Detail of the Cast Iron Work on the Victorian Rotunda of the Old Ballaarat Cemetery - Corner Macarthur Street and Creswick Road, Ballarat

            Situated in the centre of the Old Ballaarat Cemetery, is the original Victorian rotunda built in 1892 to the designs of James and Piper and J. C. Smith.  The Rotunda has recently been restored to its original splendour.

Built across an area of 7 hectares (18 acres), the historical Old Ballaarat Cemetery is located about one and a half kilometres from Ballarat's heart with its boundaries on Macarthur Street, Creswick Road, Lexton Street and Pigah Street. 

Ballarat's first public cemetery was recorded in 1856, when the first official cemetery burial took place on the 20th May. Local records indicate that whilst this was the first official burial, ceremonies took place in the area of the Old Ballaarat Cemetery in the late 1840's and thereafter, which was even before the discovery of gold in Ballarat and the subsequent Gold Rushes that drew people to the city from around the world. 

Allow the elegant and ornate Victorian gates on the corner of Macarthur Street and Creswick Road to usher you into a world of grand and simple monuments to the dead, and to a slice of Ballarat's fantastic history.  The Old Ballaarat Cemetery is filled with historical figures from Ballarat's past as many burials were early settlers who were looking to make their fortune on the goldfields. People mentioned in my own photostream are amongst those buried here; Richard Henry Sutton of Sutton's Music Store in Sturt Street; George and Clara Crocker who dedicated windows in St Peter's Church of England to their sons who died during the Great War; Thomas Stoddart who made Ballarat a city of marble statues; and Henry Richards Caselli who designed so many beautiful and iconic Ballarat buildings.  Two important monuments in not just Ballarat's, but Australia's, history were erected in the cemetery following from the armed insurrection of 1854 - the Eureka uprising; the Eureka Diggers' Monument in 1856 and the Officers and Soldiers Monument in 1879.

Cemetery records show 35,000 interments have taken place since 1856, with 18,000 prior to 1884. 

Appropriately for a city, once the wealthiest in the world, because of the Gold Rushes, in 1907 gold was discovered in the Old Ballaarat Cemetery when grave diggers were preparing a grave for a Mr. T. C. Thomas.  

The 1920 gatehouse building was restored in 1997.

Taken in: Australia / Victoria / Ballarat / Soldiers Hill (show map)

Taken on: January 14, 2013

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Camera: Canon DIGITAL IXUS 80 IS, f/2.8, 1/640 sec, 6.2mm, ISO 80 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon DIGITAL IXUS 80 IS
Aperture:	f/2.8
Exposure Time:	0.002 sec (1/640)
Focal Length:	6.2mm
ISO:	80
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Auto, Did not fire
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
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