Every year, 8 August marks Dying to Know Day, a national campaign that invites Australians to have open, unhurried conversations about death, dying, and end-of-life planning. It was created by The Groundswell Project, and since a 2021 merger, it’s now delivered by Proveda, which works to build death literacy across the country, one conversation, workshop, and community event at a time. I’ve written about the campaign before, and last year, I helped run a Dying to Know Day event with the Melbourne Inner North End of Life Doula Hub, my local group. This year, I did something different: I went along to one as a guest.
The Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust (GMCT) hosted “Know Before You Go” at Fawkner Memorial Park, a behind-the-scenes look at burials and cremations for anyone curious enough to ask. GMCT manages 19 cemeteries and memorial parks across Melbourne, including Fawkner, and its mission includes helping the community engage with death and bereavement with openness rather than avoidance. This event was a generous example of that work in practice.
Coffee, talk, and a fellow doula
The morning began in the historic Tearooms with coffee, tea, orange juice, cannoli, and fresh fruit; a gentle, unhurried start to a day that can ask a lot emotionally. Nicole Grundy, a fellow End-of-Life Doula, was there to greet us. For anyone new to the term, an End-of-Life Doula, or Death Doula, provides non-medical emotional, practical, and sometimes spiritual support to people who are dying and to those close to them. Nicole spoke briefly on funeral choices and the importance of thinking about what we want, whenever we’re ready to think about it. If you’re not sure what you want, she said, working out what you don’t want is just as good a place to start.
After the talk, our group split in two: one heading first to the crematorium, the other to burials. I went with the burials group. We climbed into a small, comfortable van, and our guide, Ebony, drove us across the park.
A cemetery like a museum
Fawkner Memorial Park opened in 1906 and today spans 113 hectares in Melbourne’s north, making it one of the largest cemeteries in Australia. For over three decades, from 1906 to 1939, specially designed mortuary trains carried the deceased from Flinders Street Station to a platform built right beside the cemetery.
Walking through Fawkner feels like wandering through a museum. Structures, memorials, and botanical features span more than a century of history. The cemetery’s entrance, for instance, is framed by the original gates of the old Melbourne Fish Market, which stood on the corner of Spencer and Flinders Streets until 1959, and a beautifully restored early 1900s mortuary hearse carriage sits on display near the old station. But this event wasn’t a heritage tour; it was a look at the working life of the cemetery, the parts most visitors never see.
Burial Operations at Fawkner Memorial Park
Mia, a member of the Burial Operations team, also known as a gravedigger, met us at Ironbark, one of the newer sections of the park. A former AFLW player, she was dressed much like a tradie: heavy-duty work pants, sturdy boots, and a high-vis vest, her hair pulled up into a high, messy bun. She told us that Fawkner isn’t just Australia’s largest cemetery; it’s also Victoria’s busiest. People die every day, she reminded us gently, and next week alone there are 70 burials scheduled, as many as sixteen in a single day.
She showed us an interment site and walked us through how a burial actually happens. Understanding the local soil and how it shifts with the seasons and weather is central to the work. You never compact the soil down hard, she explained, because heavy pressure on freshly backfilled earth risks crushing the casket beneath it. Instead, the excavated soil is simply returned and left to settle naturally, which is also why gravediggers build a mound over a new grave rather than levelling it. As the loosened soil compacts over the following months, the mound gradually sinks to meet the surrounding ground.
The cemetery also works to accommodate cultural and religious traditions. Muslim burials, for example, tend to happen quickly, often within a day, in keeping with religious practice, while an Indigenous burial may include a ceremony that unfolds over many hours at the graveside. Mia told us that learning about the death traditions of different cultures has been one of the most enriching parts of her job.
Right of Interment
A visitor asked Mia a question many people wonder about: is a body buried forever, or is it eventually removed?
When you purchase a grave or a memorial space in Victoria, you’re not buying the land itself; you’re purchasing what’s called a Right of Interment. That is, you’re buying the exclusive right to use a specific space for a burial, or for the interment of cremated remains. For graves, this right is granted in perpetuity, meaning your family can use and care for the space for generations to come. For cremation memorials, you can choose either a 25-year term or perpetuity, with the option to renew at the end of a 25-year period.
The Crown owns the land, and it’s the cemetery trust’s responsibility to maintain the broader grounds and gardens and keep the park safe and peaceful for everyone who visits. Maintaining the memorial itself, the headstone, plaque, or monument, is the responsibility of whoever holds the Right of Interment. So if you’ve ever walked through an old cemetery, noticed a broken or leaning headstone, and wondered why nobody had fixed it, this is why. The cemetery doesn’t own the memorial and can’t legally do much with it beyond making sure it isn’t a safety hazard. Sometimes the Right of Interment holder can’t be located at all, and on very old graves, there may never have been a clear record of one.
We thanked Mia for her time and climbed back into the van. Ebony drove us across the park to the chapels and the crematorium.
A brief introduction to cremations
We met Lauren Whitehead inside the Cordell Chapel. Lauren is a Funeral Services Coordinator and Crematorium Operator. Where Mia’s gear was practical and tradie-like, Lauren was dressed entirely in black: a long, full skirt, layered tops, and Doc Martens, with a narrow animal-print belt at her waist and her long dark hair worn loose and parted in the middle. The overall effect was gently Gothic, though never theatrical. She was warm, confident, and clearly loves her work.
She opened with “A Very Brief Introduction to the Art and Science of Cremation,” and true to its name, it was brief: exactly what we needed to know, nothing more and nothing less. Lauren spoke about the four classical elements, the qualities of fire, and the way everything in the universe recirculates. From there, she explained what actually happens to a body during cremation: the soft tissues break down and vaporise, in keeping with that idea of recirculation, leaving mostly bone behind. These bone fragments are then placed into a cremulator, a machine that reduces them to the fine, granular material we recognise as cremated remains, or “ashes.”
Beyond keeping ashes in an urn or interring them, there’s a surprising range of things people choose to do with cremated remains these days. Biodegradable urns designed for sea burial are increasingly popular, and ashes can also be incorporated into jewellery, artwork, vinyl records, and even tattoos.
After her talk, Lauren led us into the crematorium itself.
The crematorium at Fawkner Memorial Park
The crematorium is, in a way, disarmingly ordinary. There’s nothing dramatic or frightening about the space. It’s large, clean, and brightly lit, with pale walls and floors, stainless steel machinery, and a surprisingly high black ceiling. The cremators are built into one wall: large rectangular units with stainless steel doors, each numbered and controlled from its own panel. A heavy stainless steel loading trolley, fitted with rollers, sits in front of them, used to move the coffin into the chamber. Overhead, an open-grid black ceiling exposes some of the extensive ventilation and ductwork above, a quiet reminder of just how much heat this room is built to handle.
The coffin is placed on the loading trolley and transferred into the cremator, which is already extremely hot. Burners and carefully controlled airflow maintain the temperatures required for the process. Once the door closes, the coffin burns, and the intense heat gradually breaks down the body’s soft tissues. Gases produced along the way pass through a secondary combustion chamber, where they’re subjected to further heat before moving through the crematorium’s exhaust system.
The Crematorium Family Viewing Room, a newly refurbished space that can hold up to fifteen people, offers families an intimate space for a final goodbye.
A cremation can take up to three hours, and despite the amount of technology involved, it isn’t a fully automated process. Operators monitor the cremation throughout and make adjustments as needed to keep it running safely and correctly. Only one person is cremated at a time, and their remains are never mixed with anyone else’s. Another operator quietly told me how important it is to do this work carefully, with real respect for the dignity of the person in their care.
Once the cremation is complete and the remains have cooled enough to handle, the operator carefully removes them from the chamber. Any metal, whether from coffin fittings or surgical implants, is separated out, and the bone fragments go into the cremulator, the machine shown in the photo behind Lauren.
In the photo above, Lauren shows us some of the metal items recovered after cremation: a spoon, the head of an old hammer, part of a stethoscope, various surgical items, and a bra underwire. A cremulator is visible behind her.
Little Dottie
We left the crematorium, and Ebony guided us through some of the oldest sections of the park on the way back to the Tearooms. Along the way, we stopped at the grave of Dorothy Gladys Knapp, Fawkner Memorial Park’s very first interment in 1906. She was just four years and eleven months old when she died.
Know before you go
Mornings like this are exactly what Dying to Know Day is for: a chance to ask ordinary questions of the people who do this work every day, and get straight answers. But the conversations don’t have to happen with professionals; the ones with family and friends, over a cup of coffee, matter more.
If you’d like support thinking through your own end-of-life wishes, or those of someone close to you, that’s the work I do as an End-of-Life Doula. You can find out more about my End-of-Life Doula services or get in touch whenever you’re ready.