A WEEK after they made the devastating discovery of mass destruction at the Bathurst Cemetery, members of the Bathurst Family History Group will return to work today.
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Their job will be to repair the historic headstones one at a time.
Group volunteer Barry Konemann arrived at the cemetery last Wednesday to find 67 historic headstones and graves destroyed, the work of alleged vandals as they roamed through the grounds.
Bathurst detectives have since arrested three juveniles in relation to the vandalism, with a 15-year-old boy charged with two counts of destroying or damaging property greater than $15,000 and a girl and boy charged with destroying or damaging property greater than $15,000.
And while Mr Konemann remains upset by the incident, yesterday he said he had been buoyed by support shown.
“We’ve had offers of help; a few from the local community including Bunnings, and a company on the North Shore,” he said.
“And a group of people from the Blue Mountains have also offered their help.”
Mr Konemann said Bathurst Bunnings had offered goods and manual labour from its employees, while the Sydney-based company had offered goods.
The crime was made worse by the fact the family history group had spent the past two years restoring headstones at the cemetery.
Mr Konemann said he would deeply love to hear from anyone who is able to spare a few hours or days to help out.
“It would be great to have more people in the community coming together to work with us,” he said.
Since the family history group began its restoration project two years ago, Mr Konemann said the group had spent thousands of dollars of its own money restoring the headstones.
“Every cent has been from our own pockets. We’ve had no assistance from the government and no assistance from the council,” he said.
“Even to get to this point [before the alleged vandalism] it has cost us thousands of dollars. It will be so much more now.”
Since last week, Mr Konemann has found more damaged graves, taking the number to 100.
With that in mind, he said he needs a small army of volunteers to help out and get the cemetery back the way it was.
“We’d love to hear from anyone who can spare an hour or a day,” he said, adding the family history group would be working at the cemetery on Wednesdays and other days when volunteers can spare the time.
Anyone able to assist can contact Mr Konemann on 0427 776 413.
