Reinterment service held for bodies exhumed from Hutchins School site

Australia Broadcast Center

a day ago

About 200 people have gathered at the Cornelian Bay Cemetery in Hobart for a reinterment service of remains exhumed from the former Queenborough Cemetery.
The service came after what was believed to be the largest exhumation project in the Southern Hemisphere, which arose from 1,981 skeletons being discovered under the playing field of The Hutchins School during building works last year.
Thousands of Hobartians were buried at the Queenborough Cemetery in Sandy Bay, operated by a private company, from 1873 until the 1930s.
The cemetery's practices were the subject of public scandals, its record keeping described as messy and past exhumations not clearly defined.
Hutchins principal Rob McEwan said the service was a moment of "deep historical and human significance".
"Today we bring lives once forgotten back into the light of memory," he said.
"It was a shock to discover that beneath a playing field at The Hutchins School lay the original, untouched graves of almost 2,000 individuals.
"Individuals whose stories were silent, their names lost to time, their identities obscured by a changing landscape."
He said 1,781 individuals were able to be identified and remembered through the respectful and painstaking work of an archaeological team.
"They were mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, soldiers, settlers and servants," he said.
"To be reinterred is not to be forgotten, it is in many ways a return to the earth with dignity and to rest amongst loved ones."
Lead archaeologist Brad Williams was the first on the scene when he got a call that remains had been discovered at the school in March, 2024.
Initially, two bodies were found.
The scale of what lay beneath would shock the state.
It led to nine months of meticulous excavation and identification, as archaeologists tried to piece together who they had found.
At its peak, there was a team of 35 people working on the exhumation.
Speaking at the service, Mr Williams said the project was the largest of its type in the Southern Hemisphere and was an "honour and a challenge" to work on.
"For all of those involved in the process, it's been life-changing to spend months on the site carefully and respectfully uncovering and removing the remains in preparation for re-burial," he said.
"We could not avoid being moved by the thoughts of their lives and their deaths."
He said record keeping in the 1960s when council-funded exhumations were meant to occur after Hutchins took over the land "hadn't been as good as it should have been", and the process was not mapped properly.
Such was the scale of the exhumation he oversaw, a coffin building workshop was set up on site using carpenters waiting to work on the halted redevelopment.
Regulations stipulate that exhumed bodies have to be given an individual new coffin, or ossuary.
William Markham, who died in 1882 and was buried at the Queenborough Cemetery, was reinterred at Cornelian Bay.
His descendant, Sam Graunke, travelled from Victoria to attend the service.
She described it as a closing of the chapter for his story.
She said her family history was a "little bit sketchy" due to some shame about his convict connections.
Ms Graunke told ABC Radio Hobart Mornings that she had been researching his history, which included time as a convict on Norfolk Island and at Port Arthur.
She said he went on to have seven children and lived to 74.
The research led her to find out her great-great-grandfather was buried at the Queenborough Cemetery.
"I saw a news article last year about the archaeological side of things and reached out and asked if William was there, and was told he was," she said.
She attended the service with six family members.
"It's been a great trip, it's an opportunity for us as siblings to catch up and talk over the family history and make sure the stories are passed on," she said.
"It's an opportunity to recognise the last steps for not only William our ancestor but for the 2,000 people who have been exhumed.
"There will be many of those who don't have anyone representing them so it's kind of a special moment to acknowledge the past for those people and see them safely laid to rest."
Jo Ledda said all she could find out about her great-great-grandmother Charlotte Zarth was that she died when she was 40 in 1891.
"Then she just vanished off all records, I couldn't find anything about where she was laid to rest," she said.
But Ms Ledda found her on the list when the names of identified remains came out.
"It was nice, despite what they've been through, it was nice to finally figure out where she was and her three little children were with her too," she said.
Ms Ledda was glad she had somewhere to go and pay her respects.
"They were treated with the utmost respect and it's lovely to know there's a place here and a plaque on the wall," she said.
The school has published the names of all those who have been identified on its website, and a final report will be released soon.
Mr Williams said while the exhumation project had ended, it would not be last people heard of the former Queenborough Cemetery.
"There's probably still a lot of research that can be done in terms of who is potentially still buried within the wider environs of Hutchins and the wider cemetery," he said.