Life from Death

"I actually want to do a good thing. I want my body to be like a gift to the planet."

Fiona McCuaig onsite at Walawaani Way - photoshoot for Salty Magazine

Just outside Bodalla, down a peaceful road lined with spotted gums, Fiona McCuaig is not only starting an ambitious business but tackling an almost taboo subject. She's asking: "How we can do death better?"

If all goes to plan, by April this year Fiona will have established a conservation burial ground on her family's farm, the first of its kind in Australia.

Challenging Conventions

After watching a documentary on the subject of natural and conservation burials, Fiona became inspired. She enquired where these were located in Australia and found nothing. While there are some hybrid cemeteries that offer natural burials alongside traditional burials, Fiona found none that were solely dedicated to nature. The natural burial method suggests that bodies should not be embalmed or cremated, and coffins or shrouds are to be made of non-toxic, biodegradable materials. Fiona's burials will a step go further.

"A conservation burial is where we're actually going to regenerate the site and lock that habitat, in perpetuity," she explains. "No one will ever be able to come in and take down that habitat."

Fiona explains that, contrary to popular myth, her burials will not be shallow. Like other cemeteries, she will need to comply with human burial top of a coffin to be at legislation, which requires the t least 900 mm below the natural surface of the soil.

"If a body's going to be in a cloth shroud, it would probably be 1.3 metres deep," Fiona says. "And if it's to be a big woven casket, we might go to one and a half metres. That's where you get that living soil, that aerobic activity and beautiful composting."

Fiona recognises that some families may be concerned about preserving access to their loved ones' gravesite, and she has safeguards in place.

"On the title, there will be an environmental covenant," Fiona says. This means the land could never be used for housing or other purposes. "But also, eight percent of every burial fee goes into a perpetuity fund attached to the land, which will maintain the site."

However, the site is designed to regenerate into bushland, and while families will have a GPS location, there will not be manicured paths.

“You will need to go bushwalking to find your grandmother,” Fiona jokes. "But there will be eco-composting toilets, and the roads will be well- maintained. It will be open every single day of the year, including Christmas."

Once a cluster of graves has been filled on the property, families will be invited to help plant natural vegetation if they wish, creating an important connection to the site.

A Personal Endeavour

Fiona is motivated by her own loss, the untimely passing of a loved one. Her experience gives her valuable insight and empathy and helps her strive to find options for families to lay their loved ones to rest in a way that suits them.

"You don't have to rely on someone else to make decisions and dictate how it's done," Fiona says. "It's your person, no one else's."

According to Fiona, society needs to shift the from bodies being a waste conversation away product, and there's never been a more important time for this to happen.

"We now have over eight billion people on the planet," Fiona says. "We've really got to rethink it - what are we going to do with all these eight billion bodies? We're meant to go back into the ground, our bodies break down into the same elements as soil and those nutrients allow vegetation to grow, which produces more food and habitat for other animals to live on the planet."

On the basis of being welcoming and not discriminating, Fiona will allow families to place the ashes of those that have been cremated onto the site. However, she encourages families to have a discussion about the energy used and pollution created from non-natural burials.

Before the conservation cemetery opens, Fiona has already pre-sold 48 burial rights. She herself admits she was surprised by the overwhelming enthusiasm for her project.

"But we're part of a bigger picture, and people want to do a good thing now," she explains. "They say: I don't want to do another lasting act of generating more carbon, I actually want to do a good thing. I want my body to be like a gift to the planet."