Genealogists throughout Australia and indeed many other parts of the world will warmly welcome the availability of a comprehensive new index for interments in the Ballarat Cemeteries. Of all early settlements in Australia Ballarat can lay claim to having the richest treasure trove of burial records both in volume and diversity of goldrush immigrants.
For the Ballarat Old Cemetery, there are 35,000 burial records in 11,000 graves from May 1856 to May 2005 as well as transcriptions of headstones, many of which have now become unreadable or no longer exist. The names of some pre-1856 burials are known, such as that on an 1853 wooden headstone. This wonderful work began in 1973 when Ballarat Historical Society members, Hazel Williams and Lois Reynolds first recorded information from selected headstones in the Ballarat Old Cemetery. The work was continued in the 1980s by the Ballarat Group of the Genealogical Society of Victoria and cemetery records were computerised by the Ballaarat General Cemeteries Trust. This resulted in the publication by the GSV of the first Ballarat burial index on microfiche in 1989. Graeme Reynolds, son of Lois, has brought the Ballarat Old Cemetery transcription record up to date for this new publication by including new memorials on old graves erected as recently as June 2006.