Designing for the Living: Hamish Coates on Cemeteries and Community

What if I told you that cemeteries could be more than just final resting places? What if they could serve as vibrant community spaces that celebrate life, culture, and nature? In this episode of Don't Be Caught Dead, I sit down with Hamish Coates, a seasoned landscape architect and the principal designer at Greater Melbourne Cemeteries Trust. 

With over 20 years of experience, Hamish has transformed the way we think about cemeteries—not just as resting places for the dead, but as vibrant, accessible spaces for the living. We dive deep into the fascinating world of cemetery design, exploring how these spaces can reflect cultural diversity, promote community engagement, and even combat climate change.

Hamish shares his journey from traditional landscape architecture to the unique challenges of designing cemeteries. He discusses the importance of creating spaces that honour the deceased while also serving the needs of the living. From the intricacies of soil types and drainage to the innovative use of art and nature, Hamish reveals how thoughtful design can change perceptions of death and dying. We also touch on the growing demand for natural burials and the future of cemetery spaces in an ever-evolving urban landscape.

Join us as we explore the intersection of life, death, and design, and discover how cemeteries can become places of beauty, reflection, and community connection.

Key points from our discussion:

●      Cemeteries are primarily spaces for the living, offering comfort and community.

●      The design of cemeteries must consider cultural practices, environmental sustainability, and community needs.

●      Innovative burial methods, such as composting, are emerging as alternatives to traditional practices.

●      The importance of engaging with local communities and traditional owners in the design process.

●      The future of cemeteries may involve transforming them into multifunctional green spaces.

Where to Find Hamish Coates:

●      Greater Melbourne Cemeteries Trust: GMCT Website

●      LinkedIn: Hamish Coates 

Remember; You may not be ready to die, but at least you can be prepared.

Take care,

Catherine

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Transcript

0:01

I thought I'll go to an exhumation and just stomach that and see what it's all about, and as the body came up out of the ground, it was still quite intact. It was very strange sight, and a person was wearing the suit that they'd been buried in even though the body had been in the ground for over 10 years. I mean, the skeletal remains was pretty grizzly, but the clothes the person was wearing or had been buried in, were still quite intact. Welcome to Don't Be Caught Dead. A podcast encouraging open conversations about dying and the death of a loved one. I'm your host, Katherine Ashton, founder of Critical Info, and I'm helping to bring your stories of death back to life because while you may not be ready to die, at least you can be prepared. Don't be caught dead. Acknowledges the lands of the cool nations and recognizes their connection to land, sea, and community. We pay our respects to their elders past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nation peoples around the globe. Today I'm speaking with Hamish Coates. Hamish is a registered landscape architect with over 30 years of design experience across a wide range of landscape types. His work spans master planning, strategic planning, detailed design, construction, community engagement, and project management. Hamish has tutored design subjects at the University of Melbourne and RMIT and holds a fine arts degree majoring in sculpture. Since joining the Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust in 2016, Hamish has focused on shaping cemeteries into culturally diverse, environmentally beneficial spaces for the broader community. Thanks for being with us today, Hamish. Thanks very much. Catherine's really good to be here. Hamish, I saw you speak last year at Open Houses Symposium, which I do love entitled six. Design and death. That was quite the title, and what surprised me is the amount of design and consideration that goes into a cemetery. So how did you get started? Well, I guess I've been practicing for some time now and what I've learned in life as in profession is never say never. So I never thought that I would end up in cemeteries when I first started out my career. But I was in business. I was running a small consultancy at one stage and I was contacted by another landscape architect who was winding down his company and they did a bit of cemetery work as well. So he asked me just to help him finish up. Some jobs so he could wind up his business. But that was kind of prolonged because I took an interest in that and we got on quite well together. So it sort of went on a little bit longer than we both thought. But that gave me a big introduction into the cemetery world. And so that culminated once he. Departed was an invitation from the Southern Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust to redesign or to prepare a master plan for the one part of their site at Springvale, which I thought was just a, an absolutely fantastic project. And it was like a. Invited competition. So it was like going back to school again. You know, the hats, you know, the paper and pens were out and the ideas were flowing, and we really got stuck into what cemetery spaces could be and how they might function into the future. And so at that point, I really started to. Begin to learn a lot about cemeteries. Um, didn't win the competition, but that's okay. What that demonstrate to me that it was a really fertile space to be in and it really piqued my interests. And what was it, do you think that piqued your interest, Hamish? Well, I think that I'd been designing landscapes for. All sorts of applications, parks, streets, scapes, management plans, private and commercial spaces as well. And there was always seemed to be a little bit of meaning, I guess lacking in that to some extent. I. Prefer to just design in the public realm rather than the private or commercial one, just because I think we're dealing with nature and that's, you know, everyone has a right to access that. And so any kind of public or landscape I. Park or streetscape, for example, has a lot more application and meaning to the everyday person, and that gives me a great deal of satisfaction. The venture into the cemeteries world though, just took it one step further because it was really about your own sort of mortality and others as well. Of course. And the question about death and dying and cemeteries being spaces primarily for the living was a. You know, a really engaging kind of conundrum and duality and all that kind of thing that, that really inspire me to think more about what we do for a living and how we live and how we design, how we access our spaces, how we interact with nature, and what opportunities I. There are to do that and so forth. So yeah, begun quite a, an investigation over the years from Project to project. And what's really interesting is that point that you just raised is that cemeteries, most people would think about them as a place for the dead, but they're already taken care of. It really is a place for the living, isn't it? Absolutely. That's right. Look, there was one site we have out in the outer suburbs, and I dunno how true this story is, but I did hear that the neighboring developer who was building a housing estate sort of asked us, can you move your cemetery please, because you know you're gonna scare off my customers. But. You know, a cemetery is probably the best maybe you could have. But it sort of underlined the fact that people's perceptions of cemeteries are still very much about ghosts and zombies and you know, terrible, dark, gothic kind of iterations of that. And I guess that was a bit of a starting point for the way I began to investigate design was that, you know, they aren't these scary places surrounded by. Big high walls and gates. And I guess that sort of was the departure point for a, wanted to go with cemeteries, which was to open them up and make them more publicly accessible. And that's really interesting because most people, you know, they have very limited exposure to cemeteries. Most people don't even really be buried. Most people work commonly cremated nowadays. Mm. So the concept of a. Perhaps your high walls, your old tombstones, things are falling apart, overgrown grass bits, you know, areas that we don't really wanna hang around in very long, do we? Hamish? You know, that's the idea. Not really. No. I think all landscape architects really trying to make the. Open spaces as aesthetically pleasing and as inviting as possible. And you know, cemeteries designed by landscape architects are no exception. You know, and I think that image of cemeteries, I think we've got Hollywood to thank for that primarily. Yeah, exactly. So when you, when you embarked on this sort of. Transition from public space in more of a, an open park, verges on the side of roads, et cetera, that sort of space. And you moved over to working within cemeteries. What were the things that sparked you going, wow, I didn't know that, or I hadn't considered that, or, oh, I just think it was the way the operate. At GMCT where I work, we have a big works crew and operations crew, and they bury the bodies in a particular way. I just thought, you know, like anyone else, you'd just dig a hole and throw people in and that was that. And that's pretty much what happens. But there are all sorts of nuances to that when it comes to operations. For example, having an open space where we dig lots of little holes isn't not much good for drainage. So you can imagine. Water mixed with a body and then sort of covered over with giant slabs of granite and marble, and the imagination goes quite wilder underneath. And you sort of think, well, we have to design for that because we get complaints from flooding and we get complaints about. Paths and access and how machines actually access the site in order to dig the grave. And so all these tiny little considerations come to the fore. So that actually determines the way you put pen to paper and, and draw the lines and make these allowances. So it's not all just about making a nice space, but it's gotta be a very much a functional one as well, because I'm assuming that the maintenance and upkeep of, once the landscape, once you've designed it. Must also take into consideration mowing and whipper snipping and the type of foliage and plants that you're actually placing in the beds nearby and those sorts of considerations. Absolutely. When I first arrived at GMCT, and it still exists all these years later, is that the tension between say a tree and a grave space is really. Significant because if you plant a tree, then it takes up valuable space where we can dig a hole and put a body in. So space in the cemetery is a very acute and finite sub entity. And the question of how we're gonna provide for burial space in the future is a really big question that's very difficult to answer. But we take that a bit further and we have to sell the graves. And so we've gotta make them aesthetically beautiful. And what people really like is a garden type environment. And I work at Faulkner Cemetery, that's where I'm based, and that's a very old historic cemetery. And it has a mature. Landscape and garden around it, and just the casual interactions I have on occasion with visitors always remark that what a beautiful space it is and how confident they feel and I, I sort of really just put that down to the fact that it's landscape and garden doing its. Business, you know, and providing all that. So the tension between landscape and Graves is still there. So it's our task and challenge to make that all fit together. And can you tell us a little bit about what are the differences between the sites that you are currently managing through Greater Metropolitan? Well, we take care of over 600 hectares of green space right across the northern parts of Melbourne. The Metropolitan Melbourne, and that goes from the eastern region over from Hillsville and Lilydale down to Emerald. And then as you move west, it goes through Temple Sto and Faulkner and Northern Memorial Parks, and then further over to the West through Keilor and Altona and Werribee and Williamstown. That's a big space. It's massive. Yeah. So yeah, it's a lot of driving it on occasion from one side, I could imagine. But what that means is that we've got quite a vast variety of landscape and soil types. So over in the yeast it's quite hilly and, uh, soils generally speaking are less. Clay-like and less interactive. So as you move over to the west, there's quite a high clay content in the soil. So that means that during summer it dries and cracks, and in the winter it's quite plastic. So there's a lot of movement. They're called the reactive soil. So when we build a grave on a. Concrete foundation, you know, we have to take that sub soil conditions into consideration because it means that every site is different and that we can't just simply take one methodology and just simply apply it to another. Each new investigation is. Exactly that. It's new. You're starting from scratch again, and you've just really gotta unpack everything we can about the site. And tell me what was the 2016 that you started with Greater Metropolitan, and during that time, what have you seen as the changes in your role and the sort of work that you are doing? If you can talk me through what you know, your role involves. Yeah. Well I, I started out there as a senior landscape architect and it was quite. Quite small. I think there was only about three of us. Not that there's much more than that now, but the level of thinking, I think, and the level of application was very challenging. GMCT, like other class A cemeteries are self-funded entities. So we have to, in order to fund our enterprise, we have to sell graves. So it's a business for all intents and purpose. It's a not-for-profit one as it is, but it just means that we have to do, make sort of commercial decisions. About that, but that often means just taking a space and laying out a grid and trying to maximize yield as best we can in order to maximize our revenue opportunities. Because when a person or a family member buys a grave, we maintain it in perpetuity. So it means we'll mow the lawns and whip a snip, as you say, and take care of everything other than the headstone forever. So that's kind of where the money goes in. So we've got this kind of big cycle of maintenance and purchase, but at the same time, over the last 10 or so years, the advent of climate change is something that we just can't ignore anymore. So it means our practices. I. And our processes need to be more sort of on point about sustainability and how do we treat the environment and the fact that we know that planting trees and planted gardens lowers the heat island effect and sort of eats up the carbon and just provides us with. Better quality of air and to breathe and cleaner drinking water, all that kind of thing, as well as just lift the spirit and gives us a nice kind of charge, mental charge as well. So these ideas now we're trying to play more with. And argue and convince that if we can incorporate these kinds of measures at the expense of let's say a, a yield or a maximum revenue income, then we'll be on the right path. But it is incredibly challenging. I can see both sides of the argument and often we're just caught in the middle. And it's interesting because that was the thing that really did strike me when you gave your presentation last year for open house was. That, you know, my background has, has come from 13 years at the Royal Botanic Gardens at both Cranburn and Melbourne. So I was very sympathetic of those challenges of heritage sites. Mm-hmm. And then newly designed landscapes that you, you have, and you have the beauty of. Both of those in your role, and we'll talk a little bit more about that and Harkness shortly. But also what struck me was, oh my goodness, that's right. It's real estate and you have to manage that in amongst, you know, the biosecurity of it, the uptake, keep the. Climate change considerations, the sustainability, that's a whole other element that I'd never had to think of when dealing with green space. No, that's right. So as a landscape architect, we just treat the site as another site to be designed and rather than think about it being specifically a cemetery, that's the context that we're designing in. So we still need to apply all the principles and measures of landscape architecture and urban design and. Architecture, et cetera, but it's just in the context of a cemetery and you know, that single purpose idea of a cemetery is very strong, but by applying landscape principles, then we're making them into more multi-layered or multipurpose spaces that can provide to the local communities and local residents, et cetera. A public park does pretty much the same thing, and it's fairly neutral in its purpose. You know, it doesn't bury bodies or it doesn't have car parks, or it doesn't hold events. Generally, it's a bit more versatile in that. Respect, but Century is our primary purpose and our reason for being the trust is providing a, a service to the general public to bury bodies and formalize, farewells, provide cremation services and someplace to deposit the body. And so it's within that primary purpose. We're saying, well, how can we continue to do that while supporting that through its secondary objectives of creating pleasant, aesthetic, nice and functional. And environmentally responsible spaces. So we've just written our open space strategy and it talks about that kind of idea between the primary and the secondary objectives. And just going back to the diversity that you manage, can you sort of explain the differences in the sites and perhaps talk about what you're looking at with Harkness and explain to the audience what that means. Yeah, look, when we, GMCT doesn't, up until Harkness didn't have much experience. With large scale greenfield sites, Greenfield site being one with absolutely nothing on it. It's just needs to be designed and built from scratch. And so we just thought that here's a big opportunity to realize what a cemetery of the future could be. So rather than just simply drawing up spaces and roads and gardens and landscapes as we would normally have done in the past with some of our sites, or to continue on that methodology, we took it as an opportunity to think about, well now into the 21st century. People's attitudes. A changing generations coming on. The climate crisis is all pervasive. There's more people around. There's more consideration for the social and the financial as well, because the business needs to understand how it can be sustainable on that level. And of course, you know how we can contribute more responsibly as a steward of the land, I guess. So this is where the conceptual approach to Harkness was really important. To get right in the first place. And subsequently we undertook a fairly substantial master planning exercise that sort of addressed all these issues. I think one of the major things we did was to develop a vision for the site. So this was, we took a step back and thought, okay. Here's an opportunity. How do we realize this vision and what kind of legacy do we wanna leave given that Aries are in perpetuity. So whatever we do now is going to grow and develop forever effectively. So it's a pretty, pretty big and responsible task and something that felt like we had to get right. And tell me what was involved in that master planning process. It's just like any kind of normal master planning process. We just look at the site and understand what opportunities and constraints exist, and then it's just about, you know, typically just applying one layer over the next that address ideas of public access, open space, building a cemetery, who our visitors are. And who our customers are as we call them, and trying to understand the site as best we can. There's a very remnants of a, an old creek line that runs through the length of the site. So we took this as an opportunity to be able to recharge that creek and increase and contribute to the increase of biodiversity. And start to set up wildlife corridors and try and find links between spaces that the park was in. And so also find opportunities for more passive. Recreational pursuits and trying to understand that where this site was, for example, was on the outskirts of Western Melbourne. And so it's typically known as housing developments, you know, as far as the eye can see, and it's quite a thing. People's backyards are getting smaller, the houses are getting bigger on the same plot of land, so, and it doesn't seem to matter whether you're on the west or the east, the south or the north. It's a pretty much the same story. Each direction, isn't it? Absolutely. So symmetry in this respect, provide a really unique opportunity to provide access to open space in nature for the residents. They might not even think about ever going to visit or bury or enter someone there, but they could treat it pretty much like a public park through, you know, active transport networks and links and nature and forests and history and flora and fauna, et cetera. So that was an ulterior. Sort of side ulterior motive. I guess that's what I was going to say, that not only are we building a cemetery, but we're building a place that people who don't have the space can access the space. And one of the things, if my memory serves me correctly, Hamish, was it seems that the design incorporates multiple entry points, so. You know, a traditional cemetery generally has one entry point, and it's generally very big and big gates. But you seem to really have designed the idea of just making it part of the community. Well, well, that's right. So the master plan has undertaken, I. Several iterations and it's changed a lot. So I think what we tried to maintain was access. I think we, you have to look at a block of land like real estate in that respect and find out, you know, what its value is. And I think if you bought a house with two road frontages, then that's a pretty good thing, you know, because you can access it from either end. And we have Bowman's Road going up on one side and Harkins Road going up on the other. So this means that, you know, we can almost create a cyclical. Idea and bring people in into the park from both sides. And that's our long-term proposition though. And we won't be able to achieve that for some time to come.'cause I just wanna stress that it's 128 hectares, which is an enormous size block of land and we can't possibly build the cemetery in one go, unfortunately. So we have to sort of stage it out bit by bit. And over the next a hundred years, it'll start to build and grow and evolve. But that comes back to your point about, I suppose, being the visionary that's actually looking at managing a parcel of land in perpetuity. And so your design has to reflect that same longevity. Oh, absolutely. And this is where the value of a master plan comes into it, because the master plan is pretty much in perpetuity when landscape architects draw trees on bits of paper or computer. Now the circles are. Generally represented as the mature canopy size, the, you know, but that actually takes at least 20, 30 years. Plus to reach that size. So when we're drawing on paper, we're drawing the end result effectively. And so if we work backwards from that point, then we can work out how we can get to progress. So a method that I use is to sort of look at nature and just. Reproduce the mechanisms of nature, and that's just sort of splitting and dividing and reproducing the same thing, much like cells reproduce, you know? So it becomes a pattern or instruction on how to develop each new section. And how much do you think that. Given your background has been in art and sculpture, you've obviously always been able to see something in your mind's eye before it was created in a 3D form. How much has that ability to see things like that helped you with, you know, designing basically a grass at the moment? Well, look, that's a good question. Landscape architecture was quite creative and it is, but it wasn't until I studied art that I realized what art actually can do in a landscape architectural context. So a lot of designers feel that they can apply art, but I think, you know, it's a art's a big question and you get. Talk about that forever as well, but it really helped me. I didn't wanna become an artist. I had no aspirations to become a sculptor or anything. I just really wanted to know how to become a better landscape architect. So it made me think about ideas in a much more deeper and more broader sense. So when I could apply them to cemeteries, I could sort of look about how art could provide meaning in a cemetery context rather than just simply plop sculpture. In the landscape or build bright colors or what have you, which I found was sort of lacking in landscape architecture. That sort of relationship between art, I. And the land. I'm a bit of a harsh critic, I think at times, but sometimes I can't see those relationships, but I know that they exist, and I went to study art to find out what those relationships are. So when I'm doing cemeteries, now I'm looking really at top to bottom and left to right breadth of how we can inject the notion of art rather than the aesthetic of art. The notion of art. And into the design. And I'm assuming, or perhaps it would be great to give us some examples of how you've tried to incorporate that through your design work ish. Well, it's not easy. The notion of landscape is very technical as well, so we have to build and construct things and whatever we do has gotta have a function and a capacity, and it's costed and it's very empirical. Whereas I always sort of a bit jealous of artists. They can pretty much do what they want and good luck to them. I reckon that's pretty fantastic. But at the same time, then if we're going to put sort of a sculpture in in the land, then it has to reflect back. So we haven't really, I. Touched upon that much at GMCT, although we have developed an art strategy and because I really wanted to work out how to make a more high end, let's say for want of a better word, a high end art collection. I think these institutions like GMCT are well placed to have really. Great curated collections about death and dying and in an artistic concept, but by, by double up the purpose of sculpture, for example, our master plan for Lilydale, there's a nice high point, and I thought if we were to put a really thoughtful sculpture, a big one on top of that, not only would it be a really great defining piece, but it also would. Function as a bit of a landmark. Mm. And a bit of a talking point in the area. So everyone would then know, oh, that sculpture, that's where the cemetery is, and that cemetery, that's where the sculpture is. So, you know, it was a bit more calculated like that, I guess. But, you know, we haven't got anywhere close to doing that yet. But I think that as the design. Of Lily Dale sort of unfolds and unpacks, then we'll find something appropriate. It's already master planned and on paper, so hopefully that's indelible and it means that we'll be able to fund something like that in the future. And you touched previously just on how there's community consultation and understanding the audience that surrounds the symmetry. What sort of considerations and design implementations or design ideas have come about in relation to the culture and the heritage of the people who live around the community and the cemetery? Yeah. Well, it's a really good question and it's a really significant. Aspect of design, particularly in cemeteries. And I say that because we deal with everybody. We turn no one away, so that means we're bigger than the Olympic Games. In terms of cultural representation, we just have everybody. So you know, some communities are stronger than others and more prevalent. And so we have to focus on that. Other times there are requests from smaller communities or church groups and so on, so we try to cater to that as best we can. And of course the danger with all that is we are just starting to become a little bit more sort of mosaic. To use a nice word of outcomes, let's say designed outcomes in a cemetery, and that's the role too. So we can't expect a completely resolved sort of space from east to west, north to south. It's going to be a collection of attitudes and. Preferences and perceptions because some of the things that come to mind when you are mentioning this is, I know that Muslim faith, they need to be buried in the earth directly. So that's one particular consideration. I believe the Jewish faith. They have to be buried in a particular way of what they're facing, what particular direction on the compass they're facing. I can't recall off the top of my head, which one. And then you've also have cultures that value water as well as significance. So. How do you balance all of these sinner design with grave difficulty? Yeah. Yeah. A predominant burial type to cater for the Islamic faith, and we call them directional graves because they need to be facing the body when it's laid in the hole needs to be facing mecca effectively, so they're called directionals because the grave is slightly oriented depending on which side it is, towards Mecca. And it's a relatively consuming kind of approach because the graves are all single rows, generally because the bodies are not head to head or tail to tail. There. Head to tail, if that makes sense. So they're all facing the same direction. So it means that when we have to dig a grave, we have to come from a certain direction in order for our machinery to enable that to happen. Yeah. So we can't put double rows, although we're trying that in a development at the moment just to try and well, to make better use of the available space really. But again, you know the water, you mentioned water, and that's generally appeals to the Asian culture, and so we've gotta find. That, and that I think is generally more symbolic and visual, but we try to, if we do that and develop sort of drainage systems, that's our only real way of putting water in these days where we're going away from pits and pipes into more opens, swes and trying to hold water on site so it becomes more, more aesthetically. Are pleasing, but at the same time, that's really good environmental practice as well to just keep the ground hydrated and cater for bigger and larger storms. And so we still have lots of people who want to. Be buried in their monumental type graves. They're the big ones you see that look more gothic in their sort of representation. And then there's still quite a demand for public mausoleum as well. So we've got several public mausoleum across our sites, and that's just because people's preferences to be out of the ground. And just to, so for people who are unfamiliar with mausoleum, could you explain the structure and how that's built and how it differs? Well, yeah. Look, the risk of sounding crass, there's no easy way to put this, but the bodies are stacked in coffin sized concrete containers, and we build the mausoleum by stacking all these pods together in a grid that may be up to about. I think five high. And then we sort of build a building around that. And it's a generally a sort of an indoor outdoor building, so it's publicly accessible at all times. And we've got some pretty clever architects that know how to do that, and they do it really well. So yeah, pretty amazing sort of things because you might think that putting a body in the ground, it just might be a better option in terms of its deterioration and composition, but you think that a body in a sealed concrete. Pod stacked up way off the ground can therefore mean that the, uh, the deterioration of the body, let's say all the needs to be. Allowed for, you know, ever left anything in the fridge for a long time, you'll begin to know what I'm talking about. So, and this is the thing, is that there's so many considerations because the body does deteriorate over time. And what you were mentioning previously in relation to the soil types and how they respond, you know, if. Plant a plant and in your backyard and you water it over a period of time, the soil soaks down over a period of time and you may have to top it up with mulch or whatever. So. The challenges are still the same with you, isn't there? Oh yeah. Look, after I started working at GMCT in order to educate myself, I thought I'll go to an exhumation and just stomach that and see what it's all about. And as the body came up out of the ground, it was still quite intact. It was very strange sight, and the person was wearing the suit that they'd been buried in, even though the body had been in the ground for. Over 10 years. I mean, the skeletal remains was pretty grizzly, but the clothes the person was wearing or had been buried in were still quite intact. So why is that to the funeral director? And they said, well, it's because of the synthetic fibers. They're plastics and so they don't break down. And the body was sort, had been soaked in preservatives and formaldehyde and other chemicals presumably, and made up. Before at the funeral, so the coffins were laminated in plastic, plastic handles, so they were pulling up bits of. Plastic shards out of the hole to clean it out. So when you bury a body, it can be quite an inorganic process because of the clothes, because of the coffin. So there's now a move away from that. I think now, and then more biodegradable coffins are being chosen as well as a better way to decompose the body. And I think that leads into that movement also to see a increase in demand for natural burial to Hamish. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And so we're still pretty new at that, even though we've had natural burial sites for a little while now. I think we're tasked with developing a site at the moment, and so we're really going into the analysis of, it sounds really simple, that you can do natural barriers, just dig a hole, throw a body in. Done. But it's so much more complicated than that. In essence, that's what it's about. But the idea of natural is something that I think about. So what is natural and what are people's expectations of what natural is? Well, there's hard and fast rules about that. It may be that you don't allow diggers run by diesel motors to dig the hole. You know, because that's an environmental footprint, so it goes against being natural. So from that point right down to how you mark the body, how you prepare the body for the whole, and more importantly, what, where you put the body. So people look at a bush land and go, ah, that, that's natural. That's what I wanna be buried in. And we are trying to develop that at the moment, but at the same time, we just can't bury anywhere because we're frightened that if we upset existing tree roots. We're gonna kill the tree and the vegetation, and then suddenly over the next 10 years, there's dead trees everywhere and we would've failed. So we are developing this sort of technique that we hope can mitigate those kinds of risks and still provide the experience, but we are also, rather than just. Go from straight into natural burials. We're trying to think of them more now as say, bushland burials to sort of ease off on the strict protocols behind natural burial. That's not to say people still can't do that if that's what their wishes are, but it just allows us to provide that space for them a little bit easier. And whereabouts are you looking at doing this, Hamish, for those that may be interested in finding out more. Yeah, look, we are just developing, we have a space out at the Hillsville Cemetery. We've got one at Lilydale, I think as well, even though it's in a very constructed sort of landscape. So the idea of natural is. Perhaps a bit questionable, but at the same time, if all you wanna do is avoid coffins and cremation, then that can provide for that as well. And that's the thing, isn, isn't it? Because you have landscapes that you have something like Harkness, which you know you can design and you can have your vision and that can come about, but you're also already dealing with. Built landscape, hard landscape in other places where you have constraints in which you have to work in as well. So how do you find those challenges when you are sort of trying to retrofit sort of design elements to those environments? Look, I think they're extremely difficult. We're trying to extract every. Available piece of space. And you know, take Williamstown for example. It's a very historic cemetery. It's been going forever and a day and there's really not much space left, if any, at all there. And a few years ago we found an opportunity, but we were really just, I. Almost putting a, driving a, a round peg in a square hole or square peg in a round hole, whatever it is. But, and so what we're dealing with is an existing and historic structure of graves and then trying to put brand new ones in and trying and hoping that we don't, you know, break the drainage system and we can actually provide. Or improve it at times. And it might be that we need to provide sort of better access, you know?'cause we have to think about all abilities, access, so it means steps and wraps and handrails. That's all gotta be considered. And when we're shoehorning these into a really tight space, I. It can be really difficult because we have to make it so it's profitable for us at the same time, and so the challenge is enormous. Yeah, and the other thing that comes to mind that I've had a little bit of experience with running events in historic gardens. Mm-hmm. Do you have all of the maps for the underground services on where you are trying to do all of this work? No, no. Some of them were drawn a long, long time ago and rolled up in sealed boxes down in the basement, I think. But no, look, we'll, as a matter of course, we are trying to develop our site due diligence activities to try and just understand the site that we're working in. So first thing we'll do is go and get a surveyor or. Go and get some geotech done, or prove where the services underground are and find out what challenges we're up against before we start designing. But we're sort of under pressure so much to just keep up with demand, that building these landscapes, designing and constructing these landscapes can take enormous. Amounts of energy and time and we don't always have the time to afford because people keep dying. So we're at this rate, and I tell you, there's never a dull moment and there's never downtime. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. And I have to say that's something that does come to mind. And just on something that you touched about previously is that if anyone's traveled East Link to sort of Peninsula Link in the last few years, if. Have a look to their left just before Thompsons Road. They may be wondering what's being all the construction going on over there. And if anyone who is familiar with that, they may be aware of that Ong Memorial Park. And what we're seeing is the section of the cemetery that is dedicated to people of the Muslim faith and that's their area. And I cannot believe how quickly it is filling up. Oh, it's incredible when developing the river Rip Gum Parkland area at Northern Memorial Park over the last 10 years. And when I arrived it was really a Greenfield site and now it's, I. Completely developed or, or, but completely developed. We're doing stage two now, but the empty spaces we thought would last a long time are just filling at a rapid pace. We have to design a lot of car parks in our cemetery sites, understandably. But if you visit one of these spaces, the car parks were always empty. So it's a conundrum because the car parks were full maybe for about an hour, and then they're all empty again. So we thought we need to provide car parks, but one day the cemetery's going to be full. And then what happens next? So the clever design for River Red Gum is that we can peel up these car parks and create remaining. Burial spaces, and we've already done that with one carpark. We thought it would last another 10 years, but we've already pulled up one carpark and have just built directional graves for the Islamic community there. And I think they've just about all sold out too. So it's crazy. And just designing in a space that River Red Gums are predominantly in. So there's that space that you're referring to and other areas that you've worked on. What consideration is given to First Nations cultural consultation in relation to that landscape and those designs? Well, the short answer is very little. I. And it struck me a few years ago when I was learning about cemeteries and I thought to myself that we cater for all cultures. We always talk about culture all the time, but we include all cultures, or we did include all cultures except one, and that was our indigenous one. And I thought, well, that's a huge gap. So from that point, we sort of started making more effort to engage with our traditional owners, and then we sort of started to understand a little bit more about why this is a good thing, particularly with their skills. Of land management and maintenance over the last 60,000 years. So when we kicked off the Harkness master plan, that was very conscientiously included, a lot of consultation and engagement with the traditional owners. Normally, you know, that starts with developing a cultural heritage management plan and from that point on. We work out what the limitations are, what the opportunities are, how can we sort of work that into our designs, how that can be applied, how we can make that more relevant to the general public. I. And just be truly inclusive on that level. Well, it's lovely to hear that that work is being done and that there is a shift in the way in which we view inclusivity in relation to all cultures, as you said. Yeah, makes sense. And in relation to, as you were saying, and we, it seems to be coming up. Time and time again when we're talking about design is we've only got so much green space in the cities, and I certainly became very aware of this when I traveled overseas recently and was in Milan and thought, oh, I'll check out their cemetery, and we manage ours in perpetuity. However, there is a lot of overdue notices on cemetery, on gravestones and in the Mus Oleum in Milano Central, and I thought, what does that mean for us, Hamish, when we're, we've only got so far we can have land. What have you seen that may be the future of design and how we accommodate burying people when we have limited space? Yeah, so it's the eternal question. It's a bit of a luxury here in Australia. I think a lot of, I think in Europe and other places, there's this thing called tenure where they exhume the body and dispose of it if the family no longer requires it. But here, it's in perpetuity and off it goes. It just sort of disappears into the over time. But look, you know, when we think about space, we have to change the attitudes. I think about. Burial and how that might happen. And I think that the way we do that is to combine that with new techniques of body disposal. And it's very old sort of style of bearing a body in a coffin and putting it in the ground. And there are newer techniques. That I'd be keen to see developed here in Victoria and Australia in general, such as composting, which has been developed in the US and it's really composting a body in a rapid sort of process. So the outcome or the remains are. As I understand it, a bag of soil so you know you can do what you want with that soil. The particular business in America has a relationship with regenerating a decimated forest. So their idea of giving back to the environment is that if you dunno what to do with you remains, help us regenerate this forest with nutrient. And so to me that's a, it's a fabulous idea. In my long-term vision for the new cemetery or the eventual cemetery is just a garden or a forest where you see no headstones, you don't see any bodies, but it's all constructed or created through fertilized forest floor, you know, so it becomes a very sacred. Kind of space in its own right? I think so. There's that. There's other sort of techniques. Natural burial obviously that we've talked about is also quite becoming quite popular and, but I think that the challenges are big if you follow real estate in any way, shape, or for, we all know that things are just getting more and more expensive. And so for us to go and buy land, which is a lengthy process in the first place, that is often on the outskirts of the city. Meaning the travel times are much greater and we need to develop larger parcels to try and shore up the future that, look, maybe we should follow Brazil or Japan where they build a fit out a, an office building or you know, we house them in another kind of way or well, what have you. I think the first point is to sort of start to change people's attitudes about what they expect. When they expect to die, when they think they're gonna die, or what that outcome is. And I suppose on that, staying with that thought of perhaps challenging people's perception of what they think burial involves nowadays, as you mentioned, there's a lot of challenges with. Bearing someone in the ground. You've mentioned soil types. You've mentioned drainage. You've mentioned just the natural decomposition and settling of the body, and then the settling of the soil with a very large tombstone or plaque, you know, on top of it, and managing those and then maintaining it and growing things on top. So the thing that surprised me when I saw a, it was at Southern Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust at Bunong, was that we're using modern day techniques to help mitigate those challenges by using concrete. To actually segment areas where a person is buried, and I assume that is to actually contain that or control those issues in some way. Hamish, why is that? If I understand what you're saying is correct, then we. Pour a lot of concrete, and basically what we're doing is building concrete foundations to support the weight of a monumental grave. So as I mentioned before, the soils can be quite moving and shifting and reactive, and so we do our best to try and limit that by knowing that people wanna put a very, very heavy stone. Monolithic structure on the ground to commemorate the family or the loved one. And so the physics of that is that something very heavy on soil needs to be supported. So we pour a lot of concrete to make that happen. So we're trying to look at ways of how can we reduce our reliance on concrete. Maybe we don't need, we're investigating green concrete, you know, that doesn't rely on the usual techniques of manufacturing. We also lay concrete beams that. People can, for Lord Graves, the, the headstone or the plaque sits on and we're thinking, do we need them so wide? Perhaps we can shrink them down a little bit. So it, it's a brilliant. Product concrete. It's been around for a long time and it's proven, and so I think it's gonna be here to stay for a little while. We've just gotta work out how we can work with it, make it go further, if that makes sense. Of course. Thanks for explaining that, because it makes sense that it's putting in the substructure there to support the activities that have to happen. Yeah. Just like a house or a building. Yeah. You put down a slab, build the house on top. You're good to go. Uh, another thing that came to mind was when you were talking about the price of real estate, and there was something that I saw that, you know, when you were looking at a design of the cemetery that, you know, whenever you are closer to the water, it's always more expensive to get a plot there. You know, the places with the view always more expensive and I. That in death, as in life, the ones with the view and the ones closest to the water are still the most expensive. Sad but true. But you know, there's a couple of Wiley retailers in cemetery industries as well, so they know that, you know, people are prepared to pay and look. It's just a demand supply. Equation as well. So if people wanna commemorate, they'll pay for it, although, but you know, we have these price points all over the place in every cemetery, depending on the location, depending on the outlook, depending on the product type. You know, whether it's just a simple one grave or a cremated remains garden right up to the private mausoleum where money's not an object. And with all the things that you've seen and your experience that you've had over this time, Hamish, what's your thoughts? What's your end of life plans? Have you come to any decision about whether you'd like to be buried or. Uh, well, well, I tend to avoid questions like that sometimes, and I want to, I'll make a decision right at the end, but no, I'm actually quite like the idea of the composting myself. I think that just seems to be a natural process without a lot of mechanical interventions, and I think that the outcome, if I understand it correctly, is something that I feel is more spiritual. It's one thing to bury a whole body in the ground and let it decompose, but there's something about scattering much, much like cremation. And if I could scatter a bag of soil around in a forest, preferably down by the beach somewhere, I'd be very content with that. I think I. I like the idea of that, you know, being fertilizer for a future generation of trees and for animals to live in some part of those trees moving forward. Yeah. Look, my my personal opinion is that humans have been fighting nature ever since we got here, and it's brought us to this point now, and I think it's just a futile fight. And I think that we should be more working with nature to let it. Do its thing. And I think that's one way you can do that. Well, it sounds like things with the work that you're doing, Hamish means that you are really paving the way in making sure that kind of happens. That we are in more harmony when we design our cemeteries of the future generation. Yeah. Thanks. It's, yeah. Very challenging, but it's very rewarding at the same time. Thank you so much for being with us today. Is there anything else that you'd like to add? Oh, well, I could keep talking forever about this subject, so we better call it quits. Thank you so much for being with us today, Hamish. No worries, Catherine. Till next time. I. We hope you enjoyed today's episode of Don't Be Caught Dead, brought to you by Critical Info. If you liked the episode, learn something new, or were touched by a story you heard, we'd love for you to let us know. Send us an email, even tell your friends, subscribe so you don't miss out on new episodes. If you can spare a few moments. Please rate and review us as it helps other people to find the show. 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