“WORKING BEES.”

Otago Witness, Issue 3829, 2 August 1927, Page 18

“WORKING BEES.”

IMPROVEMENTS TO A CEMETERY. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, July 22. The spirit of civic and community pride which prompts tho citizens of suburbia to abandon their week-end jobs about their homes, and, as “working bees,” to do something for the improvement of their neighbourhood, is quickly spreading in Sydney. Ordinarily this is confined to street ornamentation, a -eneral clcanmgup, tho erection of a wooden church or social assembly hall, and such like work, but it has now taken a novel form in one old-established centre in the metropolitan area. God's acre there, a cemetery which is historical—in many respects, was looking sadly neglected. A local “working-bee” has now set actively to work to improve the spot, and to make it worthy of its hallowed associations. Among the workers were members of the Royal Australian Historical Society, including one old gentleman more than 80 years of age. It is a precedent which can, with advantage, be followed where some of the other old cemeteries round Sydney are situated. The time will come when most of them will be built on, as was the case with the old cemetery under the Sydney Town Hall, and when, in all probability, the more popular use of the scienI title processes of cremation for disposing of the dead, will supplant the cemeteries in the metropolis, but in the meantime not o few of them can be made a lot more presentable than they are to-day. It is something which is owing to the living as well as to the dead.