Ferntree Gully Cemetery getting more room to hold ashes as trees uproot graves

A CEMETERY is about to get a new lease on life, but nothing can be done to save some monuments being damaged by trees.

Ferntree Gully cemetery caretaker David Munn. Picture: Paul Loughnan.

FERNTREE GullyÂ’s 140-year-old cemetery is about to get a new lease on life with the installation of a new niche wall to hold the ashes of another 385 people.

But at the same time, trees are uprooting old graves and nothing can be done to save the monuments they’ve damaged ­unless the owners can be tracked down.

There are already 70 people who have added their names to a list to secure a spot in the new green marble wall at the historic cemetery, which is expected to be ready for use later this year.

Caretaker David Munn, who started working at the cemetery 28 years ago, is among more than 200 living locals who have secured the last burial plots in the quaint but carefully maintained grounds where there were 40 burials and 30 ashes interments in the past year.

Since it’s first burial in 1885, the 2ha cemetery has become the final resting place for thousands of residents, including famous Australian artist Arthur Streeton, who died in 1943, and many unnamed paupers, lost souls whose graves were never marked.

Mr Munn, 45, was just 16 when he dug his first grave and he has grown along with the cemetery, which is run by a community trust under the auspices of Knox Council.

“At 16 it’s a pretty freaky sort of place to work,” he said.

“I wanted a job as a gardener and went through the CES (now Centrelink) and was offered it. My first reaction was `I’m not working in no bloody cemetery’. Three months later the boss left and I took over. I thought I’d give it 12 months and 28 years later I’m still here.

“I’m born and bred in Ferntree Gully and couldn’t ask for a better place to work. I love the peace and quiet and I’m my own boss.”

Mr Munn said the first question most people asked when they discovered he was a cemetery sexton was if he believed in ghosts.

He’s reluctant to discuss the topic, but, when pressed, admits he has occasionally “seen things I can’t explain”.

“People always ask me and I never tell them because they’ll look at you with a different perspective,” he said.

“They also ask how I can work in a cemetery but I tell them it’s just a big garden.

“It’s a pleasant place.”

But one not without its challenges.

Mr Munn has met many “absolutely devastated and distraught” grieving relatives and often sat with them for hours into the night.

“Often they’d walk away with a smile and to me that’s part of my job, to help them,” he said.

In the early years he had to attend counselling, a process he initially scoffed at, but in hindsight, admits made him a stronger, more resilient person.

He’s not afraid of death. “You are always going to end up here,” he said as he looked across the sprawling grounds down to Forest Rd.

“To me it’s just one destiny you are never going to change.

“I think I’ve grown up with a whole different outlook on life because I’m dealing with death every day.”

Meantime, trees are uprooting old graves at the cemetery and nothing can be done to save the monuments they’ve damaged ­unless the owners can be tracked down.

A Knox Council special committee report said the monuments had to be removed to get rid of the trees, a cedar wattle and radiata pine, but they could not be touched without the permission of the grave owners.

The Ferntree Gully Cemetery Trust report said staff might be able to identify the holder of the rights to one site but not the other, which has a crumbling headstone for Theresa Allan, who died aged 77 and was buried there in 1939.

Knox Mayor Karin Orpen, who is a member of the cemetery committee, said any of the woman’s surviving family members should contact the committee to ­discuss the tree’s removal.

“We would be very interested to learn if there are any relatives to this person,” she said.

Councillor Orpen said the committee had identified the owner of rights to the other grave and they had agreed for the monument to be removed so the trees could go.

But she said if no one came forward for Theresa Allan’s gravesite, the committee would have to seek special permission from the Department of Health to remove the tree.

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