In short:
Police say approximately 100 headstones were knocked over at Toowoomba's Drayton cemetery.
The council says early estimates indicate some 300 graves have been affected and about half a million dollars' worth of damage has been done.
What's next?
Three teenagers were arrested by police and have been dealt with under the Youth Justice Act.
Lisa Herbert can't hold back the tears when she sees another damaged grave in Toowoomba's Drayton cemetery.
"I don't know how you even describe it, it's like a truck drove over all these graves," she said.
One, in particular, broke her heart.
"It's a small monument, so by looking at it from afar I immediately knew it was another child.
"And I don't know how you fix this one. It's probably broken into four pieces. It belongs to Mary Draney, who died in 1879. She was two years old."
A larger headstone lying face down belongs to Henry and Rebecca Draney, and memorialises another of their children – killed in France aged 35 in 1916.
"The desecration of a memorial to two toddlers and their older brother who died of wounds in World War I, and their parents – face down, broken into pieces," she said.
The full-time death literacy advocate (and part-time ABC producer) usually spends her time guiding tours through the cemetery, but this week has been cataloguing damage, after what the Police Minister described as a 'disrespectful and insulting' act of vandalism.
"The first thing I noticed when I got out of my car is a memorial of a four-year-old boy who died in 1895," she said.
"Either side of him is his 24-year-old mother, and his father or his grandfather," she said.
"But right now, the column is on the ground. You can't see the red marble ledger with his name, because it's face down. There's a cross on the top, which is broken into probably nine pieces."
"I've just spent the last three hours walking through the cemetery, and there are dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of scenes like this."
Her heart is heavy.
"There's a column on the ground which would have been three metres tall, it's been pushed over. There was probably a cross there too, but that's no longer on the top.
The community response to the vandalism has been loud on social media, both for offers to help, and anger at those responsible.
Three teenagers were arrested on Monday morning.
Why weren't the three charged?
Police Minister Mark Ryan said he understood the community outrage over the vandalism.
"This was appalling behaviour. It was disrespectful and insulting to the families who have been impacted," he said via a statement.
Police have confirmed two 15-year-old males were referred under the Youth Justice Act by police to the Department of Youth Justice for a restorative justice conference.
A restorative justice conference is a meeting between a child who has committed a crime and the people most affected by that crime to discuss what happened, the effects of the offence, and repairing the harm caused to the victim.
The third male involved in these offences, a 17-year-old boy, has been issued a police caution.
"The Youth Justice Act exists because we think young people should be dealt differently than an adult person," explained Professor Christine Bond from the Griffith Criminology Institute.
"If you want to be punitive — and incapacitate — you detain, but if you actually think that there's an opportunity to turn a young person's life around, then perhaps there are other options."
Professor Bond said research showed that the risk of reoffending after detention was "quite high".
"Community expectation is always hard, because what the decision-makers are dealing with is the whole context," she said.
Who pays for the restoration of graves?
The Toowoomba Regional Council has not finalised its damage assessment.
"It'll take a couple of weeks to catalogue," mayor Geoff McDonald said.
Police say approximately 100 headstones were knocked over, but the mayor is concerned the number of damaged graves is far more.
"Over 300, potentially," he said.
"There's an early figure of half a million dollars."
One of the memorials had only been installed two days earlier by JH Wagner & Sons.
"There's a physical cost, but there's also an emotional and historical cost," explained Martin Wagner from the fifth-generation local stone mason company.
Mr Wagner said, while the cemetery was the property of the council, the actual memorials were the property of the family.
"There's nothing such as insurance that's available for families, so yes, this will take a long time.
"The first response is definitely anger, because there is so much effort involved," Mr Wagner said.
"It's quite heartbreaking, even for the stonemasons, because we've been with the families as they've made arrangements for the memorial."
On a gloomy overcast day in the cemetery Ms Herbert says she has been heartened by the response.
"If there's a tiny bit of light to come out of this travesty, it's that the community have made their feelings known that this is a special place," she explained.
"It's a sacred place, and our dead need to be respected."
