Original article titled: In Urban Lalor the ancient craft of dry stone walling encloses an historical oasis From Inherit Heritage Council Magazine Issue 21 March 2005.
From Westgarthtown — A History and Guide by Robert Wuchatsch and David Harris (revised 2004 edition, published by the Friends of Westgarthtown).
Situated on the corner of German Lane and Gardenia Road, Lalor, the Westgarthtown Lutheran Cemetery is a peaceful and remarkable place. Today the Westgarthtown precinct, of which the Lutheran cemetery is part, is an historical oasis within an urban precinct of 1950s-1970s housing. Westgarthtown, a farming village established by German and Wendish settlers in 1850, originally consisted of 16 dairy farms, which provided milk for Melbourne’s northern suburbs. Five of the settlers’ bluestone farmhouses survive, along with Australia’s second oldest Lutheran church and the unique cemetery. Bluestone was also used to build barns, stables, milking sheds, dry stone walls and paths.
The cemetery is surrounded by a dry stone wall and lined with Monterey pines along its northern, western and eastern boundaries. The pines and Italian cypresses along the main entrance from German Lane, are believed to date from the 1870s. In the eastern and western walls are two recently restored box picket gates which were designed to provide pedestrian access but prevent the entry of cattle.
The cemetery’s first interment, that of an unnamed, still-born child, had taken place by October 1850. Although no burial register for the cemetery survives, over 175 burials are known to have taken place, with a probable total of around 200. Each family was allocated one 30 x 30 feet plot. A pencil sketch plan, drawn on the inside of a small door in the back of the old altar, shows the location of the original 16 family plots.
These numbered plots, which occupy the northern half of the cemetery, run eastward from the Maltzahn family graves in the north-west corner at Gardenia Road and German Lane, to the Graff plot in the north-east corner. Separated by a path which connects the east and west pedestrian gates, the remaining plots stretch back to the Wuchatsch graves, near the western boundary wall. Since the cemetery was first laid out, many other burials have taken place outside these 16 plots.
The graves are placed randomly within the family plots with all headstones facing east. Several are surrounded by iron fences, common in the 19th Century. Most of the graves have marble headstones, although there are also some in black granite and surprisingly, one small bluestone memorial and another made of redgum. Many of the inscriptions are in German and some in both German and English. Many of the memorials have recently been restored by the City of Whittlesea.
A variety of Indigenous and introduced species of flowering plants grow within the cemetery. In late Winter and Spring, jonquils, daffodils, roses, pelargonium and dianthus bloom among the graves. Lightwood wattles, blue flax lilies and weeping she-oaks grow in the undisturbed southern section. These Indigenous plants provide a link with the land as it was before the arrival of Europeans. As the graves and introduced flowering bulbs remind us of the German settlers, so the blue flax lilies and she-oaks remind us this is also the land of the Wurundjeri
