I’ve been thinking a lot about headstones recently. This follows a trip to Victoria in early March 2026, after being invited to give two talks; one with the Mornington Peninsula Family History Society on Ann Simmons, a convict transported in 1823 to Van Diemen’s Land with her daughter. Ann features in a chapter in the Convict Women’s Press publication, Convict Lives: Mothers’ trials and tribulations. The other talk was for the Warrnambool Family History Group, about William Wall’s legacy following his passing in the small settlement of Hexham in western Victoria in 1894.
William Wall was transported to Van Diemen’s Land twelve years after Ann, but unlike Ann, as soon as he had served his term and started a family, William was keen to put the ‘green isle’ behind him. In October 1846, William arranged passage on a brig for his wife Mary and son Joseph to cross Bass Straight for Port Phillip. In August 1847, after disembarking from the Clarence at Lady Bay, the Walls pitched a tent in the newly surveyed settlement of Warrnambool. The opening of this country offered settlers like the Walls a chance to put the past behind them, but such opportunities to stake a claim on the fertile lands that abounded led to the comprehensive displacement of the Dhauwurd Wurrung or Gunditjamara peoples.
After building, owning, or leasing eight inns and hotels, two farms that I know of and investing in various land parcels, William, my two-times great-grandfather, outlived two wives, Mary and Eliza, who, between them, bore nine surviving sons and four daughters. William died a widower, his second wife, Eliza, passed fourteen years earlier.
Martha, William’s eldest child to Eliza, was 25 by then. Martha was the housekeeper and cook at the Woolshed Inn in Hexham since she was eleven. Living at the inn also were three younger sisters and two brothers. Eliza’s children were a generation younger than Mary’s older sons.
I stayed in Hexham for a few days in 2019, giving me time to visit Hexham Cemetery and the two-story bluestone property that was once the Woolshed Inn. The Inn’s name changed to the Hexham Hotel in 1901, and somewhere along the line, the building had lost at least one of its chimneys.
What I found at Hexham Cemetery surprised me, not what was there but what wasn’t. While researching the Walls and before that, in the 2019 visit, I learned William purchased a plot in the cemetery for himself and Eliza for £1.10 shortly before Eliza died in 1880. Eliza’s grave was situated apart under the shade of two fir trees in the Church of England section. The marble headstone was simply inscribed:
IN MEMORY
of
ELIZA WALL
WHO DIED July 5th 1880
AGED 40 YEARS
ERECTED BY
HER BELOVED HUSBAND
The inscription occupies the top half of the headstone, leaving space below for another.
William died in Hexham on 23 September 1894. His death was registered in Mortlake, a couple of hours’ horse ride from Hexham, but there is no grave for William in Mortlake. When I visited in 2019, Mercy Regional College in Camperdown managed Hexham Cemetery and held a receipt book dating back to the 1870s. There were two burials registered for Hexham in 1894, and William Wall’s wasn’t one of them.
So what did I make of this? William prepared his last Will and Testament in 1887, naming Mary’s sons, Joseph, George and John (‘Jack’, my great-grandfather), as co-executors. The Will stated that all of his household furniture, ready money, goods and chattels, and any other effects in the estate were to be split equally between the six children by Eliza and their heirs. Was this because his sons by Mary were financially independent and married?
Of his sons, in the years leading up to William’s passing, Joseph, who lived near Port Fairy, periodically managed the Woolshed Inn when his father was unwell. George lived in Horsham and Jack in Warrnambool. Thomas Lamb Wall died in 1887, Randolph was in Queensland, Frederick (Charlie) was married and farming in Warracknabeal, and William Lamb Wall (Jnr) was farming in the Wimmera.
Logic dictates that these older brothers, if not Martha, organised their father’s burial in Hexham’s cemetery. Shortly after, Martha and her siblings loaded some of the furniture onto a dray and travelled to Menzies Creek, never returning to Hexham.
I can’t explain why, out of such a large family, no one arranged for the bottom half of Eliza’s headstone to be engraved with their father’s details. I’ve been there and walked around Eliza’s grave. There is no second grave. Even Eliza’s grave has no border, just a headstone semi-buried into the soft earth.
The contrast between Eliza’s grave and the twin graves of William Lamb Wall and his wife, Mary Jane, in Jeparit Cemetery is astounding.
William Lamb Wall was the second eldest, born in 1848, making him the first white male born in Warrnambool. He benefited early on from his father’s support. William Snr bought a butcher shop with a business partner, and arranged for William Jnr to be apprenticed there, but a falling out led William Snr to take his partner to court. After many years farming in the Wimmera District, William Jnr went on to become a successful wheat buyer. From what I learned through the Wall clan, he was much loved by his family and widely respected.
William Lamb Wall married his stepmother, Eliza’s younger sister, Mary Jane, in 1871. The family included six children who settled on a farm between Nhill and Kaniva for about 20 years before drought forced them into Jeparit. Apart from being a well known and successful wheat buyer, William Jnr was also a magistrate before he passed away in 1913. Mary Jane passed away in 1940.
I had no idea what might be in Jeparit Cemetery, but before travelling to Victoria this year, I reached out to Craige Proctor from the Jeparit and District Historical Society. Craige is also President of the Western Victorian Association of Historical Societies. It was a fortuitous connection because Craige confirmed there were no Walls in the Mortlake Cemetery. As luck would have it, he was travelling to Jeparit the day following our chat and offered to check out the cemetery.
Two days later, Craige’s email arrived with photos of the Wall graves in Jeparit. I was astonished.
Atop William and Mary Jane’s twin graves is a stunning black obelisk reaching at least two metres high. My cousin, who worked with granite for many years inscribing headstones, thinks it’s Australian Imperial Black granite. It’s beautifully carved and polished, created by a master craftsman—the cost must have been staggering.
I keep thinking about the blank space beneath Eliza’s inscription in Hexham. What is not there speaks volumes, and I can’t help but think it was not about the money—or was it?
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