Waverley Cemetery

Family history or genealogy tragics just love this place along with the joggers and the browsers.
There are many Italian (Aeolian) family vaults in the high ground. Fantastic views and some good stories to read on the headstones. An angel adorns the top of a vault telling the story of a woman who died of shock at the opening of Parliament House in Canberra when a ‘plane crashed killing the pilot.
There is the Irish Martyrs Memorial on the grave of Michael Dwyer who took part in the 1798 Rising.
In order to take good pictures of headstones, you might have to visit of a morning for those headstones facing the sea and an afternoon for those facing away. You can dive into the cemetery but it is better to park in one of the surrounding streets and walk in.

This has got to be one of my favourite cemeteries, not only for the view the dead get but the beautiful pictures and old stones that are located here from times gone by.
It’s haunting. It’s breathtaking and it makes you value what you’ve had.
Well worth a stop if you’re doing the Bondi to Coogee walk.

THIS.
This clifftop glory.
This beautiful boneyard.
What a find. What a wonderful, enchanting find. I haven’t been so excited about anything since Blink 182 reformed a few years back. Where has this pocket of European-​inspired class been hiding? And why do more people not know about it? Maybe the whole graveyard thing puts them off. Fools. They’re missing out.
Go on a wild, woolly, overcast day, when clouds bunch like anvils on the horizon and the screams of the crows are ripped from their beaks by a howling, petulant wind that’s out to break things.
It’s a little bit macabre and a lot beautiful, the graves sprawl from a hilltop that runs down to a cliff overlooking the churning ocean. What I like about the whole place is the mess: there are rows, but they’re not super ordered, and everything has that look of aesthetic decay — shattered marble, broken headstones, spurts of ivy and rust so old and deep it runs back and purple. Jesus weeps, cherubs float, angels implore the heavens. Spectacular.
This damn thing was opened in 1877, gets no funding from the government, and is still a functioning cemetery. Plus I found the grave of one Victor Trumper, which thrilled me to bits. .. I don’t know if it’s THE Victor Trumper, Victorian cricketing hero and master of the bushranger beard, but I like to think it is.