The country around is quiet with a slight breeze whispering through the trees and grasses. Several cattle, rather good with condition, graze undisturbed in the next paddock not far from the timbered yards. I noticed a prickly pear or two but that's nothing to mar the neatness along the barbed-wired fence. There's no busy road with mad rushing traffic, although the Central Railway line runs not far from me and the coal wagons should be past soon. It wasn't hard to find and yet if I hadn't had help from the road gang it could have been missed. I was taken aback.
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The headstone is magnificent like any in a movie. Marble and in miraculous condition. I came with a heavy heart to look for a headstone, a reminder of a sad tragedy that happened more than one hundred years ago, and found serenity and restfulness here that I didn't expect.
I visualized a woman of forty, not much older than myself, on her own, going for a walk in the morning, uncomfortable in-child and anticipating with apprehension the summer's heat yet to arrive.
Agnes Gallagher had been ill, in "a poor state of health" for some time, and six weeks prior when her husband John took her to a doctor, he advised her to remain in town until the due time. With three children and knowing her husband would be away working, she chose to go home. John, a railway lengthsman, had left his home near Boolburra, on the Monday as usual, to work at the 170 Mile.
She suffered, not only weeks from melancholia, but also from great pain the day prior to her death and lying in bed could not even speak. The eldest child, a girl of twelve, had sent for her father when Agnes' illness was so bad on the Friday. Alas, he returned on the Saturday to learn his daughter, having missed her mother, had discovered the bodies of her mother and a prematurely born child in the paddock approximately 150 yards from the house.
There is no house here now. The family moved to Duaringa; nevertheless, I feel a warm, calm, contented atmosphere. She lies in peace and her inscription reads:
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In Loving Memory of Agnes Gallagher
Who departed this Life
22nd October 1898
Aged 40 years.
'Tis hard to break the tender Chord;
When love has bound the heart
'Tis hard, so hard, to speak the word,
We for a time must part.
Dearest mother we have laid thee,
In the peaceful graves embrace,
But thy memory will be cherished,
Till we see thy heavenly face.
The site is neat and clean with a small tree stump, recently severed at ground level, evidence of care. Somebody cares.
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Family Tree for Agnes Gallagher (nee Wright)
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Parents:
John William Wright, Catherine nee Nevin
Siblings:
Ellen Nevin b 1859,
unnamed b 1861,
Mary Agatha b 1864,
John b 1865,
James Edward b 1867,
Catherine b 1869
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This was the first story I had published. It appeared in the Quarterly Journal of the Central Queensland Family History Association in September 1997, volume 6, no. 5. p. 152.
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Copyright A Rodger Dickson � 1998 - 2011
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