The register
- Burial rights and cemetery plots
What is held when a grave is ‘bought’, for how long, and where the right goes when its holder dies.
- Natural burial
What makes a burial natural, how a grave with no headstone is found again, and what a cemetery can tell you.
- Burial on private land
Who must approve a burial outside a cemetery in each state, and the tests each one applies.
- Headstones and monuments in a cemetery
Who approves a headstone, the standard it is built to, who keeps it safe, and what happens when a right ends.
- Exhumation and moving a grave
Who can apply to move a burial, how long approval takes, and the notice NSW requires once moved remains are reburied outside NSW.
- Telling organisations after a death
Who needs to know, the details they ask for, and the government service that tells many at once.
One right, five names
Nobody buys the ground in a cemetery. What changes hands is a right to have remains placed in one particular site, and the holder decides who is buried there. In NSW, Cemeteries & Crematoria NSW says a right gives no title in the land, and Victoria’s Department of Health notes that every public cemetery in that state sits on Crown land.
How long each one lasts, and what happens to it when the holder dies, is set out in Section A, burial rights and cemetery plots.
Words on the plan
- Interment
- Placing remains in their resting place. In NSW the word covers a body or ashes, in the ground or in a structure above it.
- Perpetual and renewable
- A perpetual right lasts forever. A renewable right runs for a set term and can be extended; in NSW a renewable right for a burial has an initial term of 25 years.
- Natural burial
- South Australia’s law describes it as burial in the ground with no chemical preservatives, the body held only in a shroud or a biodegradable coffin.
- Lift and reposition
- A Victorian procedure that raises the remains already in a grave, deepening it if needed, to make room for a later burial. A trust may not approve it within 10 years of the earlier burial.
- Exhumation
- Taking remains out of the place where they were interred. NSW, Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania each require an approval or licence first. In South Australia, the Attorney-General’s approval is needed to exhume bodily remains (a term its Act defines to leave out cremated remains), unless they are exhumed under a warrant issued under the Coroners Act 2003.
The first days
Services Australia sets out what happens soon after a death. These are the parts that come before any decision about burial.
A doctor confirms the death
Where the death was expected, the person’s doctor is called to sign a certificate confirming it. In a hospital, a hospice or an aged care home, the staff arrange the doctor.
The death is registered
Every death is registered with the births, deaths and marriages registry of the state or territory, which then issues the death certificate. Where there is a funeral, the funeral director usually lodges the registration.
Services Australia is told
If the person was receiving a payment, Services Australia needs to be told within 28 days, so its records can be updated and the person is not overpaid.
Wishes are found
A will and the person’s papers may say what they wanted, including whether they wanted a service at all. Services Australia notes that a funeral is not a legal requirement in Australia.
The many other organisations to tell, and the government service that tells several at once, are in Section F.