FAMILY members have gathered in Quarry Hill to celebrate a long-lost bell's restoration.
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Descendants of Bendigo foundry owner Frank Miller Brown watched the bell's official unveiling on Friday decades after it vanished.
Brown's company forged the bell.
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It was used for funerals and potentially to call the sexton in, when he was in the far reaches of the cemetery, from 1898 onward.
The bell disappeared in 1994 and only turned up when workers found it at a cemetery depot a few years ago, Remembrance Parks Central Victoria chief executive Dean McElroy said.
"We are not sure of its journey during that time, or when it reappeared back there," he said.
Remembrance Park staff suspect that it was taken down for repairs or maintenance but are unsure why it was not returned to a pole near the cemetery's entrance.
Multiple generations of Brown's descendants heard about the bell and pitched in to help fund its restoration, family member Ken McCulloch said.
"We had been told remembrance park staff would do it, but it was one of things where money was short and there was already a list of things they had to restore," he said.
"I asked how we could speed the process up because we have some older people in the family who would love to see it back up again.
"Around 24 people chipped in with $50 here, $200 there or whatever they could afford. Everyone had different financial positions."
Mr McElroy thanked the family for its generosity, saying that without it his not-for-profit organisation would have needed to rely on grant funding and the outcome of multiple other restoration projects it was juggling.
"Without grants and community support we would not be able to do a lot of this work," he said.
For Mr McCulloch, the unveiling was a chance to thank remembrance park staff for their hard work.
"They were just lovely to deal with," Mr McCulloch said.
"I'm in business and I know that some things get done and some things take time to knock over. I thought this would take quite a while but they knocked it over in no time at all."
The morning was also a time for close-knit descendants to come together and celebrate the legacy that Brown had left them, Mr McCulloch said.