Six Feet Under Down Under

"At the establishment of the Colony for a long time no piece of ground was set apart for a Burial place. Persons buried their dead in one place and some in another... Prisoners who had no friends were buried without coffins” Rev. Samuel Marsden, letter to Archdeacon Scott, November 1827. After a discussion of the history of burial practices of indigenous and early European arrivals in the colony of New South Wales we will explore the development of cemeteries, crematoriums and memorial parks down under. We will discuss current legislation regulating burials and cremation and look at some current trends, practices and statistics for burials in Australia. The major focus of the webinar will be on resources available for locating details of people who were buried or cremated in Australia since European settlement in 1788. We will examine a range of free and subscription print and online resources that provide such details.