Cemetery sign off
Council Acts
Recently Newsport carried a story on the so called ‘original’ cemetery close to the town and how a Council sign erected in the park stating it was the first cemetery in Port Douglas was not based on fact.
Mayor Michael Kerr was quick to act and requested Council staff check out the information contained in the Newsport story and determine whether the sign was carrying true or false information.
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The verdict
Well, the results are in, and Newsport and the former President of the Douglas Shire Historical Society, Noel Weare, were right. The sign has now been removed by Council workers.
The present-day cemetery on the main road into Port, opposite the Sheraton Golf Course, is the true original cemetery. Records show that the first burial at the cemetery was on 22nd June 1878 of George Freshney, who died aged 21 years and the cemetery was gazetted the same year.
The official Port Douglas Hospital, opposite the park where the Council sign was located, was successfully tendered for on 28th December 1880 by TP Hardy and Co and the building went up the following year in 1881. The park in question was gazetted as a cemetery in 1883, some five years after our current cemetery, so dates don’t lie.
Mayor Kerr told Newsport “It’s important we portray the correct information on any Council sign in the Shire, so after it was brought to our attention in that article that it was not the case and once Council staff confirmed that new information, the sign simply had to be removed”.
The future for the vacant land is not known at this stage. When Douglas was part of Cairns Regional Council in 2009, an email from the State Lands Department advised that the purpose of the land had been changed from ‘Memorial’ to ‘Park’.