Cut-price funeral company plans vertical graves

CANBERRA - Derrinallum, little more than a dot on the Hamilton Highway stretching northwest out from the Victorian coastal city of Geelong, is really a place you would be caught dead standing in.

The tiny farming town has been given permission to create what is believed to be Australia's first vertical cemetery, burying its dead on their feet, without headstones, in environmentally sound body bags.

The go-ahead for the project has been given by state Planning Minister Rob Hulls after a 15-year battle to win approval for the concept by cut-price funeral company Palacom.

The original idea was to set up a standing-room-only burial ground on farmland near Camperdown, another farming centre in Victoria's western district.

Instead, approval has been granted for the Corangamite Shire to re-zone land at Derrinallum to allow the cemetery and crematorium to be built.

It will cater for the distant dead as well as the locally deceased, with bodies stored at a morgue in Melbourne, enclosed in biodegradable plastic bags, and transported to Derrinallum in groups of up to 15.

For about A$1000 ($1070) - roughly a quarter the cost of a standard cremation and one-seventh that of a traditional funeral - the dead will be stood to rest in a 3m deep hole.

After burial, the "graves" will be filled and the land returned to pasture. In time, the ground will be leased for grazing.

Instead of individual headstones or plaques, a grid reference will be attached to a fence around the cemetery, allowing visitors to identify the exact gravesites of their loved ones.

Palacom says that its vertical interments offer a less expensive and more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional burials.