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Panmure Cemetery Victoria

On the way to Warrnambool, I made a detour at Panmure. I was looking for the final resting place of my great-great-grandparents. I didn’t know so many Bants were buried there together. Imagine my surprise when I had driven past a dirt road named Bant St.[1]

 I turned off the highway in Panmure, the town where my granny, Ivy Bant, was born.[2] I headed down a street, drove over a bridge up a hill, across the railway track and parked beside the white wooden fence. I stepped onto the crushed bluestone path into Panmure Cemetery which was surrounded by trees of different sizes. It was a dull cloudy cold day. My feet sloshed in the patchy wet grass breaking the silence that prevailed.

 Near the entrance, I stood at a row of graves of my granny’s uncles. William and his wife had a stone slab with an engraved headstone.[3] William’s son, John, had a grave with an inscription etched in stone.[4] An orange-brown coloured headstone with a white painted wrought iron railing surrounded the grave of Christopher and his wife.[5] John Elford and his family also had an orange-brown coloured headstone.[6]

The grave of her grandparents, Christopher and Eliza Bant, laid in between the sons.[7] Their headstone was the highest. It was made of dark grey stone with a cross at the top.  Rusty wrought iron railing bordered the rock grave.

Down the grassy hill, the Jersey cows munched. One by one they walked over to the fence near me. I talked to the first and she hid behind the fence post.

Then it hit me. I looked around at the environment. It was not so unfamiliar. My ancestors were dairy farmers. The Jersey cows by the Panmure Cemetery and the green grassy pastures were like my granny’s parents’ farm in Bookaar. A place where I spent many childhood holidays.
Bant Graves.

Back of the Bant Graves from the Panmure Cemetery entrance.

Cow hid behind the post.
Jennifer Empey
Photographs by Jennifer Empey

Bibliography
Google Maps, ‘Bant St, Panmure’, Accessed 3 August 2018.
Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages Victoria.

 Notes
[1] Google Maps, ‘Bant St, Panmure’, Accessed 3 August 2018.
[2] Ivy Empey discussion with Jennifer Empey Footscray, Victoria, [date unknown].
[3] Death Index of William Bant, Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages Victoria, 22158/1952.
[4] Death Index of John Bant, Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages Victoria, 7615/1925.
[5] Death Index of Christopher Bant, Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages Victoria, 14946/1925.
[6] Death Index of Christopher Bant, Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages Victoria, 21688/1947.
[7] Death Index of Christopher Bant, Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages Victoria, 2792/1909; and Death Index of Eliza Bant, Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages Victoria, 6635/1922.

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