A popular way to memorialise ancestors and raise funds for charitable organisations is to place bricks in a memorial wall or path. Descendants pay/donate $50 or more for a brick that is then inscribed with their ancestor's details and installed in a memorial. Examples of this in Australia include Gympie's Memorial Lane and Adelaide's Settlement Square.
Today while holidaying in Western Australia I found a variation on this theme along the beachside path at Rockingham. Set into the path are granite plates about 40 cm square inscribed with details of pioneers of the area; these contained more information than what I have seen inscribed on brick walls and paths elsewhere. Use of such tiles for similar purposes may be common but it was the first instance I have seen of it.
My reference source Trove tells me "The Waterfront Pioneer Rotary Walk has ninety-nine historical granite tiles installed creating a public art walk along the boardwalk. Art Researchers Artists Arif and Audrey Satar consulted with the students from Rockingham Senior High School, community groups and the Rockingham Historical Society in designing the walk."
I photographed around 20 of these tiles that I will post on this blog from time to time. You can read the stories on two of them here.
While I was there I was wishing that I could upload images of these tiles to a site such as BillionGraves.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a site that allowed one to photograph, save GPS details and inscribe details of these and other monuments around the world.
Today while holidaying in Western Australia I found a variation on this theme along the beachside path at Rockingham. Set into the path are granite plates about 40 cm square inscribed with details of pioneers of the area; these contained more information than what I have seen inscribed on brick walls and paths elsewhere. Use of such tiles for similar purposes may be common but it was the first instance I have seen of it.
My reference source Trove tells me "The Waterfront Pioneer Rotary Walk has ninety-nine historical granite tiles installed creating a public art walk along the boardwalk. Art Researchers Artists Arif and Audrey Satar consulted with the students from Rockingham Senior High School, community groups and the Rockingham Historical Society in designing the walk."
I photographed around 20 of these tiles that I will post on this blog from time to time. You can read the stories on two of them here.
While I was there I was wishing that I could upload images of these tiles to a site such as BillionGraves.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a site that allowed one to photograph, save GPS details and inscribe details of these and other monuments around the world.
5 comments:
Have a great holiday. Being slightly OCDish, I would hve to photograph all of them, then load to my Grave Encounters blog!
Hi Jill,
Great blogpost. Made me feel nostalgic for my Perth days. What a wonderful way to remember and honour ancestors. How about History Pin (http://www.historypin.com/) as a place to upload these pics? Described as "Historypin is an online, user-generated archive of historical photos and personal recollections. Users are able to use the location and date of an image to "pin" it to Google Maps." on Wikipedia. Or this, 90sec video is a good intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdT3eKdto4w&feature=player_embedded
Thanks for the pics.
Cheers,
-Maria
They are great plaques Jill. I like the sound of History Pin which Maria suggested. Going to check it out now.
Hope you have a great holiday!!
I read your post, was hanging out the washing and thought "I'm sure I've seen a site like that." And sure enough, History Pin was where I'd been. Hope it's what you were after.
Other than HistoryPin there is the US site - Historical Marker Database at http://www.hmdb.org/ There is some Australian content on here.
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