CCANSW Weekly News Letter - 17/01/2021

The increasing scarcity of developable land within Australian cities has lead to an urgent shortage of burial space and has priced remaining cemetery plots beyond ordinary means. At the same time, the edges of Australian cities have become progressively denuded of vegetation. Land-clearing rates in Australia are amongst the highest in the developed world, and the expanding livestock industry will alone consume 3 million hectares of native bushland between 2010 and 2030.

The NSW Heritage Grants program helps owners, custodians, managers and communities to recognise, value and care for heritage. Applications will be received until Feb 8th 2021.

Finally I have managed to finish Robert Nicol's excellent "This grave and burning question; A Centenary of cremation in Australia". In part it looks at the crematorium cited to be Australia's first, the Adelaide Crematorium. Its construction had commenced in 1902. Poor standards led to its closure in the late 1930s.

The book contains the text of a letter from an Adelaide clergyman, Rev Leonard Slade of Mallala. who had written to the press, painting a grim word picture of what mourners at a cremation service in 1930 could expect:

There are some exciting and informative events coming up in Adelaide's historic West Terrace Cemetery. You'll find them listed in our Community Events Diary.

Many CCANSW members will know Christine Smyth, who in her presentations to conferences and contributions to the  CCANSW Legal QandA has opened our eyes to the complexities of estate law. We were pleased to hear  that Christine has now opened her own practice, which she modestly describes as a boutique estate law practice:

The Cemeteries & Crematoria Association of NSW has scheduled two of its popular Cemetery Safety courses, to be held in Sydney and Dubbo, in March 2021.

OpusXenta, a CCANSW sponsor, has published its January 2021 Connexions newsletter:

It's reported that to prevent the funeral system from collapsing in the face of a new increase in coronavirus cases, Manaus, the Brazilian Amazon metropolis, plans to create 22,000 vertical graves.

Since the pandemic began many of the CCANSW  sponsors, supporters and connections have co-ordinated webinars to help keep you informed and up to date with industry initiatives, trends and progress. The webinars have also kept us connected. However, often we receive notifications too late to make the CCANSW weekly news letter, so we've created a special mailing list for those of you who'd like to be informed ASAP when a webinar is scheduled in the CCANSW event calendar.