Walk for about a kilometre along a rugged stretch of beach at Port Fairy, in Victoria’s south-west, and you will come across a sand dune. It is indistinct to the dozens of others along the coast. But should you decide to clamber up and over it, fighting your way through marram and sword grass, your eyes will fall on something peculiar: a marble headstone, almost 170 years old, appearing to be sucked into the undergrowth.
There were as many as 200 people buried in what was known as the
