Coffin Tree/ Eliza's Grave

It’s easy to forget there are lifetimes of experience surrounding you as you drive through The Middle of Everywhere. One of the more poignant is along the Maffra-Newry Road - where you are right now. The Coffin Tree is part of this pair of gums - 100 metres west of the Lower Newry Rd intersection.

The story goes like this...

In 1863 pioneer settlers Henry Amey and his wife Margaretta travelled by bullock wagon from Port Albert, to pitch a tent on the Newry Creek. Whether by intention, or instinct, this is the district where the couple decided to start a life. They planted two poplars, which can still be seen off Wright’s Lane. Henry eventually purchased a property on the corner of Lower Newry and Maffra- Newry Roads, building a slab and bark hut to create a home, establishing a dairy herd - producing cream, butter - and raising pigs too. The produce would go to Walhalla by pack horse, while the the pigs would be walked, in due time, the sixteen miles to Sale.

One Saturday, the 27th April 1867, while Henry was away, Margaretta was milking. By then they had had children and the youngest, Eliza, just one year old, or thereabouts, was placed outside, her mother fearing Eliza would put her hands in the milk.

Unimaginably, after the milking, the little girl was found drowned in a waterhole close by.
These were such early days there was no cemetery, so Eliza was buried, in consecrated ground, on the property. Two pieces of bark were cut by Henry from a nearby gum to make a rudimentary coffin, with Eliza’s grave being placed not far from this Coffin Tree, near the intersection of the two roads.

The Coffin Tree you see is the only known coffin tree in Victoria. Eliza’s tiny grave, found by ground radar after being unmarked and lost for many years, is cared for by Heritage Victoria.