Grave Secrets

Grave Secrets is a website hosting a private collection of cemetery headstone photographs. It began in South Australia and is now expanding to cover other Australian States. It currently lists 289,500 headstone photos from 702 cemeteries accessible with a simple name search. Grave Secrets charge $2.50 for individual photographs. Australian Cemeteries provides a similar service free of charge, but Grave Secrets can provide access to some cemeteries not covered by Australian Cemeteries.

Grave Secrets has also introduced a new World War 1 Pictorial Honour Roll of Australians who served in the First World War with over 11,000 photographs with more being added weekly.

Many of the NSW cemeteries included are war cemeteries such as Cowra Japanese War Cemetery and the Cowra Australian War Cemetery, Rookwood War Cemetery, Bathurst, Coffs Harbour, Glen Innes, Hay, Narromine, Tamworth & Tenterfield War Cemeteries. Certainly worth a look with the centenary of the First World War in 2014.

Australian Cemeteries

Great news!! Australian cemeteries now have a new home with their own domain.
http://www.australiancemeteries.com/
You may want to update your bookmarks, however if you go into the old ozgenonline.com/aust_cemeteries site, you will be transferred quickly to the new site. It looks just the same as the old one, but is much, much quicker, making it easier to use.

To forget one's ancestors is to be a brook without a source,a tree without a root.
Chinese Proverb

Australian Cemeteries

There must be a heap of people out there that spend a lot of spare time and holidays traipsing around cemeteries, looking for lost relatives. It can be very exciting to find someone, even if they are dead, but it can also be very disconcerting to find gravesites, headstones etc in a state of disrepair. Headstones do not always tell the whole story, but sometimes they can provide you with additional information.

I found Uncle Bill’s place of burial on the Australian cemeteries website

http://www.ozgenonline.com/aust_cemeteries/ . It told me the cemetery (Coonamble); his full name (William Wallace Nicolson); date of death (23 Feb 1960); age at death (83 years) and the portion of the cemetery – Presbyterian. Well what else would he be with a name like that!

But there’s more – I also found a photo of his headstone. And this told me he was a soldier. From his age and date of death I worked out that he probably served in World War 1.

So I went to the National Archives Website http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/recordsearch.aspx and did actually find his service record.

Not all stories are success stories. Some relatives may be buried in the same plot with loved ones, especially husbands and wives. Unfortunately headstones are not always updated if one is buried earlier than the other, and no responsible family member is left to attend to these duties. This is where it is important to check cemetery records where available. Most give details about who is buried together in the same plot and their relationship. It is both a practical and romantic solution for many families.