History

History – an extract from the book At Home on The Hill, Volume I by Pamela Rothfield

The earliest surveyed plan for Cowes, had four blocks of land, totalling four acres (almost 2 hectares) earmarked for a Cemetery – right in the heart of the town.

The blocks were lots 17, 18, 19 and 20 on the corner of what are now called Church Street and Dunsmore Road, which today form part of the Cowes Recreation Reserve, home of the Phillip Island Football Netball Club.

On 7 April 1870 the State Government ordered the temporary reservation of these four acres as a site for a Cemetery. However, within a fortnight, on 20 April 1870, this decision was unofficially overturned. By whom, we do not know.

What we do know is that the locals did not feel that site reserved by the Government to be suitable. A public meeting was held in Cowes, resulting in a bit of argy-bargy between the locals and the Government. President of the Board of Land & Works and Commissioner of Lands and Survey, Mr. James McKean, agreed to find a more suitable site.[1] This assurance was given on 1 April 1870. Perhaps that date should have been a foreshadowing of things to come.

Despite the commitment by Mr. McKean, it was only six days later, on 7 April 1870 that the four acres the Government had earmarked for the cemetery were gazetted. So, regardless of protestations from the locals, the Cemetery was to be located on the corner of Church Street and Dunsmore Road – or was it?

Twelve days after the gazetting of the Cemetery, a little girl named Mary Smith, from Rhyll, died from dysentery. Her father, George, sailed across to Hastings and then made his way to Schnapper Point (Mornington) on the day of her death, in order to officially register her passing.[2]

On George’s return to Phillip Island from Mornington, he proceeded with two other locals to attend to Mary’s burial – not, however, in the four acres which the Government had set aside for the Cemetery, but at another location, on the top of a hill overlooking beautiful Western Port, about three kilometres away.

The land on which he buried Mary was reserved by the Government for ‘future water needs’ for the township of Cowes, however a year later it was rezoned as farming land.

Upon Mary’s death the locals had ‘nipped off’ a neat rectangle of some 25 acres (10 hectares) to create a cemetery from a farming allotment, which was supposed to have been 100 acres effectively reducing it to 75 acres (30 hectares).

This neat rectangle comprises low-lying wetlands, through which a long driveway wends its way to the top of a hill, where an area of some seven acres commands magnificent views and features an abundance of native flora and fauna. It is the final resting place of many of our ancestors, pioneers and visitors.

At the end of 1871, the Government appointed the first trustees of the Phillip Island Cemetery Trust. They were: James Forster, James Smith, Solomon West, Thomas Kinane and David Reid.[3]

By the time the ‘reduced’ farming allotment was purchased from the Crown in 1872, there had been five burials on the 7 acres on top of the hill.

Records reflect that the Government continued to record that the Cemetery was located at the corner of Church Street and Dunsmore Road.

Then, in 1894, at the Phillip Island Shire Council meeting held on Saturday 15 September, inward correspondence reveals a letter from the Public Health Department asking for a report from the Health Officer on the cemeteries in the shire.

A year later, in 1895, the report was completed and received by the Public Health Department.[4] An extract from the Health Officer’s report on ‘Cemeteries in Phillip Island Shire’, describes the cemetery at Cowes as, “.. containing 7 acres situated 2 miles from the township of Cowes, which has a population of 140. Covered by grass brushwood and trees. Evergreens have been planted by the trustees & residents.” The words ‘7 acres’ are underlined in pencil.

It is probable that this report was the catalyst for bringing our de facto Cemetery site to the attention of Government of the day.  The discrepancy in the description of our Cemetery of ‘7 acres located on top of the hill’ compared to the 4 acres originally reserved by Government which was situated a mere 300 yards from the township of Cowes – not 2 miles – would have set off a few alarm bells!

By March 1899, there was a flurry of internal correspondence within the Department for Crown Lands & Survey including a response to “an application from residents of Cowes” for our Cemetery on the hill to be officially reserved. The documentation reveals that the opinion from the Board of Public Health was to unanimously support the petition.

So our pioneers were a resourceful lot. They decided that the original site for the Cemetery as selected by the Government of the day, was not to their liking. They instead nipped off 25 beautiful acres of farmland, which had been reserved by the Government for future water use for the Cowes township. They then performed their own survey and laid out the Cemetery in 5 religious Sections, expanding this to 6, in 1894 with the division of the Wesleyan Section.

That’s what one would call the pioneering spirit.