Annie

Annie Ashby was my paternal great grandmother and on Friday I found her final resting place.  She rests near a beautiful gum tree in one of Melbourne's old cemeteries.  

The day was typically Spring like for Melbourne, windy with squalls of rain one minute and sunshine the next.  It seemed the perfect weather in which to make her acquaintance, unpredictable and beautiful all in the one day.

 

Annie was born in 1856 and died in 1901, a relatively young women.  There is nothing fancy about her grave.   There is no headstone or marker, her grave identifiable only by an old cemetery map and the names of those around her that are marked.

 She rests in the ground below the grass in the middle of the photo above and in between two other graves marked by stone/cement rectangles.

 

 She died in a city that had just come through a depression and there wouldn't have been money for a fancy grave.

  

  

Gum nuts found on a gum tree and and a few sprigs of flowers taken from a shrub growing nearby seemed to be the perfect components for an impromptu bouquet to place on her grave.

R.I.P Annie.