In short:
The Central Darling Shire Council has discovered more than 600 unmarked graves in far-west New South Wales.
They found them without disturbing the earth, using ground-penetrating radar.
What's next?
Efforts to identify those buried are ongoing.
The first time Dave Hunter went searching for unmarked graves was as a teenager on his grandfather's farm in Rushworth, northern Victoria.
After being given the task of finding buried bulls on the property, he built a rudimentary "radar" with a multimeter.
He has since found hundreds of graves, most recently in far-west New South Wales.
In July 2025, the Central Darling Shire Council contracted him to determine whether there were any lost graves in Menindee and White Cliffs.
Using his equipment, he found more than 300 burials in each place, all connected to the existing cemeteries.
Mr Hunter said there was a real sense of satisfaction to see all the markers on the previously lost graves.
"Particularly in Menindee, it was really eye-opening to see so many," he said.
Finding those once lost
The council's cemetery officer, Tammie McMaster, is now on a mission to identify the souls beneath the ground.
She has been speaking to locals and scouring council records and archives.
"If I could do the majority [of the graves], just to put a name to these people, [that] would be absolutely fantastic," Ms McMaster said.
The council is looking at repeating the project in other far-west communities, including in Wilcannia and Tilpa.
Ms McMaster said the project was vital not only for future planning in the cemeteries, but for honouring the dead.
"It's respectful to the people that are laid to rest, and to families and relatives," she said.
Relying on technology
Unmarked graves are common in Australia, as a result of how someone was laid to rest, or records and markers becoming lost to time.
Mr Hunter uses a sophisticated ground-penetrating radar, which looks a bit like a lawn mower, to find lost graves without once ever lifting a shovel.
His radar technology helps him measure electrical resistivity, or disturbances in the soil.
"It's important to note that we're not actually detecting a body as such or any sort of skeletal remains,"Mr Hunter said.
"It is literally just the hole that has been dug in the ground that this technology detects."
While it is not an exact science, Mr Hunter takes an educated guess when figuring out whether he has found a grave.
"If we're in a cemetery context, and the disturbance is roughly six foot by roughly three foot wide, and goes down at least a metre, then generally speaking, you're probably looking at a grave," Mr Hunter said.
