Stage Number: MBSH.03.01.04
Group: Southern
Local Study Area: West End-South Brisbane-North Woolloongabba
Epoch: Early 19th Century
Street Address: 24 Vulture Street, West End
Latitude & Longitude: -27.47886111,153.008
Time Link: 1843
Map Link: 1842
Image Time Point: 1842
Cemeteries were mainly located in churchyards and private burial grounds before the 19th century, but overcrowding and high maintenance costs resulted in municipal authorities taking responsibility for them. The first burial ground in Brisbane was established at what is now Skew Street near the North Quay during the 1820s and used for soldiers and convicts. There was also a small cemetery at Nundah, established by German missionaries in 1838. The Colonial Act of 1821 directed that no burials could take place within churchyards or the limits of a town, and so new burial grounds had to be established at least one mile from town centres. A public cemetery for South Brisbane was first surveyed in 1843, on the site of the current West End school. This burial ground is reported to have been used only once by the 1860s, at which time the dead of South Brisbane were ferried across the river to be interred at the North Brisbane cemetery, which is now the site of the Lang Park sports stadium. The new South Brisbane Cemetery (off Annerley Road) opened in 1870.
Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery’ (website), ‘Early Southside Burial Grounds’ (http://www.fosbc.com/2016/06/early.html), sighted 12 July 2017.
Extract from 1865 map of Brisbane showing the burial grounds in South Brisbane and Milton. Brisbane City Council. Brisbane Images. Slater’s Pocket Map of Brisbane 1865. BCA_P004.
SLQ. First Survey of Crown Lands in the Moreton Bay District, 1842, by Surveyor Henry Wade.Brisbane, 1842. RBM 841.16 1842 00013 E
