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| Photo note: Crematorium, Adelaide, South Australia. ,
1919.Image retrieved through Trove from State Library of New South Wales,
digital order number d1_13488, from http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/36913995 |
Adelaide can lay claim to many things, but perhaps one of the least‑known is that it was home to the first crematorium ever built in the Southern Hemisphere.
Located at West Terrace Cemetery, the crematorium was constructed a decade after the Cremation Bill was passed in the Adelaide Parliament, making South Australia the first state in Australia to legalise the procedure.
The crematorium was designed by architect A. Barham Black and built by Isley & Co. It featured a chapel measuring 9.75 metres by 5.6 metres, a subterranean furnace room measuring 7 metres by 5.5 metres, a single cremation chamber, and a chimney styled as an Italianate bell tower. The furnace was heated using gas coke and mallee firewood, though in its early days achieving temperatures high enough to fully disintegrate the body and bones proved difficult.
To perfect their methods and reach the necessary temperatures, staff practised using dead animals, such as sheep.
The first human cremation in the newly built crematorium took place in May 1903, upon the remains of Bishin Singh, a Sikh businessman from Hindley Street. As the first Sikh to die in South Australia, debate arose over whether his spiritual and funeral rites—rooted in Brahmanism—could be properly fulfilled. A traditional funeral pyre was not permitted, so the crematorium was chosen as a substitute. To honour the requirement that the body be placed upon wood, Singh’s remains were enclosed in a wooden coffin shell.
The cremation attracted considerable public interest. Local media attended, and around 200 curious onlookers gathered at the chapel. One woman reportedly stated she had come to “see him burnt.”
Six of Singh’s family and countrymen carried his body into the furnace room and placed it on a grate attached to a long chain that would draw the coffin into the cremation chamber. After prayers were recited, the white‑draped coffin was slowly pulled inside. As the body ignited, dignitaries and sixteen Sikh mourners were permitted to watch through an aperture in the furnace door. It took more than an hour for Singh’s remains to be fully consumed, and witnesses saw his fleshless skeleton glowing in the flames.
In its early years, the crematorium saw little use, but demand steadily grew. Before its closure in 1959, after fifty‑six years of operation, it had cremated the remains of 4,762 people.
The building was demolished in 1969. In recent years, archaeologists have worked to recover and preserve what remains of its foundations.
In 2005, Justin McCarthy of Austral Archaeology began an excavation of the site. It was discovered that during the demolition, the furnace—being a basement‑like structure—had remained intact and had simply been backfilled with rubble. Inside, relics were found, including bricks, mallee wood, linoleum, building debris, metal scraps, and a damper for the chimney. The bricks bore manufacturers’ stamps, allowing their year of production to be identified.
These artefacts are now held by the West Terrace Cemetery Authority.
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| Adelaide Crematorium c.1919, West Terrace Cemetery - photo: History SA |
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