Nundah Historic Cemetery

Eleven Lutheran missionaries hailed from Germany in 1836 under the initiative of Reverend John Lang, with the sole aim of imposing their religion on the local Aboriginal tribes who, unsurprisingly, rejected their efforts. Sensible enough to concede failure, the missionaries took up farming instead, which they managed successfully for the next generation.

The small cemetery where these early settlers and their descendants were interred started as a small burial ground in 1846 before being opening as a cemetery in 1862.

Nearby Walkers Way was the site of this original settlement known as Zion Hill where the missionaries lived in crude bark roofed slab cottages. Later the name was changed to German Station before, in a stroke of irony, it was converted to the Aboriginal name for ‘water holes’, Nundah. At one time up to 600 German families lived in the area, as evidenced by some of the earlier gravestones, inscribed in German.

As with 19th century cemeteries, many graves were babies and children who died of fever. One such grave over the far side was the 10 week old granddaughter of one of the original missionaries Frank Gerler and the Mayor of Brisbane Richard Warry.