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Reports from Belo Interactive contributors at the Olympics in Sydney, AustraliaJohn Banks' e-mail home I see dead people every day 09/30/2000 By John Banks / DallasNews.com 
SYDNEY, Australia - I see dead people, thousands of them, every day at the Olympics.
No, I am not hallucinating, despite the fact that I'm sleep deprived because my roommate's snoring sounds like a large bear/leaf blower/lawnmower. I'm deadly serious about the dead people.
Each day my bus to work passes the thousands of gravestones of the Rookwood Necropolis, the final resting place for more than 1 million souls. A plastic sign on a chainlink fence bordering Rookwood proclaims it is the "largest cemetery in the Southern Hemisphere."
We're told in Texas that it ain't braggin if it's true. Well, Rookwood, which covers 777 acres, may be bigger than some Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs.
It's so big that the Belarus cycling team trained there before the Games.
So big that the place has a book written about it ("The Sleeping City") and its own newsletter, cleverly called R.I.P, Rookwood in Profile.
So big that "a lot of people get lost here," admitted Diane Dunphy, whose title is even big. She's Rookwood's Secretary of the Joint Committee of the Necropolis Office of Trustees.
Diane has worked at the cemetery for a year. She says lots of famous Australians are buried at Rookwood. She enjoys working there.
"This place doesn't feel like a cemetery to me," she said. "I can see the city skyline and the Harbour Bridge.
"And all these dead people can't hurt anyone."
In a strange way, Rookwood looks like a pleasant place, with its rolling hills and cracking gravestones amid the brush. A neat place to walk a dog or go for a jog.
If I return to Australia again, I might stop by to visit. No plans to remain permanently, however.
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Track star 
1996
swimming gold medalist Ryan Berube 
