Ballarat East Cemetery
Background
There is reference to a cemetery between Sinclair's and Clayton's Hill, at an East Borough Meeting. This was around the time of the Eureka reinterments of Captain Charles Ross, James Brown, Edward Thonen and Tom the Blacksmith. [1]
- EUREKA ANNIVERSARY- AS an advertisement had appeared in one of the local journals calling upon the friends of the victims of the Eureka slaughter to assemble at the Cemetery at ten o'clock in the morning of the 3rd, we went to see what would be done, and to hear what would be said. We were first on the ground, and when the hour had passed and we were still alone, the thought of races or apathy triumphant over sympathy with the poor unfortunates of the Stockade, arose in our mind, and we began to muse upon that "change which marks all earthly things "even a stockader's reverence for the resting place and dying day of his companions who fell on the fatal Sunday morning. At length one, two, three, four continental Europeans, and another of those ubiquitous animals yclept "representatives of the press" presented themselves; and yet another came, but he also was from the old world continent. Thus five Germans and two Englishmen were all who met to do honor to the memory of the men who fell four years before that morning. Mr Carl Lessman, who alone has borne the brunt of the expense of removing the bodies which last year were deposited in the monumental enclosure, who alone has spent money since, if we except Mr Gibbs, in removing some of the more slovenly appearances of the place of sepulture, was also foremost yesterday with his compatriots in hanging a wreath of evergreen and flowers and festoons of black crape around the urn and pillar erected in the enclosure. This simple tribute, thus unostentatiously paid by these few Germans, was all that marked yesterday's anniversary of the fatal Sunday. We cannot close this notice without again remarking that it is a pity the roadway, just made in the so soon to be abandoned cemetery, had not been narrowed or diverted so as to have left the little Eureka enclosure undisturbed. It would have been good taste in the trustees of the cemetery to have done this much. It would also be equally good taste if the friends and companions of those who fell were to club together and relieve themselves from the disgrace of permitting divers little matters of expenditure to devolve on one person only, and the place of their friends, burial to remain in its present dilapidated and seemingly deserted condition.[2]
The temporary reservation of 51 acres of land for Ballarat East Cemetery, by order of 22nd July, 1861, was foreshadowed to be revoked by order of 31st July, 1871.[3]
John Fussell, George Clendinning, the Venerable Laurence Shell, Charles Dyte, William Beckham Rodier, Richard Kent, and Andrew Gray, to be the trustees of the Ballarat East Cemetery in June 1864.[4]
In 1871 at site of twenty acres three roods, more or less, was reserved for a site for the Ballarat East Cemetery. The site commenced at the north angle of the site, being the junction of the southern side of George Street with the western side of Rodier Street.[5]
