BURIAL is cheaper within Greater Taree City Council than within Great Lakes Council. There’s a disparity of hundreds of dollars between buying an allotment of land in a general cemetery within the Manning compared to the Great Lakes area.
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It would be fair to say that people don’t “shop around” for burial plots or niche walls, memorial gardens or a similar location for internment of ashes.
People assume the cost of a gravesite or ashes facility is comparable from one council to another neighbouring council but it appears that assumption is wrong.
Council’s manager of community services, Andrew Braybrook said it’s like comparing apples with apples.
“We’re very confident we’re supplying a good level of service and we’ve controlled the whole process and there will be no mistakes. We have a long history of providing the full service; other councils provide only partial service,” he said. “Taree has a very minimal involvement with their cemeteries. They leave a lot to the funeral director.”
For $1600 in Great Lakes you can buy a gravesite including GST, the digging of the grave, perpetual care and records of the cemetery.
Prices in all general cemeteries within the shire are standardised. This means that it is the same price to buy a gravesite at Coolongolook Cemetery as it is at Tuncurry or Forster Cemeteries.
A comparison between two general cemeteries in close proximity but different shires such as Krambach and Coolongolook reveals a difference of about $300.
“That’s what councils can do,” funeral director Chris Edwards said.
“We’ve got no control over it. There’s no real regulations.”
The Allan Pearse Funeral Services representative said however, that the prices charged by Great Lakes Council are not a rip-off as far as prices go, in comparison to places like Ballarat.
“Taree’s pretty cheap, but cemeteries are not as well maintained as in the Great Lakes Council area. Tuncurry is beautifully maintained,” he said.
A common cost-cutting practice is to place a person’s ashes in another person’s grave, Mr Edwards said.
It is Great Lakes Council’s policy that only one burial per site is permitted and up to four urns of ashes remains may be interred into the one gravesite or a special ashes only plot may be purchased for the internment of up to six urns of ashes.
It pays to do your research beforehand. The Great Lakes is one of the oldest communities in NSW with 36 per cent over 60, double that of the state average and these numbers are expected to increase to 41 per cent by 2031.
Statistics released last year show deaths outnumber births in our region. And cemetery prices are subject to increase each financial year.
