Alone or Lonely (Kanyaka Hotel) Traditional Cache
Alone or Lonely (Kanyaka Hotel)
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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The “ALONE OR LONELY” series of Bowz2 caches acknowledges the extreme feats of endurance and hardship encountered by the pioneers of our country.
Our pioneers lived and worked without the advantages of modern communications or medical knowledge and skills, in remote and isolated locations where help was often days away by horseback or horse and cart. Consequently the want to succeed in this harsh country was often paid with a high price by young and old, male and female alike...
Added to this, when civil registration (i.e. death certificates) was introduced to the Australian colonies in the 1840s and 1850s, the models used were from Britain. Whilst the intentions were admirable, the tyranny of distance and the climate meant that practice was often very different to the required procedure. This was evident with remote deaths. To strictly follow the processes in the heat of summer was quite impractical when faced with the disposal of a rapidly decaying body, let alone considering those unexpected deaths many miles from the nearest community.
A lonely grave could be considered to be a single or small group of graves outside a recognised / currently used cemetery that never had more than twenty graves.
You can often find very isolated single burials through to the small collections at disused railway sidings, rural homesteads and long forgotten chapel sites. Whilst many sites have no headstone, some are no more than rumoured graves but others are well documented, some are unknown identities (I.e. unknown stockman) but ALL have a story to be told.
Visiting these sites can provide insight into past history, a way to remember those before us, as they shouldn’t be forgotten and it might help us to remember just how easy we have it in this day and age!
NOTE: Lonely, does not always mean remote!. Colonel William Light the founder of Adelaide is buried in a city square but his grave is lonely in the fact that it is outside a regular cemetery.
ABOUT THIS CACHE LOCATION:
Richard Gloyne’s grave is difficult to access without a four-wheel drive over rough ground when the Kanyaka creek is running although it is only 100 metres east of the road to Hawker. As you travel north about 5 km on from the well known Kanyaka Station ruins with its own tiny graveyard and its own string of interesting stories you will come across an advisory sign indicating historic ruins.
This sign refers to the Blackjack Hotel that stood on the west side of the highway and has now virtually disappeared. The hotel was the largest building of twenty-two rooms on two levels in the Kanyaka township established in 1863. The main purpose of the town was in fact the hotel built to lessen the impact on travellers calling at the Kanyaka Station itself. In fact the hotel site predated the town having been an eating-house established in 1859. The hotel was given the name, Great Northern, but the eating-house name, Blackjack, was preferred locally.
Richard Gloyne came to South Australia leaving a wife and two children back in England to work as a labourer in the district. Local tradition has it that he fell from the balcony of the hotel, but why bury him just across the road on the bank of the creek? Perhaps this site was planned as the town’s cemetery?
Research reveals a possible answer to the placement of the grave a mere five km from the Kanyaka Station cemetery, which suggests that his body was not welcomed in consecrated ground. No death registration exists for Richard Gloyne and while this is not all that uncommon for remote early deaths in South Australia, it also signals the possibility of an inquest. It seems that officials were not all that clear on procedure. The magistrate should have arranged to forward the findings of the inquest on to the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, but clearly this never eventuated. Searchers can find a number of notices in Government Gazettes reminding readers of the need to procure Death certificates indicating that this was not an uncommon problem.
The inquest revealed that Richard Gloyne age 45 suicided by hanging on 20 March 1871.
Sources
GRG 1/27 1871 (23) Inquest 1871 Abstract 23: 23 Mar 1871
Geoffrey Manning, Place names of South Australia, 1990 p163
Hans Mincham, Hawker Hub of the Flinders, 1980 p27
Biographical Index of South Australians 1836–1885 Vol 2 p578
Info sourced from: (visit link)
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