Terry St George helps connect families to Goulburn's historic cemeteries

But as luck would have it, former Goulburn man, Terry St George and a band of volunteers arrived at Saint Saviour's Cemetery at just the right time.

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Thanks to the website Mr St George developed, Mr Weeden and his daughter, Anne Kingston, were able to find Shelley's grave at Saint Saviour's Cemetery within minutes.

"We'd been searching for over an hour and were getting desperate," Mr Weeden said.

"...It was just an amazing coincidence that Terry turned up when he did. (The website) is a wonderful resource and it really helped us."

Thanks to Mr St George's efforts, people can easily find relatives' graves in Saint Saviour's, the Mortis Street and Jewish cemeteries in Goulburn. The latitude and longitude of each known grave has been recorded on the website. Using Google maps on mobile devices, searchers can track their exact location.

Over three months, Mr St George has also incorporated a wealth of information on the graves previously compiled in spreadsheets and word documents by the Friends of Historic Cemeteries volunteer group. It means people can easily search for their forbears or research subjects.

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Goulburn funeral director, RJ Sidney Craig, is sponsoring the website long-term.

Mr St George, now of Newcastle, grew up in Goulburn. The brother of well known volunteer, Pat St George, outlined his work at a Goulburn Library talk on Wednesday, September 13.

In his work at the NSW Lands Department over 45 years he oversaw large cemeteries. He is also a trustee of Sandgate cemetery at Newcastle and a former software developer. Now 'mostly retired,' Mr St George developed the same website for Sandgate and other large Sydney cemeteries.

Spying a Goulburn Post article about Saint Saviour's, he thought the same system could work for the Friends volunteer group and wanted to do his bit for a community close to his heart.

The group has been maintaining and researching graves over many years and has taken photos of many of them. These and links to Trove articles and other information will also be posted on the website, which is a 'work in progress.'

Mr St George had never visited Saint Saviour's cemetery until last week and found Mr Weeden and his daughter wandering around.

"It made me feel good to see that the system helped someone," he said.

"This guy (Mr Weeden) will be talking what happened on the day of the blue moon for some time to come."

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Saint Saviour's contains graves from the early days of the NSW colony, including that of explorer, William Hovell. Mr St George says its "unstructured" layout, with graves facing in different directions, makes it difficult to find headstones. The Friends group had however compiled a map of their locations.

Mr Weeden's task was made more difficult, thanks to faded writing on Shelley's grave.

The retiree has been writing his family history. His great-great grandfather, William Shelley, was in partnership with William Bradley at the Goulburn brewery and flour mill in the late 1830s. Mr Weeden said Shelley put up 15,000 pounds for the ventures, "a huge sum in those days."

He was one of NSW' 30 wealthiest men and owned vast tracts of land, including in Goulburn.

Shelley was born in Tahiti in 1804, the son of missionaries, and in NSW married Susannah Marsden Hassall, the daughter of the 'galloping parson,' Thomas Hassall. By the 1830s, they lived at the property, Grampian Hills at the foot of the Cookbundoon Ranges.

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According to Mr Weeden's research, Shelley and his team were the first Europeans to go into the Bungonia Caves.

"The first time they went down there, bats blew out their flares. One of the party dropped the flint to relight the flares and couldn't find it in the dark," he said.

"They were 1000 feet from the entry and there was an enormous drop on one side. They eventually found the flint and got out but the second time they went down, they took a rope so they could follow it out again."

Shelleys Cavern, off Lookdown Road, is named after Shelley. He died at age 39 in 1844.

It's just one of the stories that can be shared more widely thanks to Mr St George's and the volunteer group's efforts.

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