RADAR technology is likely to be used to find grave sites at a long-abandoned cemetery in the Kiewa Valley.
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President of the recently formed Mullindolingong Historic Pioneer Memorial Park, Allan Mull said he expected radar exploration to proceed after his group is given government approval to act as a cemetery trust.
"Ground penetrating radar would allow us to determine where the graves are because it would show where the earth has been disturbed for burials," Mr Mull said.
The park committee has reckoned there are a maximum 40 to 45 graves at the paddock which was an active cemetery from the 1880s to the 1920s.
It has written to the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services seeking advice on becoming an administrative trust.
Mr Mull said becoming a trust would give the committee access to government grants to fund signage telling the history of the cemetery as well as other work.
A department spokesman said the main hurdle to establishing the trust was determining whether the land remained classified as a cemetery.
He said if a cemetery reservation was found to be extant a trust could be approved in four to eight months.
Mr Mull said he paid surveying firm Esler and Associates for a title search and it found the land, at Coral Bank, is still designated as a cemetery.
Mr Mull believes only exhumation leads to land losing its cemetery status.
Since media publicity in May about the rediscovered cemetery there has been a flurry of interest and information, Mr Mull said.
That included a Kiewa Valley man in his 90s, Eric Higginson, telling of attending a funeral at the cemetery as a five-year-old in 1924.
"That's the most recent verbal confirmation we've got about when the cemetery was in use," Mr Mull said.
Bollards have been erected in recent months to mark the cemetery boundary.
The park committee has also written to Alpine Council seeking support for better vehicular access to the site.
The council's director of assets, Charlie Bird, said it had a limited involvement.
"The council's role only starts when the trust is formed and then it's really only in relation to the road access to the site," he said.
