Qualla: Purga Aboriginal Cemetery

Purga Aboriginal Cemetery: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shiftchange, CC0. An acre of red earth lies off Carmichaels Road, fenced with chain wire, fifteen kilometres south of Ipswich. A few marble headstones lean among simple timber crosses, the oldest reading 1918. This is the resting place of the Aboriginal people who lived and died at the Purga mission - and of many more whose graves bear no stone at all. The land itself is the country of the Yugarabul people, who have been its custodians since time immemorial. To stand here is to stand among people who were carried far from their own country and laid to rest in someone else's. The cemetery is quiet now, but it is not empty. It is held, carefully, by the descendants who still come.

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Purga Aboriginal Cemetery: Sent Far From Country

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shiftchange, CC0. Under the Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act of 1897, the lives of Queensland's Aboriginal people fell under the control of the State. Officials called Protectors could decide where people lived, where they worked, and what wages they were allowed to k...

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Purga Aboriginal Cemetery: Deebing Creek and Purga

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shiftchange, CC0. The story begins a few kilometres north, at Deebing Creek, where a mission was set up in 1892. By 1914 the work had shifted to Purga Creek, partly because the new site sat closer to the railway, and partly - as the records bluntly state - to put distance between the residents and...

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Purga Aboriginal Cemetery: The Graves That Have No Stone

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shiftchange, CC0. The cemetery was formally gazetted in 1968, but people had been buried here since the mission's earliest years - the marble headstone dated 1918 proves it. Inside the small fenced enclosure, early marble markers stand beside low concrete headstones and timber crucifixes. Beyond t...

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Purga Aboriginal Cemetery: Those We Can Name

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shiftchange, CC0. Some who rest here are remembered by name, and through them the others are honoured too. Aunty Janey Arnold was born around 1908 near Mitchell; at the age of one, her family was moved to Deebing Creek, and later to Purga. She became a long-serving campaigner for Aboriginal rights...

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Purga Aboriginal Cemetery: Why It Endures

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shiftchange, CC0. The Purga Aboriginal Cemetery was added to the Queensland Heritage Register in 2008. The listing recognises it as a physical reminder of the practice of isolating Aboriginal people from the wider Queensland community in the early twentieth century - a policy written into law and ...

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