AustLit

'Meet the people who were often unwilling participants in the events that made headlines. In cemeteries throughout Australia, gravestones hint at our history – tales of early settlement, unsolved murders, love lost, mystery, tragedy, health epidemics, scandal and sacrifice. 'Grave Tales' reveals more than the headstone can ever convey by tracing the tumultuous journeys that lead to these final resting places.

'Journalists Helen Goltz and Chris Adams have taken a walk through some of Sydney’s oldest cemeteries to get an insight into the incredible lives of personalities that may have lived in the same suburbs, streets, and even the same houses as exist now, or unexpectantly came to rest, in Sydney.

'Using gravestones as their starting points some highlights include:

• 'The story of Henry O’Farrell, our first would-be assassin who in 1868 tried to kill Queen Victoria’s son. He failed and was executed with indecent haste, despite the fact he had long been suffering from a mental breakdown.
• 'The story of Australia’s own ‘Titanic’ – the tragic deaths of all but one of the 122 passengers of the ‘Dunbar’, which crashed and sank as it pulled into Sydney Heads, at the end of its long journey from London. The sole survivor, James Johnson was found clinging to the rock ledges of The Gap amidst the debris of body parts in the sea below.
• 'The unremarkable grave of Patrick Brady – the man linked to the bizarre Coogee Shark Arm Murders of 1935 which gripped the country and remain unsolved today.

'Also featuring missing person Juanita Nielsen, poet Dorothea Mackellar and ‘Mr Eternity’ Arthur Stace, the book paints an incredible picture of Sydney’s past; history colliding with the now. These are just some of the stories and personalities featured in the Grave Tales series.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)