Newcastle, New South Wales

Historic Post Office building, Hunter Street, Newcastle

Christ Church Cathedral, Newcastle, New South Wales

Christ church Cathedral, Newcastle NSW (from: www.freewheeler.com.au)

Sandgate Cemetery, Newcastle, New South Wales

Entrance Gate - Sandgate Cemetery, Newcastle NSW

Sandgate Cemetery - Newcastle

  
  
History that lies beneath at Sandgate



Article by Matthew Kelly - Newcastle Herald - 16 Jan, 2012






A gentle nor′easter blowing across the Hunter River breaks the stillness enveloping Sandgate Cemetery′s historic train platform.

The rusty rails covered in sand haven′t been used since the last cemetery train arrived there 30 years ago.

Today, the rough brick and timber structure stands as a pointer to the cemetery′s early years when mourners arrived by train
 from Newcastle′s old Honeysuckle station.

Surrounded by some of the cemetery′s oldest and grandest monuments, it also provides a useful vantage point to survey
 the 31-hectare necropolis.

Row upon row of headstones, some ornate, the majority modest and some hardly standing, bear the inscriptions of
 about 90,000 people whose remains are interred in the state′s third-largest cemetery.

But as much as Sandgate tells the story of individuals and families, it also provides an insight into
 Lower Hunter social history.

This unique repository of collective history is attracting increasing numbers of amateur and professional researchers. 
 Many, armed with little more than a name, begin their search at the cemetery office in a Federation cottage on Maitland Road.

The office holds the records of all burials starting with Mary Wilson in September 1881.

Until the mid-1990s, burial details were faithfully inscribed in the cemetery′s official registers.
 In 1997, the painstaking process began of transferring the information from the dusty and frayed,
 handwritten register to a digital database designed by Terry St George.  













This page was last updated on 30 November 2012


  
An article about Sandgate Cemetery - on the occasion of the announcement of the coming on-line digital indexes
Layout diagram - Sandgate Cemetery, Newcastle NSW