Cemetery Vandalism Repaired by Community Project in Toowoomba

When Lindsay Farquharson heard 143 graves had been vandalised at the Drayton and Toowoomba Cemetery in August 2024, he immediately thought of his great-great-grandparents.

Quietly hoping his family's graves had been spared, he went to the cemetery and found the monument to William Farquharson and his wife Mary Maxwell lying in pieces.

"It was in three pieces," he said.

"I felt disgusted. It was a terrible thing to desecrate the graves of our pioneers."

Nearly two years later, thanks to a volunteer-led fundraising campaign, the monument has been professionally repaired and restored, and once again stands at the family plot.

"It's unbelievable. Hopefully it'll be there for a long time," Mr Farquharson said.

In total, 104 damaged headstones have now been repaired, restored or replaced through the Headstone Healing Project, which raised $96,500 through community donations.

The rest have been taken care of privately.

The group, founded in the wake of the vandalism and led by businessman Jim O'Dea, met every three weeks at a local bowls club for the better part of two years to coordinate fundraising and restoration efforts.

Despite having no family connection to the cemetery, Mr O'Dea felt an obligation to step up.

"I just didn't want the tragedy of all that damage to be the end of the story," he said.

After setting up the group, Mr O'Dea set about recruiting.

"We started getting people who were interested in history, the cemetery — we set up a Facebook page fairly quickly and invited people to a meeting," he said.

The Headstone Healing project was born.

The group started grassroots fundraising but, as word spread, they received multiple large donations from individuals.

"We had a big fundraising mountain to climb," Mr O'Dea said.

"But we found that it was a story about restoring the cultural heritage of Toowoomba that people wanted to help."

Now with the job done, Mr O'Dea could not be prouder of his group.

"None of us could have done it by ourselves," he said.

"It's a much better end to the story than, you know, 143 headstones damaged."

The two teenagers responsible for the damage were referred to restorative justice conferences with their victims under the Youth Justice Act, while a third was cautioned.

The Toowoomba Regional Council also contributed $19,000 towards the project and waived a further $18,000 in permit fees.

The Headstone Healing Project was fortunate to count Michael Wagner among its volunteers.

The fourth-generation stonemason was the man who first discovered the vandalism and reported it to council.

"My father had died in June, and I'd actually come over to say g'day to him on the Saturday morning," Mr Wagner said.

"I saw a few pieces of a sandstone cross on the track and thought, 'That's unusual.'"

As he walked through the cemetery, Mr Wagner quickly realised the damage extended far beyond the sandstone cross he had first spotted.

As soon as he heard about the Headstone Healing Project, he signed up.

"You get pretty passionate about the monumental industry," he said.

"Particularly when it comes to monuments that represent someone's final tribute."

Mr Wagner's firm was responsible for repairing most of the damaged headstones, many of which proved to be complex restorations.

"In some cases, there might be a large headstone that's quite high and has had to be dowelled back together from two or three pieces," he said.

"Some were too badly damaged to stand upright again, so we've placed them on inclined bases, allowing them to maintain much of their original form."

Mr Wagner said some of the monuments were more than 100 years old, which added to the difficulty of the work.

"For the most heavily damaged ones, we've gone back and found old photographs of the original headstones, and we've been able to etch those images onto black granite," he said.

"So, if anything ever happens again, there'll still be a long-lasting image of the original memorial there for future generations."

Another member of the Headstone Healing Project committee, Lisa Herbert, runs historical tours through the cemetery.

She said one of the best parts of the project was researching the stories of the people buried there.

"Through this project, we've been able to remind people that this is virtually a library — every grave here is a chapter," she said.

"Cemeteries are not only for the dead; they're for the living. They're little pockets of history, and we need to keep that history alive."