Chinese section
Victorian Heritage Register # H2136 – February 9, 2009
We are pleased to announce that our nomination of White Hills Cemetery, Bendigo to the Victorian Heritage Register has been accepted and will be gazetted very shortly.
It is thanks to the Friends’ hard work over the last 16 years that the heritage values of this cemetery have been accepted. We had to fight against proposed planning changes by the Bendigo Cemeteries Trust which threatened the cemetery’s major heritage features of gates, fences, individual trees and avenues, general layout of denominational areas and paths at a Victorian Civil and Administration Tribunal hearing and a Ministerial hearing over the last couple of years.
Unfortunately we have witnessed extensive vandalism in the last 15-20 years. The cost of repairs to these tombstones is thousands of dollars more than heritage can bear. Dancing on graves, toppling over tombstones and stealing polished stone is still occurring. 
We have done our best but it is a never ending struggle.
This cemetery is located in north Bendigo, formerly known Sandhurst. It was first the Lower Bendigo burial ground , then the Junction Cemetery, and finally for the last 155 years as the White Hills Cemetery.
As Bendigo grew, White Hills cemetery with a Catholic sexton was not the chosen final resting place of our most prominent citizens who were mostly Protestants. It was also not popular as public access to the cemetery by road was limited. Some mourners living to the south objected to having to drive their carriages and horses past the large, pagan, Chinese camp at Emu Point enroute to a funeral.
Burials occurred in separate denomination areas which are still defined by brick lined paths and a few remaining avenues of trees.
Few traditional plants have survived due modern methods of weed spraying and maintenance plus the leveling of all grave mounds in the 1960’s except in the Chinese area.
All the old redgum headboards, curbing and fences were burnt in the annual post war clean-ups.
The open ground around the White Hills Cemetery is being planned as the major burial site for Bendigo in this new century. The other cemeteries are almost full. We hope the public will have some input into these plans. Future plans need to incorporate and enhance some of the heritage features of this cemetery. The present Lawn section with its separate entrance at the rear has done nothing to incorporate or acknowledge that death and history flow on through the years. We should not forget that we have much to celebrate, remember and to learn from our past.
