Nundah Cemetery - a walk on the wild side

We decided that the way to celebrate Australia Day (26 Jan) this year that we would visit Nundah Cemetery, where some of Brisbane's earliest free settlers are buried, some of whom are related to my husband (the Bridges family, just for the record).

It is a relatively small cemetery, but a very densely populated one. There is a ring road through the cemetery, effectively dividing it into an inner island and the outer ring. I don't think there are many (any?) unused plots in this cemetery. The graves are very close together with only a narrow path between every 2 rows, except, of course, for where the graves don't seem to be in rows at all, and some graves are at strange angles, which makes me think that perhaps there were paths but they were later used as grave sites as well. The inner island is almost impossible to walk through towards the back of the cemetery, as it is almost solid graves and in no particular organised layout, so one is leaping about to try to move through without walking on the graves themselves.

To add to the walking problem, there were other obstacles such as trees and bushes that seem to be able to push their way up between cheek-to-jowl gravesites. In particular there were a lot of weeping bottlebrushes, which meant you can to get under the foliage in order to read the headstones. I don't think these are a good tree to plant in a cemetery -- you want a tall non-weeping tree that provides shade without obscuring the graves! It was also a bit wet and boggy in the lower areas by the creek, but fortunately I had learned from past experience and was wearing wellies. However, they did not save me from the cobblers pegs, and my clothes were covered in hundreds of them as I had to push through a number of weed patches to get close enough to read the headstones.

What was also somewhat unusual was the very high density of headstones. There seemed to be more surviving headstones that you might expect for a cemetery of that era. Admittedly there were a few modern headstones on otherwise old graves that were presumably put there by modern descendants to replace a wornout or missing headstone. What many people today do not appreciate is that in the past poorer people used a wooden cross or similar to mark a grave and these often don't survive the years. A carved headstone was a more expensive choice, but these do survive the years better. Today, cremation is cheaper than burial, hence a modern burial almost always has a stone or metal marker, as cost is not the primary consideration. Anyhow, I don't really know why there are so many surviving and legible headstones in the Nundah Cemetery, but there is a local group that seeks to preserve the cemetery so perhaps their efforts have minimised the impacts of weathering and vandalism compared with other cemeteries. Full marks to them if this is so.

The names on many gravestones are familiar, as the names of the earlier pioneer families are reflected in suburb names, streets names etc throughout this part of Brisbane. If you had ever wondered why there is a Rode Road, etc, this cemetery has the answer. For those who enjoy this kind of trivia, the area known today as Nundah was originally known as German Station, as the earliest free settlers in Brisbane were German, and this is reflected in a very high density of German names in the cemetery. Indeed, some headstones are inscribed fully or partially in German.

For the cemetery tourist, there is ample parking outside the gate. The road inside is too narrow to park and still let another car get past. On the other hand, the cemetery is not so busy that you couldn't get away with a short parking stop, if you had someone with walking difficulties. There are some seats around the edges of the cemetery, mostly near the entrance. There is a rotunda with seats and a broken water fountain just inside the cemetery (where you will find a niche wall for ashes). There were toilets but they appeared to be locked. There are plenty of shade trees at the edge of the cemetery but not too many in the middle (just those annoying weeping bottlebushes) so it's a bit hot and exposed for summer visits. There are no cafes or shops nearby, so bring your own catering. The cemetery is close to the bikeway to Toombul Shopping Centre, so you can cycle there easily.

For those of you looking for a particular grave, the best place to start is the Brisbane City Council's Grave Location Search engine:

http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/BCC:STANDARD::pp=PC_897,pc=PC_899

which is a database that amalgamates all of Brisbane's cemeteries' burial registers. While this is a generally excellent service (thanks BCC!), many of the early burial registers were not well-maintained and this is a limitation in locating many of the earlier burials in this cemetery based on personal experience. You may well find headstones for people in Nundah Cemetery that do not appear in the on-line burial register. So, if you believe someone was buried in Nundah and the online database says otherwise, it is well worth a visit to check the headstones. In an ideal world, the on-line service would be based on both the burial registers and the monumental inscriptions, and also allow people to input information obtained from other sources like death certificates and funeral notices.

Unfortunately, there is no map at the cemetery to identify the various sections and portions, but if you used the BCC database, you should have an aerial map and marker to guide you to the right general area. The cemetery is small enough that you can walk around and inspect every headstone if all else fails (but note my earlier remarks on the joys of walking through some parts of this cemetery). There is no longer a sexton at the cemetery (it is now a closed cemetery), but I believe Pinnaroo Cemetery sexton handles enquires for Nundah Cemetery.