The Third Class Precinct is positioned between the First Cemetery in the gully below and the Second Cemetery on the hill behind. In fact the Third Class Precinct was built in the late 1830s – then called the Healthy Ground – on the side of a hill facing west and overlooking Spring Cove. The west, which is where the sun sets, is associated with death in many cultures. Hence not only the quarantine cemeteries – and that includes the Third Cemetery on top of the same hill in what is now part of the North Head Sanctuary -, but the entire site of the Quarantine Station is appropriately positioned facing west given that it cannot escape the reality of the death in its historic role in isolating and curing life-threatening infectious diseases.
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HermeneuticianPosted on
20/04/2014Posted under
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Gelbe Hermeneutik 
This post was written in memory of Andrew Mills, a 26-yeard-old Leichhardt resident who was quarantined and hospitalised at North Head because of bubonic plague and who died on 20 April 1900. He was buried in the Third Cemetery. The post was written and published on the 114th anniversary of his untimely death. May his spirit rest in peace.
This comment was written in the former plague ward of H1 in the Hospital Precinct, possibly where Mills was treated and cared for a few days before his death.