Pasadena’s Centennial Park cemetery selling graves with ocean, Adelaide Hills views

TOMB with a view, anyone? The state’s biggest cemetery, Centennial Park, is now selling plots with “stunning” ocean vistas or a view of the Adelaide Hills.

CEO Janet Miller at Centennial Park Cemetery in Pasadena. Picture: Matt Loxton

TOMB with a view, anyone?

The state’s biggest cemetery, Centennial Park, is now selling plots with “stunning” ocean vistas or a view of the Adelaide Hills.

Olive Terrace is “a contemporary burial design set among lines of fragrant olive and orange trees”, the Park says, with the possibility of “in-ground vaults and the inclusion of grand monuments”.

Internment rights at Olive Terrace start at $550 a year, for a minimum of 50 years, a total of $27,500 ... or you can own your plot forever for $82,500.

The dearly departed have more options than ever before.

At Centennial Park you can opt for a hexagonal shaped group burial site, so your family can make an eternal circle.

Oh, and speaking of eternal – burial sites used to be on a renewable lease. If the lease runs out the cemetery goes to great lengths to contact the family; but if there’s no luck or they don’t want to pay, staff do a “lift and deepen”.

They disinter the bones, meticulously count them to be sure they got the whole person, check it’s the right person, then put the bones in an ossuary box. That’s effectively a smaller, more compact resting place.

Olive Terrace at Centennial Park Cemetery in Pasadena. Picture: Matt Loxton

That box is put deeper in the plot, and the new person gets the spot on top.

So now it’s possible to be perpetually interred.

In the gardens at Centennial Park, people are encouraged to pop the champagne, or bring a scotch & Coke for Mum. Even have a picnic.

Park chief executive officer Janet Miller says the focus is the life of the person who died – and those they leave behind.

“Death’s been really taboo and we’re looking to change all that,” she said.

“This is a place for the living. We might cater for the deceased but this is a place for the living to come.”

There are different areas for Jewish, Muslim, and Ba’hai burials. Apparently the Hell’s Angels quite like being close.

Elsewhere, concern for the environment is driving less orthodox options. You can have a natural burial – Enfield and Smithfield Memorial Parks have native plantings and you can be put to rest in a biodegradable coffin or shroud.

Back at the funeral, the grieving masses have moved on to coffee and cake.

So what happens next? The plinth the coffin has been put on is a motorised contraption called a catafalque. It carries the coffin to an entirely separate section of the cemetery, where it goes on a trolley to be buried or cremated.

There may be increasing numbers of burial options, but most people now get cremated.

Last year there were 818 burials and 3616 cremations at Centennial Park – more than 80 per cent cremations. Fifty years ago it was 30 per cent.

Market research done by the cemetery found that more than anything else – cost, family influence, cemetery location, traditions, religion – what influences people planning a funeral is what the loved one wanted. They now produce a book –My Life – so people can write out their funeral bucketlist before they actually kick the bucket.

Australian Funeral Directors Association spokesman Darren Eddy says one of the overarching trends in funerals is that they’re more relaxed, and more personal.

Churches are out. Skyping the eulogies is in. The personal touch extends to where people are buried, or more likely where their ashes are scattered.