Shellharbour Beachside Tourist Park

New book on forgotten burial ground

Grave tale of how
cemetery was given
new lease of life

CARAVANNERS at a NSW caravan park could be forgiven for their ghoulish stories ... after all, the park does stand on the site of an old graveyard.

And, according to a couple of local historians, human remains and headstones still lie beneath the popular 123-site Shellharbour Beachside Tourist Park on the state's South Coast.

Terry and Wendy Nunan, members of the Tongarra Heritage Society, have spent thousands of hours researching the old cemetery which eventually fell victim to the ravages of nature.

It remained abandoned for many years until the council finally developed the site as a camping and caravanning area.

The Nunans concluded that up to 259 people had been buried in the cemetery, but not all have been reinterred.

The Nunans' new book

"Hearsay states that some time in the 1950s the council decided to lay flat any remaining headstones, cover them over and absorb the burial area into the ever expanding camping area," Terry told Caravanning News.

Their 506-page book, Shellharbour's Forgotten Cemetery and Selected Pioneers, will be launched on November 22.

It contains 20 pages on the cemetery's history and its eventual new lease of life as a caravan park.

Terry has provided us with the following potted history.

"During the 1940s and 1950s Shellharbour's popularity as a camping destination grew, and with it ever mounting pressure to expand the area available for holidaymakers and the boost to the local economy that they brought with them. 

"Initially the camping area was concentrated further to the north of the current day Shellharbour Beachside Tourist Park, jammed in between the business district, the harbour and the swimming pool.

"In 1953, the council was alerted to the fact that a skeleton had been dug up and removed from the old cemetery.

"In 1955, it debated whether or not to remove any remaining headstones and transfer them to the new cemetery, but alas no further report was made either in the council minutes or newspapers to state whether this was done. 

"By this stage the council had actually forgotten that they were administratively responsible for the old burial ground, and an inquiry of the Lands Department concerning this matter brought the official reply: 'What cemetery?'.

"In the late 1950s a motion was passed by the council to expand the camping area 'to the west and south of the old burial area', with the minute books right through the 1960s recording further expansions over and over again, but never once mentioning the burial ground again and hence never specifying the exact occasion on which it was swallowed up into the camping area, then known as Bassett Park.

"The minute books of the 1960s record the gradual progression from tent camping to caravan camping, particularly noting ongoing debates with respect to the need to lay out the area with sealed or at least gravel top-dressed roadways between the actual camp sites and most contentiously, the need for installing electricity outlets for caravans. 

"It was not till the 1980s or 1990s that the area was further upgraded (and limited) to become the current day Shellharbour Beachside Tourist Park ... the areas to the north, adjacent to the swimming pool, and to the south towards the South Shellharbour Beach, being returned to parkland for the use of day visitors and not campers.

"The fact that human remains and headstones still lie there beneath the surface of the tourist park is borne out by the story that is told of a contractor who was undertaking some plumbing work in the 1990s or thereabouts. 

"When his ditch-digger struck a large block of sandstone he contacted his council supervisor to seek further instructions.

"Move the ditch," was the reply given.

For more information about the book or its launch, email tongarrasec@gmail.com

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