Paddington Cemetery

Paddington Cemetery was a cemetery located at what's now Suncorp Stadium in the Brisbane suburb of Milton.

History
Paddington Cemetery opened in 1844 and closed in 1870 due to the opening of Toowong Cemetery. During its operation, Paddington Cemetery was Brisbane's general cemetery. After its closing in 1870, the cemetery fell into disrepair. Over the years, local parishioners and religious leaders would occasionally tidy up their denomination's section of the cemetery.

Removal of gravesites (1911–1914)
In 1911 Queensland Parliament passed the Paddington Cemetery Act 1911 so within twelve months, 4,643 gravesites could be moved to an alternative site. Extensive advertising was conducted to inform family members of those buried to choose a different site for their relatives to be moved to. Most of those buried at Paddington Cemetery were moved to Toowong Cemetery. These moves were planned to be finished within twelve months. However for the remaining gravesites that had no new nominated resting place, they were moved to a small reserve adjacent to Christ Church in 1913 and 1914. The names of those moved, nominated resting place or not, were published in Parliamentary reports from 1911 to 1914.

The reason for moving 4,643 gravesites was to make way for a sports ground that would later be named Lang Park. At the time, not everyone in the community was pleased with the operation as over 4,000 exhumations did cause some people "mental anxiety" and "mortification" according to a Brisbane Courier article published in 1933. People were also not happy with how much it cost taxpayers.