Meander Valley Council losing the plot on burials

Sharon Webb

It doesn’t pay to plan ahead if you’re picky about your site in a Meander Valley cemetery.

In the name of keeping up with other municipalities, the council has just whacked up the price of reserving land in Mole Creek and Bracknell cemeteries by a whopping 41 per cent.

Yes, that’s right. Reserving a 2.5m x 1.25m piece of land in those cemeteries has risen from $425 to $600 in Meander Valley Council’s 2021–22 budget.

On top of that, if you actually die and need to be buried in that reserved plot, the cost will be another $200, 33 per cent more than last year.

The price increases follow Meander Valley’s last big burial price surge in 2018, when residents aspiring to a general cemetery in Mole Creek, Bracknell and Deloraine were slugged with a 33–35 per cent price hike.

Spending eternity in a lawn cemetery is even more expensive at $600. The cost of buying a plot there is now the same as reserving a plot in a general cemetery (increased by $50 or nine per cent this year), a single or double depth burial is $720, up 10.7 per cent on a year ago.

In Meander Valley you can’t even escape a price rise by being cremated, unless you’re happy to sit on the mantlepiece in an urn.

If your desired location is a niche in a Wall of Memory, reserving your niche is now $300, up 20 per cent on last year. 

The highly technical task of having your ashes interred in your reserved niche has risen an outstanding 53 per cent, and now costs $230 on top of the reservation cost.

Those who don’t reserve their niche pay a total of $450, a 12.5 per cent hike on last year.

If money is a consideration then, it’s cheaper not to reserve a niche next to your beloved.

In 2021–22 there is innovation in Meander Valley Council’s cemeteries, with two new costs.

A bronze vase in the Wall of Memory will cost $100. And if your plaque wears out or gets nicked, it will cost $100 to replace.

After all that, if your family change their minds about the whole burial thing or you become evidence in a crime, exhumation costs $1000, a 25 per cent increase on last year.