unmarked graves: the Australians buried without name or dignity.
Across the world, people remain buried in unmarked graves because institutions responsible for their care failed to record who they were. From mother and baby homes in Ireland and residential schools in Canada to colonial prison camps in the United States and out-of-home care institutions in Australia, countless individuals who died under government or religious authority were buried without a name or their dignity.
Some records were never created. Others no longer exist. To this day, the people behind each of those records remain nameless.
They were children, patients, prisoners and “paupers”. They came from different institutions, communities and eras, but they all deserve to be remembered by name.
establishing identity and truth.
Decades later, families are still searching for truth and justice for those who lie unacknowledged at these former sites.
These graves are a legacy of systems that existed within living memory, where the identities of those buried and the circumstances of their deaths were poorly documented, inadequately investigated or deliberately obscured. For families, this creates profound and ongoing uncertainty, not only about whether their relatives are interred at these sites, but about how, when and why they died.
Forensic science can now do what the historical record cannot: locate unmarked graves, identify forgotten individuals and reconstruct their stories.
unmarked graves as evidence.
An unmarked grave is a burial site without any identifying marker – no headstone or nameplate to record who lies there. In some cases, markers were never placed. In others, they were removed or lost over time. In institutional settings, their absence can reflect how people were regarded in death.
Unmarked graves can also be physical records of past institutional practice. They are found across former hospitals, asylums, orphanages, schools, missions and prisons, many of them state and faith-based “care” systems now associated with marginalisation and mistreatment. In these contexts, the failure to mark and register those who died could itself be part of that disregard, with their lives and deaths, in some cases, omitted from the official record.
Properly examined, these sites can reveal lost identities, unexplained deaths and institutional failures. Archival research, oral history and community knowledge are essential to piecing together what happened, but where those sources are sparse or absent, the site itself may hold forensic evidence of who a person was and what became of them.
interdisciplinary forensic investigation.
Specialised DNA techniques can identify historical remains even where no prior biometric records exist and no close relatives are available to provide DNA samples for comparison. Ancient DNA methods, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) profiling, extended kinship analysis and forensic investigative genetic genealogy (FIGG) – which combines SNP profiling, public databases and genealogical research – make it possible to sequence aged and degraded DNA, build out family trees across generations and identify living descendants of the unknown person.
DNA-led identification approaches should always form part of an interdisciplinary forensic investigation, with DNA results being interpreted alongside archaeological, anthropological, dental, medical and historical evidence. They must also be applied in a way that respects the legitimate concerns some families and communities hold about genetic samples being sent offshore, uploaded to third-party databases or exploited for other purposes. Identification should never come at the cost of their trust. Our independent DNA laboratory, secure local database, resident genetic genealogist and collaborative governance model mean it does not have to.
a global shift towards scientific truth-telling.
Warning: The following sections contain references to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have died, and to stillbirth and infant loss, institutional abuse and historical burial practices, which some readers may find distressing. Please take care when reading.
Internationally, advanced DNA capabilities are proving central to humanitarian forensic investigations into historical injustices.
In the United States, the Principal Research Group is using FIGG to identify 101 African American individuals discovered in unmarked graves at a former sugar plantation and prison farm in Sugar Land, Texas. Known collectively as the Sugar Land 95, their remains were uncovered in 2018 during school construction works at an abandoned cemetery. Predominantly male, with some as young as teenagers, these individuals are believed to have laboured and died at the Bullhead Convict Labor Camp between approximately 1880 and 1910, under Texas’ convict leasing system – a practice that forced African American prisoners to work in brutal conditions on private plantations in the aftermath of the Civil War. Multidisciplinary forensic analysis, including archaeological and anthropological examination, has revealed evidence of neglect and violence, with disease, injury and gunshot wounds among the suspected causes of death.
In Ireland, the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam has launched a DNA identification program under the Institutional Burials Act 2022 to identify human remains recovered from the site of the former Mother and Baby Institution in Tuam, County Galway, which operated from 1925 to 1961. Official death records indicate that 796 infants and children died there, yet no burial locations were documented. A 2017 test excavation confirmed the presence of commingled juvenile remains in underground chambers at the site. The full forensic excavation began in July 2025, and as of July 2026, 99 sets of infant remains have been recovered. DNA reference samples are also being collected from eligible family members in Ireland and internationally who believe they may be related to a child buried at the site. Forensic Science Ireland will use next-generation sequencing of SNP markers and mitochondrial DNA to assess potential familial links as part of the multidisciplinary forensic investigation. Forensic Human Identification Co. is contributing technical expertise to guide the DNA-led identification process.
social injustice closer to home.
Australia’s history of institutional burials reflects a similar pattern of social injustice, repeated across every state, within multiple systems of care and over more than a century.
They include babies and children removed from their families under government and church policies, who died in institutional care. Adult patients who spent their final years in psychiatric institutions, remembered as numbers rather than names. Aboriginal people confined on remote islands under state control, buried far from Country. Those who died in poverty or without anyone to claim them, consigned to communal graves with little documentation or ceremony.
What connects these cases is that decades later, questions about their identities, deaths and burials remain unanswered.
Answering those questions starts with a name. When an unidentified person is named, families may finally learn what happened to those they lost. Its social impact, however, extends far beyond any one family. Survivors’ collective experiences are acknowledged, healing from past trauma can begin and the dead are treated with the dignity every human being deserves. It also helps ensure that those who were forgotten are no longer absent from our history.
Stolen Generations institutions – NSW & WA.
Until the 1970s, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were forcibly removed from their families under government policy in an attempt to assimilate them into colonial society. They were placed in training homes, church missions or with non-Indigenous families. Separated from their culture, language and community, many experienced harsh punishment, neglect and abuse. Since 2023, investigations into former Stolen Generations institutions in both New South Wales (NSW) and Western Australia (WA) have uncovered evidence suggesting that hundreds of Aboriginal children and infants may be buried in unmarked or undocumented graves. In NSW, a ground-penetrating radar survey at the state-run Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home identified at least nine anomalous sites interpreted as being consistent with clandestine rather than Christian burials. The home operated from 1924 to 1970 and housed between 400 and 600 Aboriginal boys. The findings prompted the NSW Government to initiate its Missing Children Project to search for the remains of missing children at three sites of former Aboriginal children’s homes: Kinchela, Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls and Bomaderry Aboriginal Children’s Home.
In WA, burial records tell a fragmented story across three former church and government-run missions: Moore River, Carrolup and New Norcia. At the Moore River Native Settlement, the cemetery is one of the largest Aboriginal burial grounds in Australia, containing over 400 mainly unmarked graves. Of the 374 recorded deaths, 54 per cent were children under 18 and 73 per cent of those were aged under five, but the WA Government acknowledges the records do not account for every death at the settlement. At the Carrolup Settlement, nearly half of the 100 people who died between 1915 and 1949 were children and infants. At least 20 of them lie in unmarked graves and two further possible burial sites have not been officially acknowledged. At the New Norcia Mission, run by Benedictine monks, the burial register lists 275 Aboriginal children under 18. The monks say some were buried at New Norcia, others at Moore River and the rest are unaccounted for, while about 50 graves in the local cemetery are marked as unknown. The monastery has been researching the cemetery’s records and has expressed support for the use of ground-penetrating radar technology with government backing.
Survivors, community leaders and Aboriginal organisations have called for these sites to be investigated in a culturally appropriate manner so that the children who died can be identified and returned to Country as part of truth-telling. Survivors and families have waited generations for that truth. At some sites the graves are yet to be found and at others they are known but unnamed. Either way, records and surveys can only take the search so far. Identifying these children will take independent forensic investigation that goes beyond the surface.
penal institutions – WA.
From 1838 to 1931, Wadjemup, also known as Rottnest Island, was used as a colonial prison and forced labour camp. Between 3,700 and 4,000 Aboriginal men and boys were taken from across WA to Wadjemup, some under 10 years of age, many imprisoned for offences that would be considered minor today. State records indicate that at least 373 Aboriginal men and boys died in custody and were buried in unmarked graves at what is now known as the Wadjemup Aboriginal Burial Ground. Today, the island is a major tourist destination, while for many Aboriginal people it remains the largest recorded Aboriginal deaths-in-custody site in Australian history. In April 2026, ancestral remains were found during construction works to expand the main bus stop near the island’s Holy Trinity Catholic Church, an area outside the recognised burial ground. Forensic anthropological examination determined the remains were historical and of Aboriginal ancestry. Human remains have surfaced across the island during infrastructure and conservation works over several decades, indicating the previously mapped burial site does not account for everyone who died on Wadjemup.
From 1908 to 1919, Bernier and Dorre Islands operated as lock hospitals. More than 800 Aboriginal men, women and children were taken from their homelands and detained for suspected venereal disease. Men were held on Bernier and women and children on Dorre. Many diagnoses were unreliable and the treatments were experimental, while non-Indigenous people with the same conditions were treated in the community rather than isolated on the islands. It is estimated that more than 200 people died on the two islands and were left in unmarked graves. When the island scheme closed in 1919, the Port Hedland Lock Hospital opened on the mainland to hold the remaining patients and ran into the 1930s. Medical incarceration of Indigenous people in WA did not end there. From 1936 to 1986, the Derby Leprosarium, known as Bungarun, forcibly confined Aboriginal people from across the state for treatment of leprosy, sometimes for decades. Approximately 1,200 people were sent there over 50 years and 357 are buried in Bungarun Cemetery. Most lie in unmarked graves, although rows of white crosses and an engraved memorial wall now commemorate those who died there. But for many families, the exact location of their ancestors’ graves remains unknown.
Across these WA sites, the resting places of hundreds of Aboriginal ancestors are unmarked or uncertain. They were incarcerated for offences or illnesses that would rarely have seen others treated the same way. This history reinforces the need for a comprehensive forensic investigation to establish the full extent of these historical Aboriginal burials, and ensure that decisions about the respectful and appropriate management of ancestral remains are made in accordance with the wishes of the communities to whom they belong.
psychiatric institutions – QLD & NSW.
Between 1865 and its closure in 2000, thousands of patients died at Wolston Park Hospital in Queensland (QLD), formerly one of Australia’s largest psychiatric institutions. A QLD Government review, completed in December 2025, documented decades of systemic abuse and maltreatment, including multiple allegations of physical and sexual violence, over-medication and electroconvulsive therapy. Three successive on-site cemeteries were closed and mass exhumations reportedly undertaken, yet available records account for approximately 200 confirmed reburials. These exhumations predated modern forensic standards, leaving it unclear as to whether remains were accurately tracked from grave to reburial. At Goodna Cemetery, former Wolston Park Hospital patients are commemorated only by numbered concrete grave markers bearing no names or dates. The highest number on the surviving grave markers is 2,355, far exceeding the number of documented reburials. The review’s lead reviewer has said those numbers should be names.
Sydney’s former Gladesville Hospital is no different. It opened in 1838 as the Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum, later Gladesville Hospital, and operated until the 1990s. In memorialising those buried there, the NSW Mental Health Commission acknowledged the suffering and abandonment experienced by people held at the hospital. The Health Department’s burial register lists 1,228 patients interred in the cemetery, but names and dates survive for only 923. The earliest 305 graves have no surviving records and may never have had any. Those buried there ranged in age from teenagers to people in their nineties, among them a single infant. They included people born across Australia and immigrants from many parts of the world, as well as eight Aboriginal men and women buried away from their communities. Almost all the graves lie unmarked, while a grand headstone still stands over the grave of the hospital’s Inspector General of the Insane, who was buried there at his own request. A memorial was finally held in 2019, but a memorial is not a name, and many buried at Gladesville are yet to be given one.
Decades after these hospitals closed, it is still unknown who lies in the former cemeteries, where some of the unmarked graves are located, whether remains were later reburied and whether they can still be linked to individual patients. The records that might identify them are sealed for a century to protect patient privacy. But forensic techniques such as FIGG can help recover identities even when no name is on file and no next of kin is available, offering a way forward where the paper trail cannot.
historical burials & unmarked graves – national.
Across Australia, people whose bodies went unclaimed or unidentified were routinely buried in common or paupers’ graves and unmarked or segregated cemetery plots, with no biological specimens preserved and minimal documentation retained. Where records do exist, they are frequently inadequate or inaccurate, with one burial recorded as “a bag of bones“. This practice was not limited to the marginalised – it was systematic. Some experts estimate there may be hundreds of thousands of unmarked burials nationwide, including Indigenous ancestors, early settlers, war veterans, police officers, murder victims, sex workers and stillborn babies. South Australia alone is estimated to have 16,000–20,000 unmarked graves across its registered cemeteries. At East Perth Cemeteries in WA, close to 10,000 people were buried before the site closed in 1899, but only 773 headstones exist today. The rest of the graves were never marked, or their markers have since been lost or destroyed. Aboriginal people were also buried in older town cemeteries, often alongside settlers, but their burials were frequently unrecorded. At Coolgardie in the WA goldfields, where more than 2,000 graves lie unmarked, a community-led project has identified around 90 Aboriginal burials from archival records, though gaps in those records mean many remain unidentified. Researchers in the Northern Territory estimate that as many as 4,800 people lie in unmarked graves, most in remote Aboriginal communities where the law never required burials to be registered, as it did in non-Aboriginal communities. In NSW, approximately 750–800 unclaimed individuals were buried in unmarked graves at Emu Plains General Cemetery in the 1980s. Rookwood General Cemetery also has a dedicated section for paupers’ graves, many of which remain unmarked or are indicated only by wooden crosses or metal stakes. These practices leave little opportunity for future identification.
For much of the twentieth century, stillborn babies and newborns who died within days of birth were buried in unmarked or communal graves. Following death, burials were often arranged without the parents’ involvement or consent. Because stillbirths were not formally registered until recent decades, their burials fell outside legal requirements and many were never issued a birth or death certificate. What records did exist were inconsistent, held separately by hospitals, undertakers and cemeteries or never kept at all. At Melbourne General Cemetery, an estimated 11,000 babies are reported to lie in communal graves, while at nearby Preston Cemetery, around 350 babies who died between 1947 and 1977 were interred together in an area of about nine square metres. West Terrace Cemetery in Adelaide is believed to contain the unmarked graves of about 30,000 stillborn and perinatal babies buried there until the 1980s, some in shared graves containing up to 11 babies. In WA, a recent government review of historical records has identified more than 14,000 babies buried in around 500 communal graves across the state’s metropolitan cemeteries between 1899 and 1980. Similar burial practices occurred at institutions for single mothers and orphaned infants. At Will Will Rook Cemetery in Victoria (VIC), 492 babies who died at St Joseph’s Foundling Hospital, later St Joseph’s Babies’ Home, in Broadmeadows between 1901 and 1942 were buried in unmarked graves, commemorated more than 50 years later by a single plaque. The institution continued operating for decades after these burials, and in the 1940s children in its care were among those used in experimental medical research. Across all these sites, families may never learn where their young children lie, or the circumstances of their deaths.
Australia currently has more than 2,800 long-term missing persons. Some of those individuals are almost certainly buried as unknown, destitute or unclaimed in cemeteries around the country. We know this has happened. Ursula Barwick was 17 years old when she boarded a train to Sydney in September 1987 and was reported missing soon after. She had adopted the alias Jessica Pearce after arriving in the city and died weeks later in a head-on collision. An acquaintance visually identified her body as Jessica Pearce. She was buried as an unclaimed person under that name in a destitute burial at Emu Plains General Cemetery in January 1989. The mistaken identification was not discovered until 2016 – almost three decades later – through a police review of unidentified remains and missing persons records. By then, two opportunities to confirm Ursula’s identity had been lost: no postmortem sample had been retained for DNA identification and, with approximately 1,000 destitute burials at Emu Plains General Cemetery by 1989, incomplete cemetery records meant her grave could not be located for exhumation. Her family spent almost 30 years searching for a missing girl who had already been buried.
Missing records are one problem. The physical disturbance of human remains is another. At Castlemaine Cemetery in VIC, the Castlemaine Cemetery Trust was repeatedly directed by authorities to stop bulldozing and reselling historic graves. A 1994 police investigation confirmed that historic graves had been unlawfully disturbed, yet the practice reportedly continued up until 2020. By that point, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 individuals had been displaced, many from the goldfields era, including Irish, Scottish and English settlers, Chinese community members, women who died in violent circumstances and children and infants. Their remains were deposited in nine large spoil piles at the rear of the cemetery. The Castlemaine Cemetery Burial Recovery Project, which currently relies on donated professional expertise, is now documenting the scale of disturbance using drone imagery and laser mapping before any excavation begins. Community consultation will inform whether remains are excavated and reburied or left in situ. Forensic testing to support reassociation and identification efforts is not currently funded as part of the project’s scope. Without adequate public funding, the entire project relies on specialists working without remuneration to recover the remains of thousands of displaced individuals whose dignity may never be restored.
Even when historical burials are formally excavated – and adequately funded – establishing the identity of all those recovered is rarely treated as an obligation. In 2024, close to 2,000 sets of human remains were recovered from the former St David’s Cemetery in Hobart for the redevelopment of The Hutchins School. While extensive archaeological and historical research was undertaken to associate most individuals with burial records, 200 were reinterred at Cornelian Bay Cemetery without being identified. Similarly, when remains were relocated from a former section of East Perth Cemeteries to Karrakatta Cemetery in 2020 for urban development, only 18 of 364 exhumed individuals could be identified from the surviving records prior to reburial. In both projects, identification relied almost entirely on historical documentation and archaeological evidence such as coffin nameplates, with no provision for forensic testing. Considerable effort was directed towards documenting and studying the remains for academic research, but comparatively little towards individual identification. When a person is exhumed, every reasonable effort should be made to determine who they are using available forensic tools so they can be laid to rest with a name, and their family given a place to commemorate them. They should never be treated solely as a research subject.
resolution comes at a price.
Resolving the identities of those buried in unmarked and institutional graves requires five things:
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- Independent forensic capability guided by scientific best practice, with capacity proportionate to the scale of the task.
- A national legislative and governance framework designed around humanitarian rather than criminal objectives.
- Genuine partnership with survivors, families and communities, from initial site assessment through to reinterment or memorialisation.
- Respect for the cultural authority and data sovereignty of the communities involved.
- The political will and government funding to initiate and sustain the identification effort.
Whether a burial ground should be investigated or left undisturbed depends on many factors, including legal and coronial requirements, cultural and ethical considerations, practical and technical constraints and the wishes of the families and communities connected to those buried there. Restoring dignity can take different forms. For some, identifying a loved one and choosing their final resting place may be deeply important; for others, protecting the burial site and marking it with a memorial may be the right choice. What matters is that Australia has the forensic capability to support those decisions when identification is sought, and that survivors, families and communities are central to making them.
In Australia, government-funded forensic human identification programs have come and gone – resourced long enough to prove what is possible, then defunded before the work was complete. Forensic Human Identification Co. was established to fill that gap and remains entirely self-funded. The Castlemaine Cemetery Burial Recovery Project is being managed pro bono, while volunteers across the country devote significant hours to searching burial registers and cemetery maps to trace the identities of those buried in unmarked graves. In each case, the responsibility for naming those left unidentified has fallen to individuals and organisations who refuse to let them be forgotten.
Identifying the deceased should be a shared humanitarian duty, not one left to the goodwill of a dedicated few. Government must provide the resources, but the forensic investigation must stay independent. The Tuam model demonstrates that sustained investment and structural independence are both essential.
humanitarian investigations, not crime scenes.
The discovery of unidentified human remains will ordinarily trigger coronial jurisdiction. Coroners have both the authority and the responsibility to determine how investigations proceed. For contemporary cases, a police investigation is the appropriate response. For historical cases, the investigation should be shaped by the context of the burial, including the documented history, institutions involved and communities affected. A burial site at a former government institution will often require a different investigative framework from an active crime scene.
Where people died in institutions operated by the state, having state agencies direct the recovery and identification of those same individuals creates a conflict of interest. The concern is not the integrity of individual practitioners, but the independence of the process itself. For many families, particularly those from communities with deep and justified reasons to distrust government institutions, that distinction matters.
The forensic approach is equally as important. Investigating historical remains requires a mandate designed specifically for these cases – one that combines the specialist expertise, dedicated resources, protected time and ongoing engagement with survivors and families that laboratories driven by the volume and urgency of criminal casework cannot readily accommodate. Absorbing these examinations into existing forensic workflows compromises both their scientific objectives and humanitarian purpose.
Until recently, the only pathway in Australia when historical remains were discovered was an initial police investigation and referral to state forensic services. Now, where families, communities and authorities choose it, an independent forensic service exists – purpose-built for the recovery, analysis and identification of human remains from both historical and modern contexts, and operating under a social impact model that is family-centred and culturally informed.
Ireland has already shown there is another way. The Institutional Burials Act formed and funded an independent civilian-led body with specialist forensic expertise, operating under humanitarian forensic principles. Its legal governance and forensic requirements are as rigorous as those applied to criminal cases. The process is designed around the dignity of the deceased, the rights of surviving families and the public interest in establishing the truth. Police and coroners become involved where evidence indicates an individual may have died as a result of violent or unnatural circumstances.
These investigations demand full legal, scientific and public scrutiny because their findings may ultimately expose institutional neglect or unlawful practices. A humanitarian purpose is no reason to hold the forensic work to a lower standard since evidence that cannot withstand scrutiny cannot deliver justice. Identification is often the first step towards accountability. Until we know who these people were, it is impossible to fully understand what happened to them or whether institutions bear responsibility.
The Irish Act sets a legal precedent for the independent forensic investigation of historical institutional burials. Australia now has the opportunity – and the obligation – to introduce an equivalent framework.
the barrier is no longer scientific.
International experience is demonstrating that independent humanitarian forensic investigations can deliver truth and justice in historical contexts to the highest scientific and legal standards. Australia must make the ability to restore names to those buried without identity a national priority – one worthy of the same investment in forensic capability recently allocated to reducing criminal case backlogs. Funding this work is a societal obligation, not a favour.
Forensic Human Identification Co. is a social enterprise working to make forensic human identification accessible to those who need it. We have the multidisciplinary expertise, advanced technology and operational capacity ready to support the governments and institutions whose predecessors created these graves. It now falls to them to commission this work, resource it properly and see it through.
No one should be remembered only as “a bag of bones”. These people were not anonymous in life. They should not remain so in death.
Image: Aaron Burden / Unsplash
