Hely’s Grave
Posted: March 22, 2025 Filed under: Australia Leave a comment
Hely’s Grave is a heritage-listed grave at 559 Pacific Highway, Wyoming, Central Coast, New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by John Verge and built in 1836.
Hely’s Grave is the resting place of Frederick Augustus Hely, born in County Tyrone, Ireland, who ended up as superintendent of convicts in New South Wales in 1823. Was that a good job or a bad one? It must’ve been the equivalent of moving to the moon.
John Verge, the architect who designed this grave, also designed Hely’s house, Wyoming Cottage, which still stands and looks nice:
(Source)
Why did John Verge move to Australia? He was having success in London it seems. This may be a clue:
Verge’s marriage eventually failed and, in 1828, he migrated to Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, with his son George Philip, intending to take up a land grant.
His architectural legacy remains all over the Sydney area, I should like to go on a tour some day.
Frederick Hely’s son Hovendon Hely had an interesting career:
He took part in the 1846-47 expedition of Ludwig Leichhardt but was accused by Leichhardt of indolence, disloyalty and “disgusting” behaviour.
Interesting. More details are revealed by The Australian Dictionary of Biography:
Although described by Ludwig Leichhardt as a ‘likeable idler’, Hely joined his unsuccessful expedition of 1846-47. Leichhardt later accused him of disloyalty and dereliction of duty, after Hely and his relation, John Frederick Mann, had also disgusted Leichhardt ‘with their bawdy filthy conversations or with their constant harping on fine eating and drinking’.
Wonderful. “Likeable idler” is my dream job.
Ludwig Leichhardt, a German naturalist, had a curious nature.
His first expedition spanned a lot of northern Australia:
It was not without casualties. A vivid and blunt memorial to John Gilbert is on the wall of St. James Church in Sydney:
“Speared by the blacks.”
A second expedition doesn’t seem to have been much more successful:
Members of the party nearly mutinied after learning that Leichhardt had failed to bring along a medical kit. Faced with failure, Leichhardt seems to have suffered a nervous breakdown, and Aboriginal guide Harry Brown effectively took over as leader of the party, taking them successfully back to the Darling Downs.
Nevertheless Leichhardt kept at it. He tried another expedition and got malaria, survived, and went for one more. On this expedition, he went missing. Who was send to find him but Hovendon Hely:
In December 1851 Hely was appointed head of the official search for Leichhardt after the original appointee had drowned, but revealed little imaginative leadership. According to the Empire in 1864, the expedition ‘established nothing whatever’.
The fate of Leichhardt continues to inspire investigation, there are a number of intriguing clues like a brass plate and a letter recording an aboriginal oral history:
As for Hovendon Hely, he survived and had six sons and a daughter. Many Helys remain in Australia, among them both judges and murderers. So far as I know none of these Helys can be counted as relatives in any meaningful way, but any doorway into Australian history is welcome, and any explorations of that bizarre land are usually rewarded (as long as you don’t get speared).
If any of my Australian correspondents are available for a bit of field work, I’d like to learn why Hely’s Grave is reported by Google Maps as permanently closed. It’s a bit of a trek, an hour six minutes drive from the Park Hyatt Sydney. But on the plus side it’s across the street from a Hungry Jack’s
Carolina Whopper on me for anyone who reports.
Helytimes 