Yorick Club focus for Brighton Cemetery guided walk
On 15 February 2026, Brighton Cemetorians will conduct a guided walk with the theme of Yorick Club members. The general public with special interest are invited to join the tour. Brighton General Cemetery is located at the corner of North and Hawthorn Roads, Brighton.
Formed in 1868 this was a meeting place for men from the areas of art, literature and science. Prominent members included Marcus Clarke, Henry Kendall and Adam Lindsay Gordon. Within the Brighton Cemetery are the graves of a number of well-known members, including Tom Carrington, David Wheeler and George Walstab.
After 155 years, the grave of Adam Lindsay Gordon has undergone major renovation in the last two years – underpinning, plaque replacements, and an information bollard. This is a great opportunity to see Gordon’s grave, learn more about Yorick Club members and also see other significant graves at Brighton.
ALGCC president Russell Harrison will be attending and would welcome other ALGCC members. If you are attending, please also let him know (Russell Harrison – 0400 825 220).
For the tour, bookings essential with Lois Comeadow, Brighton Cemetorians on (03) 9558 4248.
Melbourne’s legendary Yorick Club began in 1868, when 64 men connected to ‘Literature, Art or Science’ paid £2 2s each to become foundation members. Famed poet Adam Lindsay Gordon and author Marcus Clarke were at the heart of the ‘brilliant literary coterie’ whose exploits fuelled the myth of wild ‘Bohemian living’ during that era. Other members included notable ‘newspaper men’ and senior civil servants.
Join us to view the superb refurbishment of Adam Lindsay Gordon’s grave and meet other celebrated figures from that exuberant era. These include cartoonist, illustrator and writer Tom Carrington, former chief of Hansard David Dickenson Wheeler, journalist George Arthur Walstab and also to hear about other members.
The Yorick club began with a series of informal meetings at the office of Frederick William Haddon in Spring Street. Among its earliest members were Marcus Clarke and Hamilton MacKinnon (his literary executor), Adam Lindsay Gordon, James E. Neild, John Shillinglaw and writer/journalist George Arthur Walstab (1834–1909), author of Looking Back (1864), Julian Thomas (aka ‘The Vagabond’), barrister William McKinley, journalist Malcolm Stark, and James Duerdin, who served as secretary.
‘With a human skull for a mascot and rules that parodied the gentlemen’s clubs of establishment Melbourne, Yorick members gathered in rooms adjoining the offices of Melbourne Punch to smoke clay pipes, drink from pewter mugs, recite poetry and generally engage in horseplay. Money was tight so they constructed club chairs, appropriately, from bundles of newspapers.’ [https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/yorick-club]
Later members included Henry Kendall, George Gordon McCrae, editor Edward Thomas Fricker and the poet Patrick Moloney (1843–1904).
The club members originally met at King’s Café in Collins Street before establishing clubrooms above Haigh’s tailor shop, and within a year membership had grown to 100. What started as a lively, boisterous affair, the club developed into a respectable institution and expanded its criteria to admit men in the professions. For many years it had rooms at the Victoria Buildings, adjacent the City Club Hotel on the corner of Collins and Swanston Street. In 1966 the club merged with the Melbourne Savage Club, with which it had had a cordial rivalry for some years.