By Helensburgh Historical Society researcher Jenny Donohoe

The society has had a field survey with Wollongong City Council’s Cemetery Supervisor, Paul Gooda, regarding the Flame article by Genevieve Swart in the April 2025 edition.

Society members have been researching for years to discover where all the missing burials would have taken place in the Helensburgh General Cemetery. Over the years, bush has encroached inside the cemetery boundaries and it has always been suspected there may be unknown burials somewhere.

Evidence that about 200 unknown burials took place were recorded in 2006 in Max Negel’s ‘Helensburgh General Cemetery’ report, with ‘Grave Unknown’ listed beside people’s names.

In the society’s archives, an old 1892 Helensburgh Cemetery Survey Map had been scanned and digitally filed, but where it came from is still a mystery. On this document there are four sections at the south-eastern boundaries of the map individually marked. These four sections have always been completely covered in bush with small and large trees. When the cemetery was control-burned late last year, this area was suddenly free of undergrowth to be surveyed. Prior to the current survey, this area of four sections was not registered on Council’s cemetery maps.

Society member Stephen Donohoe and I, along with WCC’s Paul Gooda, walked into the section we are talking about and found remnants of graves and an old water pipe connecting from the current cemetery. From Negel’s Cemetery Register, there could have been over 100 burials in this section from 1892 to the 1920s. What a discovery, as no one has walked into this bush section for a very long time, probably 100 years.

Thanks to previous research, we know the location of the graves of stillborn babies, paupers and other unknown Anglican burials, and the newly discovered section could amount to another 100 unknown burials. Hopefully, Wollongong Council will prepare new signage to include this section on their map as well as the other unknown burial sites. We are just starting to give the unknown burials recognition – we have their names from Negel’s Cemetery Register and are getting closer to knowing where they lie.