An exciting find of a Chinese memorial footstone in a local backyard has prompted further authentic research.

Beechworth’s Barb Carey said garden and vegetable beds at her home had been edged 26 years ago with granite rocks gathered from three friend’s farms.

When the garden’s edging was dismantled two years ago to make a safer vege patch when her husband became ill, the rocks had been given to a friend destined for a dam wall.

“When placing them in the trailer I noticed the Chinese lettering on one of the rocks, retrieved it and put it aside to investigate later,” Barb said.

Thrilled with the discovery, Barb has only recently managed to explore the finding due to family circumstances.

“The footstone now been discovered, recognised, and can be preserved and put in a safe place,” she said.

“It could have been in a dam wall and lost forever.

“I’m so happy to have discovered Beechworth history and it’s a feel-good story in a hard world we’re living in.”

Barb said she believes the memorial footstone to be more than 150 years old.

Beechworth’s Kathryn Chivers, involved in the ongoing improvement of the Chinese Gardens since 1997, said she is checking details of the exciting find with a Chinese colleague in Singapore.

“The Chinese were here in 1850s and 1860s during the gold rush, and the footstone is inscribed on old granite, has deteriorated and is largely undecipherable,” she said.

“It’s part of someone’s name and an area he came from.”

Kathryn said she has cross referenced the footstone in a book written on the Chinese section of the Beechworth Cemetery by Sydney-based Dr Kok Hu Jin.

Kathryn said Dr Kok is known for transcribing and interpreting Chinese-language inscriptions on monuments and cemetery headstones around Australia.

“The former Beechworth Chinese Cultural Centre paid to produce the first edition of the book in 2006, and Dr Kok came to the opening of the Cultural Centre,” she said.

“The footstone would have been the marker for a final resting place.

“It also has to go to the Chinese section of the Beechworth Cemetery and not the Burke Museum.”

Kathryn said she aims to lead the research project on finding out more information working with the Beechworth Cemetery Trust and the Beechworth History and Heritage Society (BHHS).