Coolgardie Pioneer Cemetery

Southern Cross Times  3 October 1903, page 2

THE OLD COOLGARDIE CEMETERY.—There are 33 graves in the old cemetery where the ceremony of unveiling a tablet took place (says the “Coolgardie Miner”). Of these the names of only six of those whose bodies were interred there are known. Most of the burials in fact nearly 30,took place in 1894.  The new cemetery was first used in December 1894. The first burial in the old cemetery was in 1893, (William Farley) when the body of a miner, William Farley, who was killed by a fall of earth in Pig Gully, near Lindsay’s, was interred. The fifth was in March, 1894, when a young man named Thomas Kemp was buried.
In those days the cemetery was in the bush and took a good deal of finding. Among those buried among the pioneers was a young man named W. Reginald C. Crossman, over the grave of whom is now a handsome black marble slab. Crossman rode a camel to Southern Cross in order to send the news of a rich strike in Bayley’s No. 2 South, and received £200 for his work. Mr. C. Lowry, the secretary of the Australian Natives Association, wrote down to Southern Cross some time ago asking the registrar thereto look up the early records and see  whether the names of the others buried in the old cemetery could be found, but so far no names have been furnished. Among those present at the unveiling ceremony we noticed Messrs. Fahan, Cawthray, Tierney, Tindal, Doe, Holtfreter, Hitchman, Bowen, and West, who were among the very earliest on the fields.

Coolgardie Cemetery, 1903, erecting the memorial

Memorial to the Pioneers ‘The Men Who Blazed the Track” Coolgardie

Grave of Agnes Holland (Error on Headstone, should be HOLLAND) died 7th May 1894.

A map showing the approximate location of burials in the Coolgardie Pioneer Cemetery.

The known burial in the Coolgardie Pioneer Cemetery.

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Moya Sharp

Owner at Outback Family History

My name is Moya Sharp, I live in Kalgoorlie Western Australia and have worked most of my adult life in the history/museum industry. I have been passionate about history for as long as I can remember and in particular the history of my adopted home the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia. Through my website I am committed to providing as many records and photographs free to any one who is interested in the family and local history of the region.

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