State Library of South Australia

Coober Pedy's first cemetery [B 74337/3] • Photograph

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Summary

View of Coober Pedy's first cemetery. The photographer comments on the cemetery, "Whilst exploring the streets around Coober Pedy in January 2013, I came across the first cemetery in the area, it can be found on a small plot of land in St Nicholas street amongst the residential houses that have spring up around it over the years. Like most things around Coober Pedy this graveyard has many secrets which will never be revealed, the graves are un-marked so you will never know who is in them and where they came from, which to me is a reflection of the modern day Coober Pedy which has a large number of individuals who live underground and go about there daily lives of searching for treasure in secret. There have been no consistent controlling authority over the cemetery, and no records kept to be passed on, each subsequent authority has been unsure of what had taken place previously. Boot Hill Cemetery, which is the current grave yard being used at Coober Pedy, also has its secrets, notes taken from Pastor Trager's statement regarding Aboriginal burials says, "It could be assumed that some of the deceased Aboriginal persons may not be buried in the cemetery as thought." Out of the total of 68 possible sites for graves in the cemetery, only 5 are positively located. It is not known at this stage who marked out the plots with besser bricks, or who placed the old wooden crosses with indented metal names tags, or what records or plans were used to determine their placement. It appears that it must have taken place a fair number of years after the burials as in several instances the names and/or the dates are wrong when compared to the burial certificates."

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Physical description

1 photograph : colour

Dates / Publication details

January 2013

Photographer

Clark, Darren

Collections

Part of Darren Clark Collection
Part of Coober Pedy Collection

Subject

Cemeteries -- South Australia -- Coober Pedy
Sepulchral monuments -- South Australia -- Coober Pedy
Coober Pedy (S.A.)

Catalogue record

Return to catalogue

Digitisation information

Date

15/04/2015

Format

image/tiff

Resolution

6,159 x 4,100 pixels (25.3 MP)

Size

151.55 MB

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