| The Cassilis Cemetery is located in
Cemetery Gully which runs off the Cassilis Road at what was about the
border between Cassilis and Tongio west. It served the Long Gully area
which consisted of Tongio West and Cassilis but also may have included Swifts Creek. Swifts Creek had land set aside for a cemetery but it has never been developed. Deaths in Swifts Creek would usually have been buried at Cassilis or Ensay. The cemetery is still a cemetery but no longer open for burials. It is cared for by community members. Due to its partial deliberate destruction in the early 1960s only 12 headstones remain. There are many mounds but most of the 200 or so burial sites were destroyed. First burial was of an infant in 1870, the last in 1926, also of an infant. |
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| The Cemetery is adjacent to the Cassilis
Recreation Reserve which is actually named the Jirnkee Recreation Reserve. Jirnkee was the Parish to which Cassilis and Tongio West belonged. The Reserve was established in 1896 when the area was near its peak and so the naming was possibly to avoid the usual argument about who was the bigger/best town. |
Cassilis Cemetery 1999 |
