Something we do each month at Tough Guy Book Club (TGBC) is set a challenge, daring all members to complete a task and post a photo as proof on our Pool Hall Facebook page. Some challenges are fun, some are difficult, many can push you outside your comfort zone, but all have the purpose of adding another page to your story.
This month the challenge was to visit a cemetery with at least one other goon and leave it looking a bit better then when you arrived. Graveyards are amazing local common spaces that are full of history, but no one spends time there, let alone cleans them up. So, in July heaps of goons got together, visited their local cemetery, and filled up a bag with trash. The TGBC Pool Hall Facebook page was filled with photos accompanied with the #GraveGang hashtag as proof. And there were some cool as fuck pictures of our members, many dressed in black skull shirts, among headstones and monuments.
The exercise uncovered some interesting history within the cemeteries and gravestones. At Minmi Cemetery there is a grave shared by two brothers who died 80 years apart. Literary graves were visited including Henry Lawson in Waverly, and the Poet John Shaw Neilson in Footscray. TGBC recently read Shadowboxing by Tony Birch, and two goons tracked down the Gabriel Statue that was featured in the book, in Coburg Cemetery – Top work Dave Cheetham and Dave Cropper.
Special shout out to Tom Scott and Nick Pitts who seemed to be the only goons to go all in on this challenge and clean up their graveyard in the dead of night. The spooky setting was definitely in the spirit of the challenge. Special mention also goes to a Kingston goon who brought a chainsaw to clear a fallen branch from a grave, with no regard as to how that would be perceived in a public graveyard.
A common take-away across the club was regarding the general cleanliness of cemeteries, with the main offending material for rubbish being scraps of plastic flowers. A scourge across many cemeteries. Another was the fragility of life, with many taking the opportunity to reflect on loved ones passed, and the deeper thoughts of their own lives. Josh Schonfeld summed it up by saying, “Grief is wild, nearly eight years past and still can’t visit my Gran’s resting place without getting teary”
