Arabic version: تحقيق بشأن قبور غير معلَّمة في روكوود يدفع نيو ساوث ويلز إلى التحرك

According to The Guardian, Jayne Kinsolving and her foster mother, Barbara Davis, found the burial site of Kinsolving’s biological mother, sister and grandmother in an overgrown, waterlogged area of Sydney’s Rookwood cemetery about 16 years ago. Guided to a location listed as section “NNNN”, they were told they were standing on the graves when they asked where the burial plots were.

Kinsolving had spent years searching for her family. Researchers at the Salvation Army told her that her mother, Christine Halpin, had died in a house fire in 1989, a month before Kinsolving’s eighth birthday. Halpin, Jessica and Patricia were buried in an unmarked communal grave after the state government deemed the family unable to afford a funeral.

Davis, who had been Halpin’s foster carer for four years, said she had not been told of the burial arrangement or given the opportunity to pay for a funeral. She later lobbied government, made parliamentary submissions and spoke to the media. In 2013, the then Liberal government committed to marking all graves, but the cemetery operator said Metropolitan Memorial Parks had not identified a legislative or regulatory requirement giving effect to that statement and had not received funding for grave markers.

The Guardian’s investigation identified hundreds of unmarked communal graves at Rookwood, often containing four to six people. It reported that only about a dozen had any marking and that a 17-metre stretch used for 2026 burials, estimated to contain more than 40 people, had no markers. NSW Health apologised after the investigation, while health minister Ryan Park called the failings “unacceptable” and said the department would explore reforms, including the Victorian model of individual plots with markings. The cemetery’s Path of Remembrance, opened in 2017, allows people to pay $880 for a commemorative plaque on a rock.