Cemetery Bay

Cemetery Bay overlooks the Norfolk Island cemetery, an historic and picturesque place.  There is only one cemetery on the island so everyone who dies on the island has been buried here since the time of the first settlement to the present days (unless transported overseas).  There exist no funeral parlours or crematoria.   The many headstones tell gruelling stories – William McCulloch who was executed for the mutiny of the island in 1834, Stephen Smith, native of Dublin, who was ‘barbarously murdered’ by prisoners in 1840, Frank Warren, native of Providence, Rhode Island, who was ‘brutally murdered by a creek miscreant’ on a ship, Alfred Essex Baldock, the Chief Constable, who was ‘unfortunately drowned’ in 1848, along with a memorial to Corporal Lister Quintal, who gave his life at Gallipoli 1914-16.

The beach at Cemetery Bay is perfect for swimming and snorkelling in favourable tides. Rockpools can be seen when the tide is low.