Established 1856 Country Australia No. of interments >52,000 Phone +61 1300 022 298 | Location Preston, Victoria Size 25 acres (10 ha) Founded 1856 | |
Website Coburg Pine Ridge Cemetery Address Bell St & Elizabeth Street, Preston VIC 3058, Australia Hours Open today · 7AM–7:30PMWednesday7AM–7:30PMThursday7AM–7:30PMFriday7AM–7:30PMSaturday7AM–7:30PMSunday7AM–7:30PMMonday(Labour Day)7AM–7:30PMHours might differTuesday7AM–7:30PM | ||
Coburg Pine Ridge Cemetery is located in the northern Melbourne suburb of Preston, Victoria, Australia on the boundary of Coburg. The main entrance is on Bell Street, Preston.
Contents
History
The cemetery was established in 1856, in part because of the growing village around the Pentridge stockade. There is evidence of burials dating back to the 1850s, although the early records which were maintained by each denomination group are presumed lost. Existing burial records starting from 1875 are held at Fawkner Memorial Park and show around 52,000 interments until 1971.
A strip of the cemetery along the south boundary was resumed for widening of Bell Street in the 1960s, although it is not known if any burials had to be exhumed. The cemetery reached capacity in 1971, and management was transferred to the Fawkner Memorial Park Trust. Since that time, burials at Coburg Pine Ridge Cemetery have been restricted to additional interments in existing graves at a rate, currently, of around one per month. In March 2010, the Fawkner Memorial Park Trust was amalgamated with 7 other Trusts and formed the Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust (GMCT) which now manages the Coburg Cemetery.
Graves
Graves within the Coburg Cemetery have an unusual numbering system where the numbers were allocated by the order of burial sequence in each area rather than position in rows, resulting in visitors finding an apparently random numbering system. A new system was introduced in the 1920s with a 'new', more accessible, location number, allocated to the 'old' number under the original system.
Some prominent individuals buried at Coburg Cemetery are:
There are also victims of the S.S Dandenong steamer disaster of 1876 and the Sunshine rail disaster memorialized or buried in the cemetery.
Many of the above-listed people's graves are included in the Friends of Coburg Cemetery's "Self Guided Heritage Walk". A map is available on site and the marked graves have signs with further information about 30 interesting and remarkable men and women.
War graves
The cemetery contains the war graves of 201 Commonwealth service personnel, 178 of World War I and 23 of World War II.