Since colonisation, Australia’s distance from perceived centres of European culture has been a defining feature of its local, national and international identity. Blainey comprehensively challenged the impact of Australia’s liminal position in the 1960s, and this misconception is still being readdressed. Studies demonstrate substantial cultural and material exchanges between Europe and colonial Australia. One understudied exchange is the transference of burial preferences, funeral customs, and funeral markers. Consequently, this paper draws on an ongoing project to present a brief history of the material and cultural exchange of memorial designs and structures between Britain and Australia during the Victorian period. The paper contextualises the prevalence of ad hoc burial and commemoration at the colony’s inception before identifying how the colonists replicated traditional memorial markers and picturesque churchyard models. Colonists imported expansive pattern books, with this cultural exchange leading to diverse memorials reflecting emerging European styles. As the colonial media and society labelled local stone inferior, masons responded by importing European stone for projects, accelerating material exchanges. Driven by their aspirations and connections, expatriate officials imported increasingly elaborate and costly memorials. The paper concludes by examining the Gothic Revival monument to Governor Sir Charles Hotham erected in the Melbourne General Cemetery in 1857. With the backing of parliament, his widow, Jane, commissioned Sir George Gilbert Scott to design the memorial. The structure was sculpted in London by John Birney Philip from Scottish granites. Hotham’s memorial captures the ongoing material and cultural exchange to the colony, validating that distance did not impede development.