McLeod Street Pioneer Cemetery

This five acre (2ha) cemetery was gazetted in 1877, the year after the establishment of Cairns as a port for the Hodgkinson gold fields. Earlier burials took place along the Esplanade near the hospital reserve. Management of the cemetery was initially sporadic, but in 1885, the appointed trustees obtained funding to properly manage the site. The cemetery is divided into sections for the use of various Christian denominations, and an area for non-Christians, in which were buried Chinese, Malays, Javanese, and Aborigines. References to these burials, all unmarked, may be found in interpretation material in the rotunda. Burials here also include the first mayor of Cairns, Richard Ash Kingsford (grandfather of aviator Charles Kingsford Smith); Cairns' much admired medical pioneer, Dr Edward Koch; men who died during construction of the Cairns to Herberton Railway; and a beche-de-mere fisherman who had been associated with Trinity Bay prior to the establishment of Cairns. The surviving headstones record people from all levels of early Cairns society - professional, business, clerical, political, mercantile - and the cosmopolitan nature of early Cairns is reflected in the range of nationalities, including English, Irish, Scottish, Japanese, Javanese, Chinese, Indian, Italian, Bulgarian and Swedish.