Images of American author Erskine Caldwell’s poor sharecroppers and exploited workers came to mind when Little Darwin spotted a sign declaring GOD’S ACRE from a bus. Hitting the stop button , we bailed out and found the intriguingly named place is an early Brisbane cemetery within the busy Archerfield Aerodrome boundary . It became a dedicated cemetery after a l6 year old boy ,Volney Grenier, fell from a horse during a fox hunt on October 26, l859, and was buried there. His parents cut off three quarters of an acre of their property , truly making it Caldwell’s God’s Little Acre, as a family cemetery in what was then part of NSW . Other local pioneers were buried there, l6 of them Greniers.
As Little Darwin entered the consecrated ground , buzzed by a host of low flying light fixed wing aircraft and helicopters, there was a cross marking the grave of Leopold Hahm , 53, an l893 inscription stating he had a hard life on earth, but is now resting in Heaven. Of the about 280 buried there, representing 83 different families, several were stillborn, and the oldest , 92.
Over the years, the Archerfield drome played a large part in Australian aviation , Qantas planes using it on runs to the NT and overseas. There is a plaque in the passenger terminal commemorating the l934 first flight from Australia to the US by Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Captain P.T. Taylor, in the Lockheed Altair Monoplane, VH-USB, named Lady Southern Cross.
During WW11 Archerfield was a very busy base , much used by the US Fifth Air Force , the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, the RAAF and others.
There are photographs of Eleanor Roosevelt , the toothily endowed , always beaming wife of the US President , in her American Red Cross uniform , with Jean MacArthur , wife of the famous general , at Archerfield in September l943 . In the background can be seen the number plate of Mrs MacArthur’s staff car ,US-2, and she is wearing a fashionable hat and a large spray of flowers pinned to the lapel of her jacket. Mrs Roosevelt also met Prime Minister , John Curtin, in Canberra , and visited troops in camps, hostels and hospitals.
One of the crewmembers of a Ventura bomber who emerged uninjured when it crashed on landing at Archerfield during the war was Gough Whitlam. Whitlam joined the RAAF General Duties Branch in l941 , became a navigator, spent some time in the Territory , and when discharged in l945 had the rank of Flight Lieutenant .
The cemetery is now heritage listed and maintained by Federal Aviation and God’s Acre Restoration Committee , with a day of remembrance held the last Sunday of June each year. Not all persons buried there have been identified , so anybody who might have information is invited to contact the committee . There is an alphabetical list of those in God’s Acre which can be viewed online , two bearing the unusual surname of Barnacle. Should you choose to visit the cemetery and the airport, be careful crossing Beatty Road as Tobacco Road never experienced such heavy traffic .
