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Waverley Cemeteries

Waverley Council is the operator of two cemeteries - Waverley Cemetery at Bronte, and South Head Cemetery at Vaucluse. Both cemeteries are operational, and we provide a range of services including Interment Rights for memorial spaces and ash gardens, ash interments and coffin burials for existing licence holders as well as maintenance services. Both Waverley and South Head Cemeteries are open for grave visitation on foot all year round. For more information about our services and the fees and charges associated with this please click here or email us with your enquiry.

Waverley Cemetery

Waverley Cemetery is the main operational cemetery within the Waverley LGA. In 1868 Waverley Council agreed to establish a cemetery and the first purchase of land to start the Cemetery took place in 1875. The first part of the cemetery was officially finished and opened in August 1877, and the first interment took place in the same month. Since that time around 90,000 interments have taken place in 55,000 gravesites and memorials over the 16 hectare site.

The site was listed on the State Heritage Register on 28 October 2016, as well as being listed in the Waverley Local Environmental Plan 2014 as a landscape conservation area of local significance. A number of notable people have been laid to rest in Waverley Cemetery, including Dorothea Mackellar, Henry Lawson and Victor Trumper.

South Head Cemetery

South Head Cemetery is the second and comparatively smaller operational cemetery located within the Waverley LGA and operated by Council. The Cemetery is located on Old South Head Road in Vaucluse, and was first opened around 1845, with the first interment undertaken in 1869. In the early 1940s, the management of South Head Cemetery passed from a private trust to Council. The land remains Crown land with Council appointed as the ‘Crown Land Manager’.

The Cemetery has over 6,000 gravesites and memorials, spread over a total area of just under 2 hectares. A number of notable people have been laid to rest in South Head Cemetery, including Australia’s first Prime Minister, Sir Edmund Barton and several members of the prominent Packer and Fairfax families.

Contact Us

The Cemetery Services office is located at Waverley Cemetery - on the corner of St Thomas Street and Trafalgar Street, Bronte. The cemetery office is located just inside the main cemetery gates and is open from Monday – Friday 9am – 4pm.

• Phone: (02) 9083 8899
• Email: cemetery@waverley.nsw.gov.au

Friends of Waverley Cemetery

Friends of Waverley Cemetery is a volunteer organisation, passionate about the Cemetery and preserving it as a national icon. Its members are usually people with an interest in in genealogy, social and local history and the preservation of the memories and deeds of pioneers and other notable Australians buried in the cemetery or may simply have relatives interred in the cemetery.

The Friends of Waverley Cemetery conduct cemetery tours on most Saturdays. These special tours take approximately 90 minutes to complete and cost $24.18 per person (which goes towards monument restoration). Click here to book your place at a tour today. To find out more information or to volunteer please email friendsofwaverleycemetery@gmail.com or visit their Facebook page.