Nearly 2000 bodies exhumed under Tasmanian school’s hockey field

The removal of the bodies from an Australian school sports field is believed to be the largest mass exhumation in the nation’s history.

Nearly 2,000 bodies have been exhumed from a sports field at a Tasmania boarding school - with some buried six people deep - in what is believed to be Australia’s largest mass exhumation.

Contractors working at the prestigious Hutchins School in Hobart – one of the oldest schools in Australia – discovered human graves buried underneath the hockey field while carrying out construction work in March.

The site had previously formed part of the Queenborough Cemetery before the Hobart City Council took over ownership in the early 1900s.

After nine months of evacuation, a total of 1,973 remains have now been exhumed, a notice published on the school’s website reads.

1,973 remains were exhumed at the site of Hutchins School in Hobart. Picture: Google Maps

An archaeology team worked to identify 87 per cent of the deceased by piecing together information from Births Deaths and Marriage records, headstone transcripts, newspapers. incomplete burial registers and other evidence.

However, the notice stated: “In many instances, it has not been possible to determine the separate identity of individuals within family plots.”

The school has published a list of those identified on its website, with the deceased ranging from infants to 99 years old. Some remains are believed to date back to the 1800s.

An archaeology team worked to identify 87 per cent of the remains. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Evacuation took place over the course of nine months. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Cemetery turned boarding school

It’s believed up to 13,000 people were buried at the Queenborough Cemetery between 1873-1934, the ABC reports.

Hobart City Council took over the site of the cemetery from a private company in 1917 before the school purchased the site in the 1960s as part of a deal which stipulated the council would fund the cost to exhume up to 1,900 bodies.

Hutchins principal Rob McEwan said in a letter to parents earlier this year that the school had been aware that approximately 1900 exhumations had occurred at the site before 1961, The Mercury reports.

“It has now become clear very few of the previous exhumations had occurred on the site of the current building works,” he said.

Queenborough Memorial Reserve near the school site. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Historical archaeologist Brad Williams said the team were surprised to discover how many bodies were buried on the site.

“I thought we could be dealing with a couple of hundred [people’s remains],” he told the ABC.

“What we hadn’t expected was the amount of stacked burials that we found … sometimes up to six people deep.”

Hundreds of bodies are believed to still lie underneath the school, with archaeologists only exhuming about 15 per cent of the site of the cemetery.

The school said the exhumed remains have been transferred into new coffins and will be reburied at the Cornelian Bay Cemetery in late January. A service will be held at a later time.

Their identified names of the declasses will be included on new memorials at the Cornelian Bay and the Peel Street Memorial Reserve.

Originally published as Nearly 2000 bodies exhumed under Tasmanian school’s hockey field