Louth and the Mary Mathews Monument

It is just a short 80km drive NE towards Bourke from Kallara Station to the small town of Louth.  There is not much to the village of Louth.  A school that teaches kindergarten through to Year 6 with a total of 8 students, a pub known as Shindy’s Inn (which is up for sale), and a cemetery where more people lie each night than currently reside in town.

In the cemetery, one headstone stands out above all of the rest, particularly as the sun sets.  A polished granite monument was erected by Thomas Mathews in memory of his wife Mary, who died of lung disease at just 42 years of age on August 19, 1886.  “Nothing so special about that”, I hear you say – “happens all of the time that a spouse places a special headstone on their partners grave”.  I agree, but this headstone and monument is more unique than most…

The monument is a polished granite pillar with a polished granite Celtic cross on top of it – the whole thing stands 7.6m tall (~25ft in the old scale) and was shipped overland and by paddle steamer from Phillip Island in Victoria (near Melbourne) to outback Australia.  The headstones' journey took over two years due to the river boat becoming stranded in a waterhole for two years during a long running drought!

Mary Mathews has quite an impressive headstone - even in broad daylight

Interestingly at dusk each evening when the sun strikes the cross that sits atop the pillar, if standing in the right place in the cemetery (the ‘right place’ location moves a little bit each day of the year), the reflection of light from the cross is nothing short of dazzling, even blinding for about three minutes.  After that time, the sun is too low in the sky or you are too close to see the full brilliance of the reflection.

As the sun sets the reflection gets progressively brighter

Stand in the right spot and the reflection goes from dazzling to blinding!

The really interesting part of the story, however, is that on the anniversary of Mary’s death each year, August 19^th, the reflection is at its brightest directly where the doorway of the home Thomas and Mary used to share once stood.  The home is no longer there but the love story is eternal!

I am not typically wowed by too many things but this impressed me greatly.

To wrap up this edition of WTF? – Where are The Farrows?, I will say that if you get to ‘see the light’ in Louth, be sure to have your sunglasses handy because it can be very bright!