Stories behind the Stones: White Cliffs

To find the White Cliffs cemetery, start at the White Cliffs Corner Store on your left and the White Cliffs Hotel on your right. You will be on Keraro Road/Mandalay Road. Follow this road out of town for approximately 1km and you will come up a little rise in the road and will see a green painted rock (on the left) and a little sign pointing to the cemetery (on the right). Turn left here and you will have arrived at the White Cliffs cemetery.

After the discovery of opal at White Cliffs people came from near and far to try their luck on the field. By 1890, the shanty town had a population of 700 people, who lived in tents, shacks, or holes dug into the nearby hills. Food supplies were scanty, and tragically, their limited water supply came from a sheep paddock and was often polluted. Opalmania was strong and the community continued to grow, despite the unsanitary and difficult living conditions, which resulted in many deaths due to typhoid, cholera, dysentery, and diphtheria. Tragically, those hardest hit, were young children and their mothers, due to limited medical care.

This cemetery reflects the difficulties the pioneering families faced and stands as a monument to those who lived and died in this remote mining town. While records are scarce, it has been documented that between 1892-1899 over 500 children and innumerable adults were buried in this cemetery, many in unmarked graves.

The cemetery was planned according to the religious beliefs of the day, with the followers of the Church of England faith to the right of the entrance, followers of the Roman Catholic faith to the left, and the general area at the rear. It is also understood that many Chinese, Afghans, and Aboriginal people may be buried outside of the consecrated ground, in the rocky fields surrounding the cemetery.

As you walk through this cemetery, walk with respect and remember the hardships faced by the pioneering men, women and children who struggled to live in this harsh environment. You will see many monuments that reflect the landscape itself, including some made out of striking Antarctic ‘Dropstones’, which would have been dropped from icebergs into the ancient icy sea that once covered the area, approximately 120 million years ago.

Locals recall that many of the modern funerals are different to those found elsewhere with the deceased being placed in the back of the pub ute and driven around the opal fields, and the locals throwing in a few opals amongst the dirt as they were buried.! In the words of one local, Enid Black, ‘funerals are not necessarily sombre and crying affairs out here, there are more laughs than anything else’. These funerals, and their monuments, reflect the lives of the hard-working miners, pastoralists, and colourful creatives who chose to live, and subsequently die, in the unique town of White Cliffs.

As this is a small cemetery directions will refer to ‘the back' or 'the front' of the cemetery and the central pathway. We will circumnavigate the cemetery in a clockwise direction. Your first stop will be in the 4th row on your left as you walk through the entrance gate. You will see a memorial to Thomas Crannell.