Advance Care Planning:
Article: Advance Care Planning Australia, Victorian site: “Create your plan in Victoria” – including all relevant official forms for download. It’s important to understand that all Australian states have different rules, forms, and even vocabulary when it comes to Advance Care Planning – so don’t get too confused when looking up something on the topic on a website outside of Victoria.
- Note that Advance Care Planning Australia offers FREE advice by phone or email. For details visit their website.
Video: “Advance Care Planning is for Everyone” (2022) by OPAN gives a good overview and introduction to the topic.
Hospice:
There isn’t a hospice in Gippsland, so the nearest one is the Peninsula Home Hospice – its services are available free of charge to everybody who needs palliative care in the Local Government areas of Mornington Peninsula Shire, City of Frankston and part of the City of Kingston.
Green & Community-led Funeral Care:
One of the pioneers in natural funeral care in our greater region are Natural Grace. They are serving the Melbourne Suburbs, the Macedon Ranges, Hepburn Shire, and Country Victoria.
- Video: Libby Moloney, Funeral Director at Natural Grace, gives a talk at the Centre for Palliative Care in Melbourne: “So Now You’re Dead, What Are Your Options?”
I have linked Tender Funerals Australia in the General Resources section, and it is very exciting that a Gippsland branch of Tender is now in the fundraising stage, getting ready to spread the Tender way in our area: Tender Funerals Gippsland.
- ABC News Inside Story Video: “Inside the not-for-profit funeral home revolutionising how we deal with death” documents the “original” Tender funeral home in Illawarra, NSW.
This no-fuss, (relatively) low cost, eco-burial site in country Western Victoria seems so Australian to me! It also happens to be the only place in Australia that offers upright burial.
If you are curious to find out about a different, innovative way of disposing of a dead body that is neither burial nor cremation, why not investigate aquamation, for example here: Aquamation Melbourne?
And if you like to idea of your ashes feeding a tree, there is an opportunity for that near Somerville on the Mornington Peninsula at Mornington Green Legacy Gardens.
An early adopter of green burials in Gippsland was Gippsland Memorial Park in Traralgon – and today many other cemeteries can offer natural burials upon request, so it’s worth inquiring with your local cemetery.
Finally, a beautiful wilder setting can be found at Bunurong Memorial Park in Dandenong South.