Photos: Nicci Foster conducting a tour of the cemetery for the research team - July 2026

The Right to be Remembered -Restoring Denied Dignity

The Right to Be Remembered is a major community led research project forming part of the Castlemaine Cemetery Burial Recovery Project.

As Nicci Foster and her team continue their vital work on the burial recovery project, an equally important journey is taking place through the historical archives. 

For too long, many of those buried here at Castlemaine Cemetery were denied the lasting peace they deserved. Now a dedicated team of volunteers will start researching these people to piece together their lives and ensure that their stories are permanently etched back into the history of Castlemaine.

The research undertaken will stand as a permanent testament to their lives, ensuring they are finally met with the respect, recognition, and lasting memory they deserve.

This will be the largest community led historical research project ever undertaken in Castlemaine.

The project is called The Right to Be Remembered because remembrance is about more than history—it is about human dignity. Every person has the right to have their life acknowledged, regardless of their wealth, status or the passage of time.

The title also honours the spirit of Castlemaine itself. The miners and settlers who came to the Victorian goldfields fought for fairness, representation and the right to build better lives for themselves and their families. Today, we continue that legacy by restoring the dignity that was denied to those whose final resting places were disturbed.

Through historical research, The Right to Be Remembered project seeks to ensure that these individuals are remembered not only for their name and date of death, but for the lives they lived and the enduring contribution they made to the story of Castlemaine.

If you would like to join our research team, we'd love to hear from you. Please contact us at castlemainecemeterytrust@gmail.com.

We'll send you the name of a person from our burial register database, along with a research worksheet. Once you've completed your research, simply email the completed worksheet back to us. You can research as many people as you like.

You can work at your own pace, so there's no pressure or deadlines.

Our goal is to eventually create an online memorial where the stories of those buried in the cemetery can be preserved and shared with the community for future generations.

Castlemaine Cemetery holds a deeply complex history—one where the peace of the deceased was not always guaranteed. Before the first gold tents were pitched or the first graves dug in 1852, this land was and remains the unceded country of the Dja Dja Wurrung people.

As we seek to address the historical displacement and restore denied dignity to the pioneers buried within Castlemaine Cemetery we must first acknowledge a harsher truth: that the very gold rush which brought these pioneers here caused immediate, devastating destruction to the local Indigenous population, their culture, and their sacred sites. We cannot rightfully advocate for the right to be remembered for our early settlers without first acknowledging the voices long silenced of the Traditional Owners of this land. In asserting that every human being has the right to be remembered, we explicitly include the Dja Dja Wurrung people whose lives and landscapes were upended by the birth of the goldfields. True dignity cannot be restored to this cemetery without acknowledging the deep historical truth of the land it rests upon.

We pay our deep respects to Dja Dja Wurrung Elders past, present, and emerging, and recognize that their sovereignty was never ceded.