Old Wellington Days" remembered it from boyhood days. Today, however, the paths are non-existent, the trees uncontrolled and many inscriptions almost obliterated.

"Puke Hinau. That's the Maori name for the Mount Street Cemetery," said Mr Lawlor. "It's also applied to the whole of Kelburn Heights. It means Hide of the Hinau trees. There used to be an old priest who practically lived in the cemetery, but I couldn't tell you his name."

"I remember top," continued he, "straying away from my father, and going to inspect the other graves." He recounted how after stumbling on an old family vault, he fled back in terror unable to explain he had played 'knick-knock' with the dead. That old vault is still there, although the little wooden door is slowly rotting.

Besides the good Irish names from Count Kerry, Wessex, Count Clare, King County, there is the grave of Captain O'Connell who arrived in 1840 with the 65th Regiment. He had fought with the Duke of Wellington at Babjoz, Vittoria and in the Pyrenees.

Miss Irvine-Smith remembers with nostalgia in "The Streets of my City," "Debonair Captain O'Connell. He gave a dash of colour to those early days when he whirled around in his bright yellow dog cart with its high steppers, the smartest equipage in the district. Do echoes of college choruses ever come drifting over the fence to that forgotten grave?

"When I ride out each day in my little Coupe,

I tell you I'm something to see."

At the top of the hill is the grave shared by three of the earliest Catholic missionaries. Father Jean Babtista Petitjean, who fought for State aid for Catholic Schools during 26 years of service in the Wellington settlement. He was the first parish priest in Auckland, and established the first Catholic School in N.Z.

Father O'Riley, first resident priest in Wellington, whose parish extended into the Hutt Valley and Nelson. He secured a site in Boulcott St. in Wellington where he erected the Roman Catholic church. This has since been replaced by the present Cathedral.

The Reverend Augustin Sauzeau, S.M., "30 years missionary apostolic in N.Z.

There also are buried the "Sisters of Mercy" the first order of nuns in this country. Sister Mary Agatha Crimino, Sister Mary Aloysius Golder, Sister Mary Catherine McEvoy, and Sister Mary Francis Dwyer are among them.

There are those graves which tell their own story:

"Maurice Edward Dee, who accidentally shot himself, June, 1867, aged 25."

Margaret, beloved wife of Hugh Bradley who departed this life Sept. 11th 1886, aged 25. Deeply regretted, also Margaret, his second beloved wife, May 20th 1888, aged 26 years.