About two-and-a-half hours south-west of Melbourne, farmer-turned-undertaker Tony Dupleix is tasked with granting the final wishes of people who want a rather unusual burial.
He oversees one of the world’s first purpose-built upright cemeteries, where the dead are buried “standing up”.
The Kurweeton Road Cemetery near Camperdown in regional Victoria opened almost 15 years ago.
It’s now the final resting place of more than 100 people, with another 1,000 already signed up for a plot.
The cemetery was decades in the making. (ABC)
While for most it’s environmental reasons that bring them to the upright cemetery, Tony has also been deeply moved by some surprising personal reasons.
“There’s one person in particular, he was involved in a terrible accident when he was a child and spent his entire life in a wheelchair,” he told ABC iview’s Back Roads.
“And he said, ‘I’ve just been seated all my life and I want to stand forever’.
“We were able to stand him in his grave. That was a great day.”
Logistics of burying upright
Tony also recalled how one of his sheep helped start the unusual business and prove the upright method was possible.
“We had to design and fabricate a catafalque [raised structure that supports a coffin] to slowly and respectfully lower the deceased into their graves,” he said.
“I had just lost one of my rams and so I thought, ‘Thank you Cecil for putting your hand up’.
Farmer Tony Dupleix also oversees burials at the Kurweeton Road Cemetery. (ABC: Ben Cunningham)
“Then we stitched him into a shroud, we loaded him into the catafalque, and then we buried him vertically, respectfully.
“Cecil did [us] a great favour.”
There are no coffins or headstones in the cemetery. Instead, there’s a memorial wall with a small plaque for each person buried and a locator to show where their grave is.
Instead of headstones, the cemetery has a memorial wall of those buried there. (ABC)
Cemetery not without controversy
While the cemetery has been open for nearly 15 years, it was decades in the making.
“It started with just being a little bit disillusioned with the traditional funeral process,” Tony said.
“A group of us thought that maybe we’d experiment and try something a bit different and just strip away all the unnecessary parts of the funeral process and just keep it nice and simple.”
The group came up with the idea in 1984, but it took until 2010 to get clearance from the Victorian government.
But not everyone was supportive.
“There are people in my own town that will cross the street rather than face me on the footpath because they think it’s abominable,” Tony said.
Many others, however, have embraced the alternative approach to death.
“The happiest person in the world was a Vietnam veteran called Alan, who was very unwell,” Tony said.
“He was really fed up with society and conforming to the needs of average people.
“He really wanted to be the first one in our cemetery and he got that honour.”
Tony initially thought the relatively low burial price, which is now $3,750, would be the drawcard.
But he’s found most of his customers like the process because it doesn’t use many resources and contributes to a local revegetation program.
“For every person that’s buried here, there’s a tree planted on Mount Elephant [a nearby extinct volcano],” Tony said.
“Our thinking is that the tree in its life will sequester a similar amount of carbon that’s emitted through transport, refrigeration and the burial process.”
Growing demand for burials
Farming is still Tony Dupleix’s main job and even with his side business, he’s not planning to call himself a funeral director anytime soon.
“I just go about doing my farming business and occasionally I get a phone call to say that there’s a death and I clean my fingernails and I polish my boots and we jump into action,” he said.
“I guess I think of myself, in a way, like the old-fashioned undertaker from the Wild West movies of our childhood.”
Tony and his wife Lois’ plots are the closest to Mount Elephant. (ABC)
And while this unconventional resting place has its detractors, Tony said there was a growing demand for the 40,000 potential burial sites in the cemetery.
“The funeral industry early on was very critical of us and, you know, just laughed us off,” he said.
“Whereas now we’re getting inquiries from funeral directors whose clients have heard about us and want to be buried here.”
As for Tony, he and his wife Lois have already reserved their places.
“It’s the closest to Mount Elephant,” he said.
“All my life, from my farm, Mount Elephant’s been on my horizon, and I just like the idea of being able to see it.”
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