and retired last week. Council’s Parks and Gardens supervisor Paul Sullivan said Bruce has done an amazing job and it’s going to be very hard work replacing him.
The Cobar Cemetery is looking a picture thanks to plenty of rain in the past few months and a hell of a lot of work over the past 16 years by caretaker, Bruce Shuttle.
Bruce, a former truck driver and butcher, started helping out 16 years ago as part of the cemetery committee group of volunteers.
When that committee folded leaving Bruce as the only worker, Cobar Shire Council then employed him to be their “official” caretaker and last week Bruce retired from the role.
Bruce has always had a passion for gardening (as have many members of his family) and he plans to now spend his free time getting through the long list of jobs that need doing in his own garden.
Bruce leaves a legacy of well nurtured trees and gardens at the cemetery including a number of memorial gardens, one of which contains a memorial plaque for one of his own family members and another garden that was organised by local Barry Knight, and dedicated to a list of miners who are buried in unmarked graves.
Bruce said he was very upset when the cemetery was vandalized in March 2012 and 75 graves were damaged.
“When I came out and saw all the headstones laying on the ground, then had to go through and list them all, I just wanted to get it done.
“Thank goodness we had the money to get them all fixed up,” Bruce said.
Council’s Parks and Gardens supervisor Paul Sullivan said Bruce has done an amazing job getting the cemetery gardens up to a high standard.
“For example, when you are driving in all that grass and turf at the entrance, that was never there, the shaped gardens and pruned trees. This was all just bare and very desolate,” he said.
Paul said he appreciates Bruce has done a lot of work given the poor soil, the hardness of the ground, low rainfall and very hot summers.
He said due to the lack of a reliable automated watering system, Bruce would have also spent a lot of time dragging hoses around to ensure the trees were watered.
“We’ve also had the benefit of Bruce’s extensive local knowledge of where all the graves are located,” Paul said.
He said as council’s plans of the cemetery are not 100 percent accurate, Bruce’s knowledge has been helpful on more than one occasion.
Bruce said he’s proud to have received numerous compliments over the years on how well the cemetery is kept, particularly from returning Cobar residents who come back to check on their family graves.
