Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park

Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park is a cemetery and crematorium at Matraville, New South Wales, in the eastern suburbs district of Sydney, Australia. Land was dedicated as a cemetery site in 1888, with the first interment recorded on 21 August 1893. Since then, more than 65,000 people have been buried there.

Botany Cemetery
Details
Established10 January 1888[1]
Location
Military Road, Bomborah Point
CountryAustralia
Coordinates33°58′28″S 151°13′39″E
Size29 acres 2 roods 27 perches (12.01 ha)
WebsiteEastern Suburbs Memorial Park

The memorial park incorporates Botany Cemetery, Eastern Suburbs Crematorium and Pioneer Park.

Botany Cemetery

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) register and maintain 157 war graves in what it calls Botany General Cemetery - 5 Commonwealth service personnel of World War I, and, from World War II, 150 Commonwealth service and 2 Dutch service personnel.[2]

Eastern Suburbs Crematorium

The crematorium was opened in 1938. Thirty Australian and two British service personnel who were cremated here during World War II are commemorated here by the CWGC.[3]

Pioneer Park
Pioneer Memorial Park Plaque - Botany Cemetery
New Graves Over Pioneer Memorial Park in Botany Cemetery

Pioneer Park contains historic headstones which were relocated from Devonshire Street Cemetery in 1901 to make space for Central railway station.[4] At that time, thousands of graves and 2825 tombstones of the first settlers in Australia were moved to the new cemetery at La Perouse, named Bunnerong Cemetery. In 1976, the Botany Cemetery Trust destroyed most of these historic monuments by creating a new, low maintenance lawn area. The remaining 746 headstones were reinstalled in concrete strips, unrelated to the graves below. The new lawn was named Pioneer Memorial Park. The Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park has recently started expanding burials over this lawn, with interments now abutting the few historic tombstones which were saved. In May 2016 an obtrusive series of statues was installed in the middle of the ancient headstones. This comprises six white statues, 15 signboards and white garden bed edging. It commemorates the First Fleet despite the fact that only 12 of the 746 monuments in the park record people who arrived on the First Fleet.[5]

  • Crematorium
  • Memorial Garden
  • Memorial

References
  1. "Government Gazette Notices". New South Wales Government Gazette (29). New South Wales, Australia. 10 January 1888. p. 212 – via National Library of Australia.
  2. cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/2022724/BOTANY%20GENERAL%20CEMETERY/
  3. cwgc.org/find-war-dead/results/cemetery=EASTERN%20SUBURBS%20CREMATORIUM,%20BOTANY/
  4. Johnson, K.A. and Sainty, M.R., Sydney Burial Ground 1819-1901 and History of Sydney's Early Cemeteries from 1788. Library of Australian History, Sydney 2001.
  5. Melissa Seiler (19 May 2016). "First Fleeters Memorial opens at Botany Cemetery 229 years after voyage". The Daily Telegraph. Southern Courier.
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