USING a soft brush and water, Tracey Lyons gets to work washing away years of grime and pollution, making headstones gleam and gravesites return to their original state.
Tracey doesn’t know the interred who lie below her worksite, to her the important thing is their final resting place is clean, tidy and inscriptions can be read.
‘Gravesite cleaner’ is not a job description often seen and perhaps this is why so many graves remain in disarray years after the last person had placed flowers or tended to weeding and other maintenance.
There are many reasons some grave sites become this way, one is the most obvious and that’s the people who were connected have since moved or passed away themselves.
Regardless, Tracey said she feels compelled to do something to make each site a pleasure to look at even if the person below is unable to say thank you.
“The first grave site I cleaned and tidied up belonged to a woman named Alice, when I’d finished I got in my car to drive home and the song Living Next Door to Alice came on the radio,” she said.
“And now, my next one will be a double grave belonging to a couple.
“I’d like to do at least one to two a week.”
The grave sites she’s tending to are in Stone Quarry Cemetery at Jeebropilly.
The cemetery was once known as Jeebropilly Cemetery and before that Seven Mile Creek Cemetery.
According to its trustees, many of Rosewood, Ebenezer, Jeebropilly and Amberley district’s pioneers are buried in this cemetery.
Tracey’s work cleaning grave sites pays respect to their perseverance, and in some ways is a form of gratitude for how they paved the way for the rapid development that later occurred in the district.
“Where Alice is, there is probably about eight [grave sites] in that area, so I’d like to finish that spot first,” she said.
“I am going to work my way around.”
She has permission to go onto the property and take care of the grave sites.
This is why only soft brushes and water is used in cleaning, it’s the only products permitted.
“I’m always in need of fake flower donations and other materials suitable for the sites like small stones,” she said.
“My boss gave me a few bags of stones and some signs.”
So, why does this larger than life bubbly lady love spend time around the dead so much?
Her reply: “I don’t know, I just enjoy doing it.”
“When I first looked at the graveyard I thought it needed some colour and cleaning up, so I decided to do it.”
She treats each site as its own entity and revamps it according to gender and age.
While working she plays music from the era the person would have lived within.
“It just makes me feel a bit closer to them I guess,” she said.
“If I can get hold of any of the families, I’d love to do repainting of the words chiselled onto the gravestones.”
