Our History

Unfortunately, in the 1930’s the Burial register was lost. There were only headstones, and living relatives to identify who was laying at rest, the majority were unknown.

The Inverloch Cemetery Trust, primarily led by one of their trustees, the late Noelene Lyons, attempted to reconstruct the list of who had been interred there. She used information from Births, Deaths, and Marriages initially and at a later date arranged soil scrapings to locate the graves. She eventually believed she had located and named all bar one.

There are 76 graves and all are marked now with the names of the occupants, except the unknown one. It took many years of dedication and hard work but the Pioneer Cemetery, as it is now called, holds an incredible amount of Inverloch history. Absolutely worth a visit.

In 1910, when the Powlett River Coalfields opened it led to the opening of the Township of Wonthaggi, the Wonthaggi Hospital and the Wonthaggi Cemetery. Due to this fewer people were being buried at Inverloch and the Cemetery struggled to stay afloat and fell into disrepair. As burials were the only income the cemetery received they decided to let some of the land in 1922 for grazing to supplement their income. A fence was erected for this purpose and was removed in 1981 when the area was cleared of overgrowth. The fence you see today separating the Pioneer Cemetery from the Inverloch Cemetery was restored as a symbol of the past fence that had been removed.

By 1933, the cemetery had fallen foul of rabbits, grazing cattle and overgrowth. The cemetery for
many ensuing years struggled to establish a board of trustees. The Health Department recommended that the management of the cemetery be transferred to the Woorayl Shire, which occurred in May 1961 when the Shire closed the cemetery.

The shire leased the land to a neighbouring farmer, who allowed his cattle to graze there.

This remained the case until 1981, when the Woorayl Shire was convinced that the population in Inverloch had increased enough to reopen the Cemetery. They petitioned the Health Department to do so and permission was granted and new trustees were appointed.

The new trustees and a band of volunteers got to work immediately clearing the many years of overgrown ti-tree and uncover the graves that already existed. Some families did maintain the gravesites but many remained neglected in the coming years and were soon overrun with ti-tree and blackberries again. A couple of working bees in 1990 cleared around all the graves again. When clearing this site, although no new graves were found, it was noticed the soil looked different in some places. In May 1990 shavings were taken of the vegetation from the surface with a tractor. Tom Evans, a trustee at the time, placed a small metal cross on each site where
the ground appeared to have been disturbed. Amazingly, this was to be 8 foot centres in three lines.
Indicating where previous burials had been. It was then the task of other trustees to identify these
graves.

With a lot of hard work the Pioneer Cemetery was eventually cleared and work was carried out to set up a lawn cemetery in a previously unused section of the grounds. Rose Lawn was the first established, followed by Oak and Callistemon. Cremated areas were established in the Memorial Gardens, Remembrance Garden, Niche Wall and the “G” beam of the Callistemon Lawn. The trustees are always working on the future plans and expansion of the cemetery.

The Inverloch Cemetery Trust believes the above information to be an accurate representation of its history.