SOMEBODY’S DARLING

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12250, 23 September 1925, Page 7

SOMEBODY’S DARLING

“SOMEBODY’S DARLING LIES BURIED HERE” ERECTED 1803." A pathetic story I* told of the lonely grave on the hill, near Muller’s Flat in the goldfields, the inscription on which is quoted above. A man whose name was not known disappeared, and no trace of him could be found owing to the snow on the hills. When the snows melted the hody was found by a miner, who, with his pick and shovel dug a humble grave on tho spot, buried the "unknown” there, and erected a wooden cross, on hwich he roughly carved the inscription: “Somebody’s Darling Lies Buried Here. - 1866. ' This cross remained until it decayed with age, when a public subscription was organised, from the funds of which the grave was restoired and a stone erected, and surrounded by rail* ings. The Minister was approached and requested to sanction the spot being made into a burial ground, to which ho consented. Years later, on his de.athbed, the man who found the body of the unknown man and erected the original cross, expressed a desire to he laid alongside' the man he had laid to rest in the mountains long years before. The wish was complied with, and a similar stone was erected over his grave. The story was sent to England in the hope that some mother who had lost her son in hte goldfields might feel that this was possibly her son, and that his remains had been cared for.