What our Name Search does
Our Name Search can help you locate graves in redeveloped areas of Karrakatta Cemetery.
Redevelopment — also known as “Cemetery Renewal” — is an ongoing program undertaken at Karrakatta by the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board (MCB). It involves the mass removal of headstones, grave surrounds and plot numbers to make way for new graves. The headstones are either moved elsewhere in the cemetery, drilled into walls or entirely destroyed.
Just because your loved one isn’t listed doesn’t necessarily mean their grave is safe! Over time, the MCB plans to redevelop most of the graves at Karrakatta. The information we share is only a snapshot of the destruction that is occurring.
For more information about redevelopment, please visit our home page.
What our Name Search DOESN’T do
You cannot use our Name Search to locate everyone buried at Karrakatta. At this point, we have records for the redeveloped sections only.
Unfortunately, we do not have records for graves that are planned to be redeveloped in the future. Please visit the “Affected Areas” page for more information.
For a cemetery-wide search, you can visit the MCB’s website.
Where the data comes from
For redeveloped sections, the MCB has prepared a “Book of Remembrance” (BOR) document that contains information about the pre-existing graves. We have obtained copies of these documents and have based our Name Search upon them.
For a list of sections not included, please scroll to the bottom of this page.
Grave retention
Under the “Retained” column, each entry has either “Yes” or “No” listed.
- “Yes” means that the grave has not been impacted by redevelopment
- “No” means that the grave has, in some way, been affected by redevelopment.
For more precise information about the grave, you can click the “Yes” or “No” button next to each record to view the relevant BOR. If you need help understanding it, we welcome you to contact us for support.
Names
Not all entries contain full names. For example, some children are only named as an “infant” or “baby”.
Death dates
All death dates have been entered in the YYYY-MM-DD format. This makes them easy to search and sort.
For example, if a person died on 8th April 1925, the date would be entered as 1925-04-08.
Where only part of a person’s death date has been recorded, the unrecorded parts are replaced with 00. For example:
- 1925-00-00 would indicate that only the death year 1925 was recorded
- 1925-04-00 would indicate that the death month and year (April 1925) are known, but not the day.
If you want to search for all records within a specific year, just enter the year (e.g. 1925) and nothing else. If you want to search by month AND year, just enter the first part (e.g. 1925-04). There’s no need to enter double zeros when searching.
Leading zeros — plot numbers
To make searching and filtering by plot number easy, all numbers are entered with leading zeros. For example:
- Plot number “5” is entered as “0005”
- Number “50” is entered as “0050”
- Number “500” is entered as “0500”.
If you’re searching by plot number, please remember to include leading zeros.
Exhumed graves
In some cases, graves have been exhumed prior to redevelopment. Generally, these graves are not included in the BORs.
Errors
Although we have taken great care in building our Name Search, we CANNOT GUARANTEE its accuracy or assume responsibility for issues that may arise.
We currently have more than 49,500 individual interments (both burials and ashes) listed. Mistakes within this massive dataset are, unfortunately, all but inevitable.
If you notice what appears to be an error within our Name Search, we recommend that you compare that record with the relevant BOR:
- If the error is also reflected in the BOR, then the issue lies with the MCB
- If the BOR entry is different, that means the problem is on our end.
Regardless of where the error may have originated, please contact us if you spot anything wrong. We will then either correct our records or refer the issue to the MCB.
More information
Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or need assistance.
For enquiries about individual graves, it is best that you contact the MCB. At the same time, please make sure to lodge your contact details for all your family’s graves, whether they be at Karrakatta or any another Perth metropolitan cemetery (including Fremantle, Pinnaroo, Guildford, Midland and Rockingham).