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Subject: An Aussie Stand Up Cemetery
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 08:24:47 EDT

Standing room only at new Aussie cemetery

CANBERRA (Reuters) - It will be standing room only for those being buried
at a new Australian cemetery that aims to provide cheap, environmentally
friendly burials.
Australia's Victoria state government has approved plans for the cemetery at
Darlington, 200 km (125 miles) southwest of the Victorian capital Melbourne,
where corpses will be buried vertically in body bags -- instead of caskets
-- on grazing land. "When you die, you are returned to the earth with a
minimum of fuss and with no paraphernalia that would affect the environment," a
spokesman for Palacom, which will establish the cemetery, told Australian
Associated Press on Thursday.
"You're not burning 90kg of gas in a crematorium and there's no ongoing
maintenance costs."
He said burials would cost about A$1,000 (410.5 pounds), with bodies held in
a morgue in Melbourne and transported to the cemetery in batches of up to 15
in a bid to reduce costs. Animals would be allowed to graze on the land
again once it was stable.

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