Sydney’s Oldest Graveyard: Camperdown Cemetery

From Pauper’s Burials to Priscilla: The Forgotten Tales of Camperdown Cemetery

By Melissa Mantle

More on Newtown

A memorial plaque near the entrance to Camperdown cemetery reads: In memory of the many humble, undistinguished, unknown, unremembered folk buried in this cemetery whose names are not written in the book of history, but are written in the book of life.

Indeed, what better place to read the book of life than in one of Sydney’s oldest existing graveyards. While older cemeteries existed in Sydney, they were either relocated or built over, making Camperdown the only surviving one of the original three major cemeteries in the city.  (St John's Cemetery, Parramatta,  in use between 1789 and 1824, is Australia's oldest surviving cemetery.)

Foundation of Camperdown Cemetery

Founded in 1848 as an Anglican General Cemetery, Camperdown Cemetery was Sydney’s main burial ground until 1868, after the closure of the Old Sydney Burial Ground (now beneath Sydney Town Hall) and the Devonshire Street Cemetery (now the site of Central Station). 

The land was originally owned by Governor William Bligh, who named it Camperdown in commemoration of the Battle of Camperdown he’d fought in during the French Revolutionary Wars. Bligh’s son-in-law was the first soul to be buried there, starting a trend that would soon also include many other early colonial luminaries.

Famous Burials at Camperdown Cemetery

Perhaps the most famous of all the burials is the Dunbar tomb, containing the remains of 22 people who died when the Dunbar, a clipper ship, went asunder in August 1857, killing all but one of 122 passengers and crew. Many of the dead were returning home to Sydney.

Of course if you’re more of a literary type it will be of interest to know that the cemetery claims the possible inspiration of Miss Havisham (a character in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations) among its permanent residents in Eliza Emily Donnithorne, a jilted bride and recluse who died in 1886.

Romantics might also enjoy knowing that they’ll find a small grove of Chinese Elms planted where William Broughton, the first Anglican Bishop in Australia, buried his wife, Sarah, and planted the Elms there in honour of her.

Within the walls of the cemetery stands the Cemetery Lodge, St Stephen’s Church, and the church’s rectory. The Church, opened in 1874, is considered a masterpiece of Gothic Revival architecture.

And speaking of gothic: the cemetery has attracted its fair share of ghost stories. The two top contenders being a spectral matron of Sydney General Hospital named Bathsheba Ghost who is allegedly “seen” attending to the sick in St Stephen’s Rectory, and a “ghostly grey lady” who drifts over the grave of her illicit lover who died aboard the Dunbar.

Most of the 2000 tombstones seen in the cemetery today are made of sandstone as per the fashion of the time, and were constructed by prolific local mason John Roote Andrews and his family who lived on Prospect Street nearby.

In its heyday, the cemetery accepted the dead of all denominations, though it buried them with the Church of England rites. 

It slowed its acceptance of new inhabitants in 1868 due to complaints about the stench arising from “pauper’s burials”, a sort of stacked coffin arrangement which at the time made up around half of the burials. 

In 1946, the murder of a young girl whose body was found in the overgrown cemetery prompted the establishment of the Camperdown Memorial Rest Park and the cemetery’s thirteen acres were walled off to just four. In the process, many tombstones were unfortunately damaged and the cemetery went on to suffer an era of neglect and rampant vandalism as the suburb’s demographics and priorities shifted.

Resurrection of Camperdown Cemetery

From the 1970s, though, the cemetery resuscitated from the dead, as it were, because locals grew interested in preserving their green space. In 1994, the grounds appeared in the cult movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, many broken monuments were repaired with the help of a Bicentennial Heritage Grant – including the restoration of the tomb of Sir Thomas Mitchell, a Scottish-Australian soldier, surveyor and poet. A conservation strategy was initiated as well as a landscape management plan.

The cemetery is notable for containing examples of native flora considered rare in the inner city’s urban environment. If you wander to the rear of the cemetery, you will find remnants of the original Turpentine-Ironbark forest that covered the area, including Kangaroo grass and flax lilies. The Moreton Bay Fig and other oaks in the cemetery are also some of the oldest in the area, dating back to 1848.

The cemetery grounds are maintained by a group of volunteers and the Camperdown Cemetery Dog Walkers.

The cemetery, along with St Stephen’s Church, is listed by the Heritage Council of NSW and the National Register as a site of national importance.

Camperdown Cemetery

189 Church St, Newtown