page_title: Penguin General Cemetery
section_title: Recent Research
hierarchical_section_title: Penguin General Cemetery / Recent Research
caption_attribution_description: English: The Penguin community fund-raised to purchase this artpiece to celebrate the lives of its many unnamed children.
context_page_description: Penguin General Cemetery was gazetted a public cemetery in 1897; it overlooks the township of Penguin and the Bass Strait in Tasmania, Australia. It is situated on Main Street, a kilometre west of the town’s Post Office, on land originally owned by Reverend W.H. Walton of the Primitive Methodist Church.
context_section_description: 2006 saw renewed interest in the cemetery, sparked essentially by the chance discovery of a 1915 ‘John Doe’ burial in the records. Buried at the back edge of the cemetery, side-by-side with six other pioneers buried by the state, the discovery generated community interest, which resulted in researching the seven burials and erecting individual gravestones for each.
  Research suggests the mystery person may have been Jeremiah or Michael Clifford, an Irishman in his 40s. The most comprehensive account of the circumstance of his death comes from the statewide newspaper: The Mercury, under the heading “A bush tragedy – Dead Body Of Man Found – Gunshot Wound To The Head – Supposed Case Of Suicide”. The case for his presumed identity rests on the Police Gazette records. The remains are still unidentified.
  Much is already published on Penguin’s heritage-listed cemetery. This has generated investment in showcasing it as a tourist magnet, including a dedicated small internal garden in memory of the tens of unnamed babies buried in the old section.
  Such has been the response to the cemetery's ongoing and widespread publicity that the Tasmanian Association for Hospice & Palliative Care (TAH&PC) funded the inaugural Penguin Twilight Celebration of the Dead - music among the tombstones.
  This unusual, even unique, event held on Wednesday 7 January 2015 at 7pm in the cemetery was well supported by the broader Penguin community. It marked the centenary of the cemetery's unknown burial. The one-hour musical extravaganza, involving pipers, vocalists, choir, violinist, flautist and guitarist had the crowd of 120-150 people meandering around six of the more significant tombstones. The celebration culminated in the magnificent and moving butterfly release in the commemorative garden dedicated to the tens of unnamed babies in the cemetery.
  Photographic images of all headstones are available online at the Australian Cemeteries Index. Most recently, the Penguin community organized an onsite fundraiser to preserve the cemetery's history. The fundraiser was a Long Table dinner within the cemetery grounds, another truly unique experience, and once again bringing the cemetery alive. Attended by 36 guests the monies raised go towards commissioning an art-piece in the commemorative garden for the 80 or so unnamed babies buried in the grounds.
  Penguin's leadership in novel uses for old cemeteries is being emulated across Australia.
  
  Most recently the Penguin community dedicated a sculpture to its many unnamed children buried in the cemetery.  Children of the World by Bruny Island artist Keith Smith stands in its small commemorative garden.
   There have also been ghost tours.
  In 2020 a community artwork, a mosaic & word jumble, was installed along the foreshore.
caption: Children of the World sculpture
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