Cooktown Cemetery

Cooktown Cemetery
Cooktown Cemetery, 2010
Location	Charlotte Street, Cooktown, Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia
Coordinates	15°28′33″S 145°14′28″E / 15.4759°S 145.2411°E / -15.4759; 145.2411Coordinates: 15°28′33″S 145°14′28″E / 15.4759°S 145.2411°E / -15.4759; 145.2411
Design period	1870s - 1890s (late 19th century)
Built	1874 - 1920
Queensland Heritage Register
Official name: Cooktown Cemetery
Type	state heritage (landscape, built)
Designated	8 April 1997
Reference no.	601147
Significant period	1874-1920 (fabric, historical) 1874- (social)
Significant components	pathway/walkway, memorial/monument, fire box, gate - entrance, cemetery, fence/wall - perimeter, track, grave surrounds/railings, headstone, burial/grave, trees/plantings, sign, grave marker, denominational divisions, shrine, well
Location of Cooktown Cemetery in Queensland Show map of Queensland Location of Cooktown Cemetery in Queensland Show map of Australia

Cooktown Cemetery is a heritage-listed cemetery at Charlotte Street, Cooktown, Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1874 to 1920. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 8 April 1997.

Cooktown Cemetery, with over 3,000 burials, has been in continuous use since soon after the town was established in October 1873. Although gazettal was not until mid-1875 the site was used earlier; the oldest marked grave is that of Rev. Francis Tripp, an Anglican clergyman who died at Cooktown on 20 May 1874. Cemetery records date from 1875, with approximately 1830 burials recorded in the period 1877 to 1920. The colourful mix of nationalities and religions evident in these records and in the cemetery itself reflect the nature of Cooktown in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the Endeavour River port for the Palmer River goldfields.

Cooktown "mushroomed" in the mid-1870s as a port and supply and administrative centre. Within six months of its establishment in October 1873 there were 20 restaurants, 12 large and 20 smaller stores, 6 butchers, 5 bakers, 3 tinsmiths, and chemists, fancygoods shops, watchmakers, bootmakers and saddlers, conducting businesses in the town; 65 publican's licenses had been issued for the Cooktown- Palmer River district, with 30 more applied for by April 1874. There was an estimated 3,000 floating population in the town itself, and thousands of men en route to the goldfields. Large numbers of Chinese made their way to the Palmer goldfields via Cooktown in the period 1873-77, and Chinese storekeepers were amongst the earliest to establish businesses in Cooktown. Two Cooktown newspapers were established in 1874, a state school, customs house, court house, post office and several churches were erected by 1875, and the town was declared a municipality on 5 April 1876. The 1876 census revealed a population of over 9,200 persons on the then extensive Palmer goldfields, and the town of Cooktown had a population of just under 2,200.

In the 1880s Cooktown business "boomed". A railway was constructed from Cooktown to Laura between 1884 and 1888, further opening the port to development. By the late 1880s it was the centre not only of a thriving mining district (boosted by the 1887 discovery of tin along the Annan River), but also of pearling, beche-de-mer, and pastoral activity. After 1885 Cooktown was also the main port for Queensland trade with New Guinea. Despite the decline in alluvial output from the Palmer River goldfields in the mid-1880s and the corresponding decline in the town's importance as the principal port of Far North Queensland from the early 1890s, by the turn of the century the Cook and Palmer census districts still had a population of just under 6,000, (despite less than 1,300 persons on the Palmer, Coen and Hamilton goldfields) and the municipality of Cooktown retained a population of nearly 2,000.