WHEN most people think of a cemetery, they imagine dark, foggy nights and sounds that make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.
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But for Leonie Brown, a cemetery is a place of connections, stories and family.
The Corowa woman has spent the last few years visiting grave sites across the Riverina, tending to them, cleaning them and taking photos.
"It started out as just tracing my own family history, which I've been interested in doing since my early 20s," Mrs Brown, who is now nearly 60, said.
"I'm from Tumut originally, and I had posted a picture of a very old relative's grave to an ancestry website, then someone contacted me about it saying they were also related, so we ended up sharing pictures of my great-great-great grandmother and hearing all the stories of her life and who knew who, it was so interesting."
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Making new connections within her own family tree sparked a new interest for Mrs Brown, who began to expand her horizons to a website called Find A Grave.
"Essentially, I go to various cemeteries, clean up the grave sites a bit and take a photo, then upload it to the website where people can trace their family history and learn their roots," she said.
"There's literally thousands of people doing it around the world too, it's like a huge network, and I'm just one of so many others."
Mrs Brown has been everywhere in the region from Batlow, Coolac, and Gundagai to Wagga, Adelong, Cootamundra and many in between.
While a lot of work goes into the process on top of working a full time job, Mrs Brown said she found being a part of Find A Grave fulfilling.
"It's very quiet in the cemeteries, I work in a bank, talking all day so it's nice to get the peace and quiet," she said.
"You also get to meet a lot of people though, believe it or not, and see the good in society still.
"Once, a younger woman brought her children out to a grave I was at, and to see the younger generations paying their respects was beautiful."
Researching some of the names she came across along the way, Mrs Brown said there were endless records of tragic stories behind the grave site.
"One of the graves belonging to a Walter Kitto in Tumut has always stuck in my memory," she said.
"He is buried there with five of his children who all died really young, and all in horrific accidents or from diphtheria.
"But Walter himself died when a tree fell on him while he was building a house in the middle of whoop whoop.
"There's so much sadness to it, but so much history, too."
Children's graves are particularly difficult to see, according to Mrs Brown, who said it can be draining after spending a long time surrounded by headstones.
She added that it was also sad to see so many unkept graves.
"A lot of times, someone has died with no family or friends around to visit and manage the grave site," she said.
"There's a fellow buried in Tumut, for example, who was killed building a dam in the Snowy Mountains.
"He'd arrived from overseas but still buried here, so had no one around to tend to it."
It wasn't always a saddening experience, though.
"There's a lovely young gentleman from Wagga who goes out to Cootamundra every month to tend to his wife's grave," Mrs Brown said.
"He has a chat and tells the magpie that sits in the tree above her grave not to poop on it."
The fear-factor often portrayed in stories around cemeteries was definitely not entirely lacking, according to Mrs Brown, who said she'd had a few scares over the years.
"It can definitely be a bit creepy, particularly if they're old cemeteries, but I'd also never go in the dark," she said.
"One time I had gotten home and started uploading pictures from the Batlow cemetery, and as I did that, the names for each grave site also started to appear, and the creepiest part was, the person uploading the names was also called Leonie Brown.
"It turns out it was just a massive coincidence and there was genuinely another woman of the same name doing the same thing in the area, but very weird nonetheless."
Mrs Brown said at the end of the day, visiting cemeteries gave her a sense of connection.
"Sometimes I think I must be mad, but when you start to link all these families, it's like putting a big puzzle together," she said.
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