Sydney landmarks you didn't know used to be cemeteries

Did you know that Town Hall Station stands where Sydney’s first cemetery once lay? It’s what’s known as the Old Sydney Cemetery and was established in September 1792 by governor Arthur Phillip and the reverend Richard Johnson, back when it was the outskirts of town (it’s the dead centre of the city now). In 1812, governor Lachlan Macquarie authorised the extension of the burial ground to the north and west and granted a site for a new church, St Andrew’s, next door, covering just under a hectare.

By 1820 the cemetery was full, so a new burial ground was set aside on Brickfield Hill – now the site of Central railway station. Vaults and graves were opened and most of the corpses and tombs deposited in the new burial ground, though some were left behind. Once closed, the cemetery was neglected, and by 1837 many of the headstones had been vandalised. The cemetery became “a resort for bad characters at night” and by day stray pigs, goats and horses wandered among the graves, many of which lay open. Graves and remains were still being discovered years after the cemetery officially relocated. In the 1890s water main excavations uncovered skulls. Just skulls.

In 1924, coffins and tombs were unearthed while electric lighting was being installed, and most recently in 2007, evidence of at least 50 graves was uncovered during station updates.

After the closure of the Old Sydney Cemetery, the Devonshire Street Cemetery was opened in 1820. This site was a particularly ghoulish reminder of the corruption of death, as the grounds were overflowing by just 1845, though the cemetery remained in use until 1860. Locals complained of coffins breaking through the surface, emanating foul odours that became especially noxious during humid Sydney summers.

In an essay called Death and dying in Sydney in the nineteenth century by Dr Lisa Murray, gruesome accounts of the dire situation are described: '"Pauper graves, which were left open for several days to receive numerous bodies attracted 'nasty greenish-blue blowflies'," as well as "the disgorging of maggots after heavy rain" from the overcrowded burial grounds.

In the 1890s, demand for the railway lines to be extended from Redfern was high, prompting the current government to pay for the exhumation and relocation of remains and tombstones to various cemeteries around Sydney, primarily the Botany Cemetery (now known as the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park).

At the north end of Leichhardt’s Norton Street lies Pioneers Memorial Park, formerly known as Balmain Cemetery. The  four-hectare burial ground was refreshingly well organised, with residents coming together in August of 1863 to propose a cemetery be built for the newly established municipality of Balmain. Grave plots were bought for £1, securing a (presumably) eternal resting place, with the government pledging to match all funds raised by locals to establish the graveyard. The gates opened in 1868, and the cemetery would eventually amass over 10,000 internments until it was closed in 1912. The ground remained a quiet place of rest for two decades while debates flared as to what better purposes the space could serve and in 1941, it was decided to replace the cemetery with parkland and rename it Pioneers Memorial Park.
Relatives of the deceased were invited to have the graves removed at the cost of the council, though only a few responded and most that did relocate were reburied at Camperdown Cemetery. The rest remain.

These days it’s an idyllic community hub, with dog friendly off-leash areas, a playground, patches of bushland, an olive grove to honour the suburb’s Italian roots and a war memorial. All that remains of the park’s morbid past is a plaque embedded in a sandstone archway memorialising those who rest there.

If you’ve ever sat on the grass with a longneck at the inner-west dog watching hot spot, Camperdown Memorial Rest Park, there’s a good chance you’re sitting above a corpse. The site is formerly known as Camperdown Cemetery and at one stage was the resting place for over 18,000 Sydney residents, including a mass grave of 121 passengers who drowned when the Dunbar wrecked at the Gap in 1857. First opened in 1848 on 12 and a half acres, the burial ground was the Church of England’s official graveyard and business was booming.

In just 18 years, the grounds were full and were closed in 1866. The land was originally granted to William Bligh upon his appointment as fourth governor of NSW and in a macabre twist of fate, his son-in-law, Sir Maurice O’Connell was the cemetery’s first resident after being exhumed from the Devonshire Street Cemetery. The grounds fell into disrepair over the ensuing decades and despite opposition from the church, the grounds were eventually converted into parkland. A number of factors were at play in the decision to reclaim the acres of neglected land including lack of funds during the Depression and then the discovery of Joan Norma Ginn’s body in 1946. Joan was only 11 when she was murdered and sexually assaulted, sparking an outcry from the community to repurpose the cemetery. Her killers were never found.

Tombstones and remains were crammed as best as they could be into the walled off four acre burial grounds surrounding the church though there simply wasn’t enough room for everyone.