It is sited on a steeply sloping site on a spur at the southern end of the central city, overlooking "The Flat", the area of coastal plain on which the suburbs of South Dunedin and Saint Kilda are located.

The cemetery was opened in early 1858, with the earliest recorded interment being that of John MacGibbon in March 1858.

[2] The Northern Cemetery, at the other end of the city's main urban area, was opened in 1872.

[8] Up to 200 Chinese burials are thought to have taken place between 1877 and 1921, of which 114 have been identified, with the majority of those interred having originally come from around the Pearl River Delta.

Other interments, including several from the Panyu District, were exhumed in the 1880s and early 1900s at the behest of the Poon Fah Association, in order to return the dead to their ancestral soil in China.