Audio Stories

Beechworth Cemetery has over seventeen thousand recorded burials within its confines. In I856, a Cemetery Trust was formed and the cemetery was in operation in January the same year. Some early burials and their stories are included in our 8 storytelling videos.

  • Robert Murdoch

    Cemetery’s first internment
    Robert Murdoch the landlord of the Star Hotel in Beechworth, originally from Scotland was buried in 1856 as a result of a cruel act. From the result of a cruel act toward Robert a respected business proprietor. His many friends and associates interned Robert, his fondness within community is reflected in his memorial inscription.

  • Pioneer Graves

    Transferred from original burial ground
    The present Cemetery was opened in 1856, but before that (between 1853 and 1856) the town’s burial ground was in Loch Street, where the old Congregational Church and adjacent buildings now stand. With the opening of the new Cemetery in 1856, it was decided to exhume the bodies of those buried in the Loch Street graveyard and transfer them to the new Cemetery.

  • James Ingram

    Beechworth's 'Grand Old Man'
    James Ingram arrived in Beechworth in March, 1855, as a young man of 27 years, having landed in Melbourne from Scotland in December, 1852. He came to Beechworth only three years after gold was discovered, and for the next seventy years was a leading member of Beechworth's community.

  • Chinese Graves & Buring Towers

    The Victorian goldfields were characterised by the large numbers of Chinese miners who, along with others from Britain and Europe, came to try their luck with the gold pan and pick. Beechworth was no exception.

  • Pyle Family

    Typhoid fever victims 
    Robert Pyle and his family were residents in Three Mile Creek, died in 1859, the result of a Typhoid fever from a contaminated water supply. Their tragic story about the challenges that faced those in early days of settlement and can be heard in this video.

  • Patrick Brady

    Cemetery’s first internment
    Patrick Brady a Gold miner was buried in 1856, the result of a bullock dray accident at Six Mile Creek.

  • The Gammon Children

    The Gammon children’s grave is surrounded by a hedge just in front of the Rotunda. Inside is a statue of a sleeping baby, and the names of some of the children may be seen on the statue pedestal. These tragic deaths illustrate the trauma of family life in the 19th Century, where instead of when so many children died from illness and diseases that are now treatable.

  • Baby William Skinner

    Cemetery’s first internment
    Young William Skinner the son of a Woolshed gold miner died of a fever and was buried in 1856 just six weeks after the cemetery opened. An act of kindness towards William and his parent who were ill, friends interred William, but because of  circumstances the exact location of William's remains a mystery.