The White Hat Guide to Sorrento Cemetery

One of the most pleasant and personal cemeteries in Victoria can be found at Sorrento nestled between the calm waters of the bay and the pounding surf of Bass Strait. You won’t find it on the tourist brochures but we can recommend a quiet hour for those are happy to read between the lines of a tombstone and ponder lives past and lives to come. Not surprisingly, the cemetery contains the graves of numbers of early settlers. It also contains graves and memorials to those lost in local shipwrecks. An unusual feature which I cannot recall seeing in another cemetery is a memorial wall to those whose ashes have been scattered at sea.

Some of the more prominent people buried there are Percy Cerutty (athletics coach), Dama Zara Bate (wife of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt) and the theatrical entrepreneur Sir Frank Tait.

However, the abiding impression is that of a wide variety of people from different backgrounds who seem thankful for a good life and a peaceful rest. A goodly number seemed to have derived pleasure from ‘messing about in boats’ and probably our favourite memorial has a simple pier constructed over the grave.

If you are in the area we recommend a visit.