Cemetery development continues
Development of the second stage of the Gulwarra Heights Memorial Park, Warragul’s second cemetery, has started with grave sites expected to be ready by the end of the year.
Roadworks and kerbing for the latest stage to the south of the existing area is well advanced and expected to be ready by the end of the year.
The expansion costing about $250,000 will provide another 1800 grave sites and is expected to cater for needs for the next 25 years.
Gulwarra Heights and the Warragul cemetery in Victoria, that still has some burial sites available, are administered by the volunteer Warragul Cemetery Trust.
The second stage at Gulwarra Heights will also increase the options available for burials.
The cemetery near the western end of Burke St conducted its first burial in 1996 and since then has seen about 850 burials and ashes interments.
Trust chairman Graeme Perkins said stage two was being financed by its perpetual maintenance fund, a percentage of funeral costs paid to the trust, and a small grant from the Department of Health and Human Services.
The master plan for Gulwarra Heights comprises more than seven development stages.
Mr Perkins said the trust believed ashes interments would increase in future and was looking to establish more memorial gardens where families can install plaques or inter the ashes of loved ones to complement the existing granite niche wall and three rose gardens for ashes interments and a camelia garden where ashes can be scattered and a plaque installed.
A Friends of the Cemetery group helps maintain the Victoria St cemetery, meeting each month to wash and maintain graves, and the trust would welcome other volunteers interested in forming a similar group for Gulwarra Heights.
Inquiries about either cemetery can be made to the trust’s manager Merryn Perry from 9 am to noon, Mondays to Fridays, on 5622 3255 or 0411 460 325.