In the past I have written and conducted tours for the Friends of Toowong Cemetery as I have more than a passing interest in local history as articulated through cemetery walks. Last Friday I had the pleasure of attending a nocturnal tour of South Brisbane Cemetery conducted by the Friends of said site. I say 'pleasure' in no small part because the tour was lacking the gaudy baubles and irritations (e.g. 'spooky hosts' in questionable costuming, pretending to be vampires etc, and scripts with inaccuracies) that are the hallmark of other night time tours operating in the local region.
My impressions of the tour aside, I decided to write a post because of a general sense of recurrent comparison that the tour guides set up between Toowong and South Brisbane Cemeteries. This comparative reprise had the tone of what might, in vernacular slang, be called a 'pissing contest' over which was the older, grander, more wonderful cemetery. Those which I explicitly remember had to do with the respective 'age' of each (marked by first burial), the number of people interred, and the fact that South Brisbane has "a [Queensland] premier too". On the whole, I found such comments to be quite pointless.
What directly prompted me to write was the reiteration of those same sentiments in the facebook event created for the upcoming tour on 24th August (http://www.facebook.com/events/424863900888632/). The first line of the event description reads: "Whilst Toowong Cemetery on the City's west-side lays claims to a number of Queensland's important pioneers and events, South Brisbane holds yet an earlier record of Brisbane's history".
Does it though? Both cemeteries were established in 1866. The first burial in South Brisbane took place on 1st August 1870. According to information gathered from the Council's Grave Location Search and also from the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery website, this was the burial of a lady named Jane Hocking (or Hockings depending on source). Presumably she is a relation of Albert John Hocking as they are buried in the same plot. The Friend's site lists A J Hocking as a member of the cemetery trustees. Other than that I know nothing further of Jane. Toowong Cemetery's first burial occurred on the 3rd January 1871, only a matter of months after South Brisbane's debut. The burial in question was that of Governor Samuel Blackall. Not a good place to start a 'pissing contest', Friends...
Looking again at the event page, we see that the two first mentioned topics are the 1896 Pearl Tragedy and the executed criminals buried in South Brisbane. Toowong Cemetery has both victims of the Pearl Tragedy and victims of the hangman's noose. Indeed, the latter are those from Petrie Terrace Gaol which predates the Boggo Road inmates that rest in South Brisbane. How is this proof of a "yet earlier record of Brisbane's history"? It should also be noted that the history which cemeteries bear witness to predates the burial times of those interred in them anyway. That is to say we have as much interest in the lives of the people interred as we do in the date and moment of their death/funeral/burial when studying the significance of a cemetery.
Although it barely merits attention, the event description also lists a "Lady in Black" as being a 'resident' apparition of South Brisbane. If one chooses to focus (or even believe) in such things then Toowong likewise has a catalogue of such characters, some genuine folklore, some the partial fiction of more recent story-tellers.
To conclude, I still find a sense of competition quite meaningless. Brisbane has a long and interesting history, and certainly enough of a colourful past to fill at least two cemeteries. The very fact that many historical events encompass persons memorialised and interred at both Toowong and South Brisbane is testament to the mutual importance of each location.