Community members gathered at Flinders Shire’s Hughenden Cemetery in October to hear that the cemetery records were in the best shape they’d been in for more than 100 years.
Located on the banks of the Flinders River in northwest Queensland, Flinders Shire Council covers 41,600 square kilometres. The town of Hughenden is its main business centre.
At the cemetery meeting, people of all ages and walks of life heard from local project officer Melissa Driscoll about how her team of Council staff had undertaken a 760 hour project to get records accurate and up to date.
“We started with some very old and tattered registry books dating back to 1884, a faded map handwritten in 1965 and pegs that had been placed in the ground to mark the plots since 1900,” Melissa Driscoll said.
“After entering all of the data into the computer, we worked plot by plot, row by row, to identify each grave or headstone, confirm the details on the registry and compare with the map.
“We also photographed each headstone and took a GPS waypoint for each plot.
“Now that Council staff have access to the computerised records, cemetery searches can be done more quickly and effectively, providing better solutions for people looking for the graves of relatives and friends.
“In addition, the data will make historical and genealogical research much easier.”
Council’s Community Development Officer and project initiator Sherilee Honnery said now that stage one of this project is complete, Council is planning for stage two.
“There is still more work to be done,” she said.
“We have plans to make the data available on the new Flinders Shire website and we need to add the data from Prairie and Torrens Creek Cemeteries, amongst other things.”
For further information about the project contact Council on (07) 4741 2900.
