Nashville Times, Gympie and Mary River Mining Gazette, Wednesday 22 July 1868, page 2
Gympie’s first cemetery was located on the corner of King and Alfred Street, Gympie and operated as a non-Gazetted cemetery from December 1867 until its last known burial on 6 January 1869. It is now the site of the Gympie Ambulance headquarters.
(Gympie’s first gazetted cemetery, and second actual cemetery commenced a few days before the closure of the King Street Cemetery in January 1869 – see our blog post about Tozer Park Road Cemetery here)
It is the resting place of an estimated 80 to 100 people and there was no burial register in existence for this cemetery. Additionally, no headstones from this burial ground have survived.
We shall remember and pay respects to the number of miners and potential pastoralists and their families, that traversed the local area and the early goldfields of Gympie. There were sadly deaths that occurred that went undiscovered (for months or even completely):
April 1868:
March 1869:
In 1888, Gympie Municipal Council records indicate the land was used as a stockyard and Alderman Shields called to prevent further desecration.
In April 1904, a resident wrote a letter to the editor of the Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette to protest an application for a homestead lease on the old cemetery grounds, called it “sacrilege”.
Gympie Regional Memories 