Autumn Contemplation in the Children's Garden

"Come up here, O dusty feet!

Here is fairy bread ready to eat.

Here in my retiring room,

Children, you may dine

On the golden smell of broom

And the shade of pine;

And when you have eaten well,

Fairy stories hear and tell."

 

Fairy Bread - Robert Louis Stevenson (1885)

 

Last Friday, a dear Flickr friend whom I made the acquaintance of before Coronavirus, and I met for the first time. We have bonded over time over history and fossicking for treasures. We always kept saying that we were going to go out and visit a cemetery or two (another commonality that bonded us), yet for various reasons, it just never happened. Like the kind and generous gentleman that he is, he took me to the Box Hill Cemetery in the inner Eastern suburb of Melbourne. It was a place I have been past before, wanted to visit, but just never got around to going there. We had a wonderful day exploring the graves of well known Melbournians buried there, including Sidney Myer, owner of the famous Melbourne department store on Bourke Street and Cyril Percy Callister, inventor of Vegemite (a product I have never acquired the taste for). A beautiful and well laid out cemetery, Box Hill also has some lovely Victorian and Edwardian gravestones, including this one of a child sitting and reading. I only caught a glimpse of the back of it. Framed by autumnal maple leaves, it was too good an opportunity not to photograph from this angle.

 

This image is dedicated to my dear Flickr friend as a thank you to him for his kindness, generosity and great company. I hope this is the first of many more trips with him to interesting and historical places I have never been to.

Done