The discovery of gold in Bendigo in 1851 precipitated a massive influx of migrants from many nations and faiths to the area, bringing with them their practices to mourn and remember the dead.
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The multitudes that came to Bendigo added a variety of customs to those observed by the Dja Dja Wurrung and Taungurung people for centuries.
Ahead of the first Official Registration of Deaths in Victoria in 1853 and the appointment of the first Deputy Registrars of Births and Deaths in the Goldfields in 1855, many early pioneers of Bendigo were buried in bush graves.
The Maiden Gully grave of Maria Ninnes and two of her children, Grace and Jane, who died in 1852 following an arduous journey to Bendigo, is one such early burial.
Bendigo’s earliest cemetery, the Old Sandhurst Burial Ground, was situated at the end of Cemetery Street, near Bridge Street.
There were 229 registered burials there.
In 1854, the Victorian Government’s Act for the Establishment and Management of Cemeteries in the Colony of Victoria stipulated that a burial ground must be located at least one mile from town, and, as such, the burial ground was closed.
Government-sanctioned cemeteries were established at White Hills (1854), Kangaroo Flat (1855), Back Creek (Bendigo, or Sandhurst as the city was initially known, in 1858) and Eaglehawk (1863).
These places on the outer edges of town were surveyed by the District Surveyor from the Lands Department, Richard Larritt, who considered these essential civic provisions alongside the city’s parks, gardens and other amenities.
Early migrants to the goldfields of Bendigo found incredible hardship and harsh, unsanitary conditions.
Common causes of death were mining accidents and the ‘White Death’ of silicosis (also known as miner's phthisis) and diseases now controlled by vaccination or cured by antibiotics.
