Life and death on the Sydney tourist trail
Environmental scientist and amateur historian Shlomi Bonet holds the top part of gravestone he found buried in his garden above the matching base piece at St Brigid’s Catholic cemetery in Breadalbane.When you buy a 170-year old hotel and start digging around, you’re bound to come across a few surprises. That’s what happened to Shlomi Bonet while unearthing an old landfill at his heritage-listed property in Breadalbane, a small village southwest of Sydney that just happens to make a fine day trip out of the city.
Standing on the Old South Road -- the first thoroughfare linking Sydney and Melbourne -- the Breadalbane Hotel was an alehouse, post office and staging post for Cobb and Co, the legendary 19th-century stagecoach company.
The hotel’s license to serve alcohol was temporarily revoked in 1865 after the then-publican Thomas Lodge was charged with harboring “The Gentleman Bushranger” Ben Hall, whose gang spent the night there after holding up another hotel down the road at the town of Collector.
What lies beneath?
Before the Breadalbane Hotel was converted into a homestead a century ago, customers got through thousands of bottles, most of which were thrown into landfills that now pockmark the property.
Over time, some of this glass has found its way to the surface, creating a colonial-era hazard for the current owner’s young family.
Bonet has unearthed a plethora of collectables while clearing the landfills, including old schnapps bottles, paper bullet casings, a silver belt buckle and one far more notable item.
“I had dug a lot of rubbish out and was very pleased with myself -- I put it all into bags and planned to take it to the tip,” says Bonet.
“But, then I hit something hard and become determined to dig it out -- don’t ask me why -- even though I knew it was probably just a rock.
“As I dug around the object, it became obvious it was man-made, rather than natural stone, carved with a slopping side and a pinnacle at the top.
“It wasn’t until I lifted it out of the ground and turned it around that I saw the words ‘In Memory of James Thomas McCabe, Born June 11th 1869.’ My mind began flying in all sorts of directions as I came up with theories on how this thing, which was obviously a tombstone, or part of a tombstone, ended up in my garden.”
The plot thickens
The first part of the mystery -- where the stone came from -- was straightaway solved after Bonet took a short walk down the road to St. Brigid’s, a rubble stone Catholic Church and cemetery established in 1865.
There he found the base of the tombstone he’d unearthed, along with the remainder of the engraving: “Died at his residence in Mummell June 10th 1890.”
At first, Bonet considered piecing the parts together, but settled on simply resting his find in front of the base piece, where it remains today.
An environmental scientist by trade, Bonet then committed himself to solving the second part of the mystery -- who broke the gravestone and how the hell did it end up in his garden?
He visited the cemetery in nearby Mummel (the spelling differs over time), where 16 other McCabes are buried. He went to the Registrar-General’s Office in Canberra and acquired copies of James Thomas McCabe’s death certificate.
That noted the cause of death as peritonitis -- an inflammation of the peritoneum, the membrane that lines part of the abdominal cavity.
Peritonitis can result from infection, but is more commonly caused by perforation of the gastrointestinal tract.
“He may have gotten sick. He may have fallen off a horse and impaled himself on a piece of wood. He may have died a thousand different ways,” says Bonet.
“But if James died of natural causes or by accident, why would someone go to all the trouble of breaking his tombstone?” he asked himself, the mystery assuming a biblical dimension in his mind.
Written in scripture
A clearer picture of what may have happened began to emerge after Bonet studied the psalm engraved on McCabe’s headstone, “O Lamb of God,” and learned of its use to mark the graves of grievous sinners:
Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
Ad that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Bonet thinks McCabe took his own life and was buried at St. Birgid’s -- instead of at Mummel with the rest of the family -- because of the stigma attached to suicide, the ultimate mortal sin according to some in the church.
And while the move may have placated the residents of Mummel, Bonet believes it ruffled many feathers in Breadalbane.
He theorizes that one night, after consuming a wee bit too much rum, a group of scallywags steered a carriage down the road, smashed McCabe’s tombstone in half, carted the broken piece back to back to the pub and unceremoniously dumped it in the trash.
But fifth-generation Breadalbanian Terry Hannon, who sold the old pub to Bonet in 2003 and acts as custodian of St. Brigid’s, isn’t convinced.
“I would not put my name to that because there’s no evidence to suggest it’s true,” he says.
“Someone obviously put it there, but we’ll never know what really happened.”
See it yourself
From Sydney, follow the Hume Highway south to the Breadalbane/Cullerin Road exit. Turn right at Old South Road. St. Brigid’s Church lies about five kilometers past the train tracks on the right-hand side. The cemetery is around the back.
Alternatively, catch a CountyLink train from Sydney’s Central Station to Goulburn. From Goulburn, it’s easy and cheap to hire a taxi to Breadalbane.
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