Tales as old as time

As a history enthusiast, Jeanette was eager to share the hidden history of the cemetery and its surrounding area.

“I realised how good this would be history-wise for Shepparton,” she said.

“I am very interested in history, of the history of Shepparton and the surrounding areas — I love it all.”

Her passion for the cemetery’s history stemmed from her time on the Shepparton Cemetery Trust where she found herself roaming the cemetery, piecing together the lives of those that once lived.

“I was on the trust and people would say to me, ‘Is there a history of the cemetery?’ and I said, no, there’s not,’’ Jeanette said.

“Then different people would say to me, ‘Well, you should get to it and see what you can come up with.’ So, I did.’’

It was during this time she started the Shepparton Public Cemetery Facebook page where she researched and posted about the stories of those buried in the cemetery.

“I joined the trust because of the historical side and I wanted to keep it in the public’s eye,” Jeanette said.

“Then I became interested in the people that were here and in their lives.

“When I left the trust I thought, I don’t know whether to keep going or not and then I had a few people say to me, ‘You want to keep going, people are interested in researching their family history.’ So, I kept going.”

The Facebook page thrust Jeanette into another area of study: the history of the cemetery itself, which led her to writing the book.

Finding most of her information on digital database Trove and the minutes from the Shepparton cemetery fund, Jeanette pieced together the story of the cemetery from its beginnings in 1874 up until 2021.

“When I got to 1948, they (the cemetery trust) allowed me access to the minute books, which I know are very precious,’’ she said.

“I just hope that trust realises how precious they are because they’re history as well and they allowed me to take them home.

“So page by page, I read every word from 1948 onwards, to try and glean a bit of information as to what they were doing with the cemetery, with the trust, what was happening and how it was growing.”

Carefully curated with the smallest details of the cemetery’s history, the book itself took about a year for Jeanette to research and write up.

During her research Jeanette discovered a range of hidden gems.

“A lot of people don’t realise this, but the first place where they buried people in Shepparton was the car park that’s opposite the library near the footy grounds in the free car park,” she said.

Despite knowing a good portion of the history beforehand, Jeanette found herself surprised that part of the current cemetery was also once home to a school in the 1900s, which eventually closed in 1955.

Jeanette said children would often walk through the cemetery to get to the school, which was located on the other side.

“I did get a bit of a surprise about the fact that there was a school and I assumed it was in the cemetery grounds to begin with, but it wasn’t in the cemetery,” she said.

“This is all government land and the school was government land as well.

“So eventually the school closed in 1955. And the cemetery applied to have that land.”

The cemetery has undergone various changes over the years, with the most recent additions being the mausoleum and an updated columbarium.

To read more about the deep history of the Shepparton cemetery, you can buy A History of the Shepparton Public Cemetery 1876 to 2021 from Lovell’s Newsagency and Lost Shepparton Shop for $19.95.