Warrnambool’s new cemetery, Tooram Memorial Park, should provide sufficient area for burial sites for the next 200 years, according to Warrnambool Cemetery Trust secretary Clive Rayner.
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Mr Rayner said work was well underway on the new cemetery on Hopkins Point Road near Allansford and it was expected to be opened within the next two to three years.
The trust bought the 23-hectare former cattle grazing paddocks in 2015 and has so far undertaken extensive earthworks on the property.
Mr Rayner said the earthworks were for roadworks, kerbing and channelling, and to “take the lumps off some of the hills.”
He said the trust planned to first develop about 6-8 hectares (15-20 acres) of the site close to Hopkins Point Road, leaving room for later expansion.
The infrastructure to be built on the site would include public toilets, a workshop and staff amenities, Mr Rayner said.
The new cemetery will cost the trust hundreds of thousands of dollars but has been undertaken because the Warrnambool cemetery on Otway Road, next to the Hopkins River, is close to capacity.
Set up more than 150 years ago, Warrnambool cemetery has about 28,000 recorded burials.
Concept plans for the new cemetery have been developed but detailed planning was still a work in progress, Mr Rayner said.
He said trust members were looking at modern cemeteries to get ideas to create a facility that met contemporary demands.
The new cemetery...has been undertaken because the Warrnambool cemetery on Otway Road, next to the Hopkins River, is close to capacity.
- Warrnambool Cemetery Trust
“It will not just be all headstones,” he said.
Mr Rayner said the new cemetery was likely to include a garden area and niche wall for people who had been cremated.
However the trust had not yet decided what form that area would take.
Mr Rayner said there were only between 250-260 new plots available at the Otway Road cemetery.
He said the name Tooram Memorial Park was chosen because of the site’s vicinity to the Tooram Stones in the nearby Hopkins River.