UNDERGROUND RAILWAY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5050, 10 November 1926, Page 3

UNDERGROUND RAILWAY.

STARTING IN SYDNEY. RIDING UNDER A CEMETERY. When the underground railway is, in full swing—trains are; .already going into the new stations, established in connection with it at “The Cqn.tr.al”— the people of Sydney will be travelling not only under huge, buildings, but, on the western side of the city, in the neighbourhood of the Town Hall, under the old cemetery which was once thq main burial ground of Sydney, a,nd which dates back more than. 100 years.

The picks of the workmen who are engaged on the railway at that point are constantly laying bare the coffins of an earlier generation, some of them crumbling, others intact, apd pre occasionally faced with the grim spectacle df a bone or two. As a recognition of the unpleasant nature of their work, the men are getting substantially higher wages while in the neighbourhood of this old buriaj ground. Every day countless thousands of people, walk over this old cemetery, many of them blissfully ignorant of its associations. Before many yeprs no, countless thousands of people will still travel beneath it. The tunnels ‘for the railway are being driven many feet fdow the old graves. It is not the first time that the fore•fathers of the hamlet that is to-day Sydney have been rudely disturbed in their last sleep. They wiere disturbed first by the building of the Town Halil. In digging the foundations workmen revealedej large number of coffins. Thqn, in 1904, came the original electric light tunnels, which were driven through that graveyard. Workmen on the occasion came across a whole row of coffins .as well as a skull. Silver candlesticks tumbled into the trenches. The picks: laid bare even a pair of rusty manacles, grim reminders of the old days. It! was this, find tliat gave rise to .the view that some convicts had been laid to rqst in this cemetery. It looks as though at least ohie convict was not allowed to forget his cruel shackles even, in the spirit.