Victoria Cemeteries

This is a PDF image collection. The records come from five cemeteries in Victoria and span the years 1856 to 2005. Each cemetery’s records cover a slightly different year range. See below in our discover more about these records section to learn more about the cemeteries included in this collection.

The records in this collection can provide vital details about your ancestor’s death and next of kin. Details that you may discover are as follows:

• Name

• Birth date

• Birth place

• Age at death

• Death date

• Death place

• Grave number

• Inscription – which may include an occupation and names of spouses, parents, siblings, and children

For example, in researching Anne Coxhead, we can read her burial inscription and learn the names of her husband and daughter and their respective death dates: ‘In loving memory of Anne, the beloved wife of George Coxhead who fell asleep in Jesus 24th November 1899, aged 66 years. Happy Christian may we ever / Hold thy faith as firm and fast, / That when called from earth to sever, / We may reach thy home at last’. With the additional note that ‘the above George Coxhead who departed this life 16th July 1907, aged 82 years. Also their daughter Amy died 16th March 1928’

• Boroondara Cemetery (1856-2005) – Located in Kew, Victoria, and colloquially known as Kew Cemetery. The cemetery was divided up by religious denomination. Since 1859, some 75,000 burials have taken place at this cemetery. You can find notable individuals in the records from this cemetery such as David Syme, known as the ‘father of protection in Australia’.

• Coburg Cemetery (1875-1988) – Located in Preston, the Coburg Pine Ridge Cemetery was founded in 1856. Early burial records have not survived. The earliest surviving records date from 1875 and show around 52,000 burials from the time period of 1875 to 1971. The original plots were organized by divided by religious denomination. John Andrew Arthur is buried in this cemetery. Arthur was a politician and served as a member of the Australian Parliament before he succumbed to kidney disease at the age of 39.

• Footscray Cemetery (1860-1997) – By 1939, around 19,000 burials had taken place in this cemetery. Footscray Cemetery is located in Yarraville, Victoria.

• Lilydale Cemetery (1864-1993) – You can find the memorial inscription for Dame Nellie Melba in these records. She is buried in grave number 95 in the Lilydale Cemetery with the inscription of ‘to my mother, in loving memory, from her son’.

• St Kilda Cemetery Memorials (1859-1987) – Established in 1851, this cemetery is located in St Kilda East, Victoria. William Pitt, architect, is buried with his family in St Kilda Cemetery. Pitt designed several renowned Melbourne buildings including Princess Theatre, St Kilda Town Hall, and Bryant and May Factory.

These records have been digitally scanned and converted to machine-encoded text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This process is not perfect and the machine may have misread characters, especially in personal names, which causes searches to fail.

• The search feature uses direct search. It will only search for the exact words you write in the search field. 
For example, if you search for John Smith the results will give you pages with ‘John’ and ‘Smith.’

• All search results will bring you to the page on which your search word has been found and not to an individual transcript. You can then read through the page to find your result.

• If you are unable to find your relative on your first search you can try different name variations. A number of register books only use abbreviations for first name. 
For example, if your search is unsuccessful for William Smith, try W Smith

• You can use the optional keywords field to search on any text you think may appear in the records, such as places, occupations, and years.