As cemeteries fill, Australians choose forests
· Michael West
When Helen Rafferty succumbed to a five-year illness on the eve of the first COVID-19 lockdown, her husband Michael had to act fast to farewell his “darling wife of 44 years”.
Three days after she died, borders closed, cities emptied and families across Australia became separated from loved ones.
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The Raffertys’ children, scattered between the United States and Australia, had no time to get home before restrictions came into force and the pandemic sealed the borders.
“They all missed the death,” Mr Rafferty tells AAP.
Just days after Michael Rafferty lost his wife, his family became separated by COVID lockdowns. (James Ross/AAP PHOTOS)He had to act fast to push ahead with Helen’s memorial service – one she had written and he sang at – before the state effectively shut down.
It was held just in time with Mr Rafferty but his children did not have the opportunity to properly farewell their mother.
“The city was shut down on the same day – the 18th – and I came home from the memorial service and into an empty home and I stayed there for two years,” Mr Rafferty remembers.
“Not even someone to have a goddamn cup of coffee with?”
Ms Rafferty had been cremated and her ashes divided into three containers for the couple’s children.
At first, Michael held onto them, believing they would eventually return and decide together what should happen.
“I kept them there hoping the children would come back,” he says.
Helen Rafferty’s ashes were initially divided into separate containers for her children. (James Ross/AAP PHOTOS)But as the months stretched into years, Michael realised he needed to make a decision.
“I spoke to one of my sisters and they said, ‘Make the choice, it’s your decision. No one else’s’,” he says.
Sitting in the backyard was a Wollemi pine – one of the world’s oldest and rarest tree species.
The couple had been cultivating the tree from a cutting taken from a rediscovered specimen in the Blue Mountains decades earlier.
The tree – by then two metres high – had been Helen’s pride and joy.
“Helen was into gardening like there was no tomorrow,” Mr Rafferty says.
“The pine was Helen’s pine. She selected it. I nurtured it.”
The Raffertys cultivated their thriving tree from a cutting taken in the NSW Blue Mountains. (James Ross/AAP PHOTOS)Then, while reading the newspaper one morning, he stumbled across an advertisement for Mornington Green – a memorial park on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula offering environmentally-focused memorial options.
“I said, ‘What I want to do is to put Helen’s ashes under (the pine),'” he recalls.
The decision was immediate.
“I didn’t even think twice,” he says.
He was one of the first bereaved people to choose that option and Helen’s Wollemi pine was the first planted at the park overlooking Western Port Bay.
“The whole setting is truly magnificent,” Mr Rafferty says.
“The perfect place for Helen.”
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He now visits the site on Helen’s birthday, their wedding anniversary and other significant dates.
“I normally say a little prayer and wander around and just have a look and wander off and come out,” he says.
“And I am at peace.”
Australians are increasingly reconsidering what happens after death.
Traditional burials continue to consume urban land, particularly in major cities where cemetery space is increasingly limited.
Available room on Crown land is likely to run out within 30 years, while in Sydney, this is likely to be the case in less than a decade and at least 70,000 spaces will soon be needed just to keep up.
At the same time, cremation – now chosen by more than 70 per cent of Australians according to industry estimates – carries an environmental footprint through energy use and emissions.
Helen’s wollemi pine was the first planted at Mornington Green. (James Ross/AAP PHOTOS)A growing number of memorial providers are instead promoting alternatives focused on conservation, regeneration and natural memorialisation.
Living Legacy Forest, an Australian-first initiative, allows ashes to be placed within protected forest sites – like Mornington Green – to regenerate habitat and restore biodiversity.
“Now that people are aware of the toxic profile of ashes having the same pH as bleach and a cup of salts, people are treating ashes so they can actually help a tree grow rather than harm it,” one of Living Legacy Memorial Gardens’ founders, Warren Roberts, explains.
“Living Legacy is a paradigm shift in how we leave the world.
“Instead of chopping down trees to make coffins and space for graves people are becoming trees and creating protected forests.”
The organisation estimates that if even 10 per cent of Australians chose forest memorials, more than 5400 hectares of conservation forest could eventually be created.
Other memorial alternatives include incorporating cremated remains into artificial reef structures and biodegradable urns, or even having ashes turned into diamonds.
With conventional burial space scarce, Australians are reconsidering what happens after death. (Joel Carrett/AAP PHOTOS)For Mr Rafferty, though, the decision had little to do with trends. It was about Helen.
“She loved that pine,” he says.
“She would have been delighted. Absolutely delighted.”