Karrakatta Cemetery is currently undergoing a ‘Cemetery Renewal’ as part of its 10-year-plan, which has left some distraught. 

The renewal entails redeveloping cemetery land to accommodate new burials and memorial gardens. The Metropolitan Cemeteries Board’s chief executive officer Kathlene Oliver explained: “When we do cemetery renewal, we are utilising unused areas of the cemetery that exist between graves.”

The MCB began the work as part of their 10-year-long Medium-to-Long Term Asset Investment Plan which aims to ensure community demands and expectations are being met now and will be in the future.

The goal for the renewal is to allow for more people to be buried at Karrakatta Cemetery, as it is popular because of its central location. However, many people feel the renewal tears families apart and destroys their ancestry.

Carolyn Higgins Trigwell founded the action group ‘Saving Family Headstones at Karrakatta’ in 2015 when she was refused the right to bury her sister’s ashes in her parent’s grave, due to the grant tenure of the grave extinguishing in 2012.

“We were told no three times and refused because we lost our right of burial, and I couldn’t understand what that meant,” she explained.

Ms Trigwell has since found out that a mausoleum is set to be built on top of her grandmother and uncle’s graves, as part of the Cemetery Renewal.

“You’re losing your tangible ability to be at that grave, which is the last resting place for all those people,” she said.

Saving Family Headstones at Karrakatta has more than 6000 members on Facebook, all fighting to preserve the headstones and plot numbers of their ancestors.

“With the wording ‘renewal’ it leads people to think it’s a beautification of the area, but it’s more the mass removal of headstones, grave surrounds and plot numbers to make way for new graves,” Ms Trigwell said.

Under the revised 1986 Cemeteries Act, a person may be granted the right of burial for a 25-year term and may purchase a 25-year extension of the grant.

Research shows in Perth, approximately 80 per cent of all funeral services are cremations. Out of the remaining burials, approximately 40 per cent of all burials are at Karrakatta Cemetery.

Late last year, confidential board papers regarding the Asset Investment Plan were leaked to the public after a security upgrade error. As a result, many people had heard that the cemetery renewal process was scheduled to begin at Fremantle Cemetery within the next five to 10 years. However, Ms Oliver, confirmed this was incorrect.

“We have used language like ‘redevelopment’ with regards to Fremantle, which is just a refresh of the existing burial areas …we have at least 50 years’ worth of supply of burials at Fremantle cemetery, so there’s no intention anytime in the foreseeable future to do any ‘renewal’ there,” Ms Oliver explained.

The MCB said it had attempted to work with the people who are protesting the renewal but they remain at loggerheads.

Ms Oliver said: “We are doing it because the community wants to have the ability to be able to use this cemetery again, and to be able to be interred alongside their forefathers and so I guess we have to agree to disagree. But we are happy to work with them around ways in which it can be made more palatable.”

Another Saving Family Headstones member Tonya said no headstones should be removed.

She added: “I went [to Karrakatta Cemetery] a while back, and when I saw how bad it was, I found myself sitting down there and crying for 20 minutes.”

In a letter to a Parliamentary Committee in 2018 on the subject, Minister for Local Government, Heritage and the Arts David Templeman wrote: “The committee that assesses these submissions is known as the Monument Assessment and Advisory Committee. This sub-committee of the Board comprises board members and independent appointees and ensures all headstones are assessed across a wide range of criteria including, but not limited to, stonemasonry craft, historical significance of the persons buried and the cause of death.

“During the process of cemetery renewal, all headstones are photographed and their inscriptions recorded for posterity. Records of these are maintained and are available to the public for reference. Headstones assessed as suitable are relocated within the burial area to a landscaped garden enclosure and inscription tablets are displayed on memorial walls.

“It should be noted that the MCB also retains these headstones and memorials after renewal or grant expiration at no charge to the Grant-holder or their descendants. In other jurisdictions, the practice is to store them in a storage facility, often away from the cemetery, and then after a set period of time to dispose of them. This can be in as little as two years in South Australia and five years in New South Wales.

“Please be assured that we are not losing our heritage.

“The renewal process has been refined and improved over the years, for example, an entry is made in the cemetery records system stating the location as to where the headstone has been relocated – in a particular garden bed or on a wall.”