The Copper Coast’s Cornish festival, Kernewek Lowender, has shared its plans for the 2025 Dressing of the Graves at the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia. 

Dressing the Graves is a unique and very moving ceremony to honour and reflect upon the Cornish community’s ancestors buried in the cemeteries of the Copper Coast. Families nominate an ancestor and during the ceremony, a story of that ancestor’s life is read out, and flowers, prepared by local school children, are placed on the grave by the nominator or a relative.

DATES & DEETS

  • 13 MAY Greens Plains SA
  • 13 MAY Wallaroo SA
  • 14 MAY Kadina SA
  • 14 MAY Moonta SA

The honouree must be interred at one of the following  cemeteries: Greens Plains, Paskeville Road where the ceremony will take place on Tuesday, May 13th; Wallaroo on Spencer Highway, where the dressing will also take place on May 13th, Kadina on Russack Road where the ceremony will take place on Wednesday, 14th May and Moonta, on Russack Road, where the ceremony will be held on Wednesday, 14th May. 

During the dressing, honourees will be celebrated with a verbal recounting of their life and experiences, followed by the laying of flower tributes and a storyboard laid by local school children. A plaque with the festival logo will be permanently added to mark the occasion. 

A book is produced with the citation curated about the honourees‘ lives are made available to purchase at the festival. Dressing the graves celebrates the lives and contributions of our past residents, from the most humble, to those of notoriety and everyone in between. The honourees are often nominated by descendants, current owners of their property and keen local history researchers and genealogists. 

For more information, go to facebook.com/kernewekcc.

Pictures: A child in traditional clothing takes part in the Dressing of the Graves ceremony in South Australia. Credit: facebook.com/Dressing The Graves Copper Coast