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'Expired' Tenure Plaques at Springvale Botanical Cemetery
Index and photographs are available on the computers at the AIGS Library and in the Members Area
If you are unable to visit the Library or are a non-member, copies of images can be emailed as a digital image or posted as a photo-quality copy.
Please contact the Research Team for a Look Up Service

As the 25 year tenure on some sites at Springvale Botanical Cemetery expires, the ashes and plaques are being removed from commemorative rocks, trees, rosebushes and wall niches. Plaques awaiting reclamation are marked with a sticker indicating:

Tenure on this Memorial has expired. Please contact Administration.

This AIGS Project to preserve images of expired Plaques is a long-term project to photograph and index those images not claimed by Next-of-Kin. We are aware that as an Index of Expired Tenure Plaques it is incomplete as, when families reclaim their plaques and/or ashes, they are unavailable for recording. Springvale Botanical Cemetery makes every effort to contact the deceased’s representative at the last known address, giving the following options:

1   Reclaim ashes and plaque
2   Paying required amount for continued tenure
3   Reclaim plaque and scatter ashes
4   Pay for renewed tenure in perpetuity
5   If none of these is accepted, the ashes are scattered in the Rose Garden and the plaques melted 
    down. Any money involved is donated to charity

As the plaques are reclaimed by the Cemetery Trust, the AIGS volunteers are photographing and indexing them. As we have no control over which plaques are reclaimed and over what period, researchers please note that all parts of the index need to be consulted. The index is free to search at our library and the images available for a small fee.

Many plaques contain only the name of the deceased and the death date however some do contain more detailed information. Where the death date is not given 4X are shown in the index. Once the unclaimed plaques are removed from the site and final arrangements made, the only image of the plaque will be via this Index.

This is an on-going project. It is expected to include up to 14,000 images when it is finalised. It is a preservation project and not a photographic project. Some of the early images are of poor quality. Photographing was done at the Springvale Botanical Cemetery where the variable lighting conditions under which images were recorded, goes a little way to explaining the sometimes less-than-perfect images, however the AIGS always aimed for the best results possible. Images were recorded during working hours and the AIGS is grateful to the Botanical staff who were most co-operative and tolerant of our volunteers.

Once again the success of this project is due to our excellent volunteers: For participating in the preliminary discussions we thank Dorothy Moss, Ian Spencer and Noelene Goodwin. For photographing images: David Andreassen, Julie Anderson, Barbara Bell, Lesley Keay, Glen Knight, and management of the database: Noelene Goodwin.
 
 
 








 

 

 








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