Repairing the Headstones

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now I saw this on seven News tourn for Marty
last night.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
You know they're buried here. The gravestones were destroyed in
August last.

Speaker 3 (00:07):
Year, unfortunately potentially just smashed and maybe beyond any repair.
So we've got to work out a process of how
to respect what was there.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Well, repairs have begun on the headstone steamags and destroyed
in the vandal attacked at Drayden Cemetery and Lisa Herbert
joins us this morning to get a Lisa, how are
you going?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Good morning? Thanks for taking an interest.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Yeah, absolute pleasure. Listen tell us exactly what's happened and
what's going on right now.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
So there's a community group that was formed after the
sense of vandalism. The group is called the Headstone Healing Project.
So we've jumped through all sorts of hoops to be
able to access the graves that were vandalized and now
we've finally got permission to be able to try and
repair them. But of course that's really costly, so we

(00:53):
have raised some funds and we've allocated some of the
grave repairs to a couple of local stone masons. Incredibly,
Tafe Queensland has come on board because they offer stonemasonry
training from their tafe Acacia Ridge campus, Bretty. So yeah,
so last week we sent down five damaged headstones. So

(01:17):
the students at that tafe are going to get hands
on training and we get helped in the process, the
community gets helped. So it's absolutely brilliant for these students
who usually go into construction, you know, they do kitchens
and fireplaces and buildings, but they are actually going to
get to work on cemetery monuments and do some great work,

(01:38):
hopefully and hopefully little by little because it's a very
expensive process. We can fix this or for wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, that is a wonderful for what they've done, just
these vandals. And I noticed that you you gave some
of the vision to Channel seven news story last night.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Is that right? Ah? Yeah, well I was on hand
because it's fat fascinating to see how they pick up
these huge monuments without damaging them any any further. So yeah,
I got the vision. I was out there with my
phone and then yeah, we just gave the vision to
Channel seven and said here you go, because it is
fascinating how these stonemasons work in cemeteries. It's really cool

(02:19):
and that vision if you want to see some is
on my Facebook page of Cemetery Tours to Womba and
also I've just posted some photos of a couple of
examples of the damage graves. Like there's a little boy
who was four.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Years old when he died in eighteen sixty five and
you know, just to see his name face down in
the dirt. There's another guy who lived in Ipswich before
moving to to Woomba and he was born near bob
now Borel in Scotland and he actually danced for Queen Victoria. Wow.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
And I know it's that all these stories are amazing.
So to see these monuments in pieces is really part
of our history.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yes, respect absolutely, so we're gonna have to leave there
where Can people check it out your page.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
So they can have a lot. Yeah, Cemetery Tours to
Womba and there are links to the Headstone Healing project
from there.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, it's what people are talking about. Thank you,