Drayton and Toowoomba Cemetery, Heritage-listed cemetery in Harristown, Toowoomba, Australia

Drayton and Toowoomba Cemetery occupies a site at the corner of South Street and Anzac Avenue in Harristown, Queensland. Surveyed in May 1850, it holds over 45,000 burials and remains in use across all its sections. Three shelter-sheds built around 1930 survive on the grounds, and monuments within the cemetery are associated with Toowoomba stonemasons R. C. Ziegler & Son, Henry Bailey, Walter Bruce, John H. Wagner and the Bruce Brothers.

The cemetery was established in 1850 as the first official burial ground for the Drayton-Toowoomba district. It grew rapidly, especially between 1870 and 1873, to keep pace with the region's population growth.

The cemetery's original 1850 layout by surveyor James Charles Burnett set aside 8 acres in denominational sections: 2 acres each for Roman Catholics and Anglicans, 1 acre each for Presbyterians, Wesleyans and Congregationalists, and 2 roods each for Jews and Pagans. The Jewish and Pagan sections became a military cemetery around the 1950s, and plots for paupers, stillborn babies and Muslims were added later.

The cemetery lies at the corner of South Street and Anzac Avenue in Harristown, with entrances off both roads. Three shelter-sheds built around 1930 still stand for visitors. The heritage listing covers the original reserve but not the 1957 and 1987 expansions, so the older denominational sections near the centre hold the historic graves.

The earliest identified headstone marks Michael Gorry, a Drayton storekeeper who died on 25 March 1852 aged 28; before 1856 New South Wales kept no civil record of deaths, so the stone is the only public record of his death beyond a brief newspaper notice. Look also for monuments by Toowoomba stonemasons R. C. Ziegler & Son, Henry Bailey, Walter Bruce, John H. Wagner and the Bruce Brothers.