THE Kerang Cemetery Trust has scheduled a working bee for Tuesday, March 4, 6pm, encouraged by recent volunteer support from the Rotary Club.
Cemetery Trust chairman Trevor Wilkinson said the committee has a management plan in place to ensure a beautiful cemetery, they just need the volunteer support to make it possible.
“We’ve got a works program that entails upgrades and weed and pest management, keeping rabbit numbers down in the cemetery, which is a large job that needs a good lot of volunteers to help us do it,” he said.
“Volunteering is best thing community can do to help, and now we have the Rotary Club who are going to assist us with getting the word out about working bees.
“It was so great to see the numbers that Rotary mobilised, and we would love to see people join ours to cover a much larger area.
“We had a volunteer come up from another cemetery committee last week mowing, whipper-snipping, weeding and doing maintenance so the place is looking fantastic at the moment, we only need one of our own like him to keep it in that state.
“We want to make a better place for our community which the people interned there deserve as our forebears.”
Mr Wilkinson said the constraints the Kerang Cemetery Trust and every other of its kind around the state operate under make for a delicate balancing act.
“The plan meets the guidelines laid out by the Cemeteries and Crematoria of Association of Victoria (CCAV) under the Victorian Health Department and the other regulatory bodies we answer to.
“Our role is the betterment of the whole cemetery, making it more user friendly and safer for the people visiting their loved ones, and we are entirely dependent on grants to fund new amenities and works,” he said.
“We have guidelines from Cemeteries and Crematoria of Association of Victoria (CCAV) under the Victorian Health Department, WorkSafe and the Environment Protection Authority that decide when and how we work and can make it extremely difficult to arrange logistics at times.
“Our aim is to ensure that all we do, including our internments are conducted in a safe and professional manner, and uphold the legislative requirements we are governed by.
“We have been consulting an arborist to decide on shade trees with root systems that won’t upset the equilibrium of the pathways or monuments and working within the restraints to avoid a real disaster.
“We are very mindful of the lack of shade, particularly on internment days that exceed 35 degrees, but the makeup of the cemetery and the limited space makes it extremely hard.”
Mr Wilkinson credits the hard work and ongoing commitment from the understaffed committee who persevere despite the challenges.
“We’re lucky to have a passionate and dedicated committee that put in the time and energy to get it all right, because it’s not an easy task,” he said.
“We’re doing our best with limited sources and trying to build capacity to keep up with maintenance, we’re applying for new sprinkler systems, they’re antiquated and need upgraded but they are expensive.
“Grants funding is limited because there are lots of people trying to access the same ones and we’re just another person in that list.
“The trust members put in so much time and effort other than our monthly management meetings, and I don’t think we have had a week that’s gone by recently that we haven’t been flat out working for the cemetery in an uphill battle.
“The Cemetery Trust has 11 seats allocated by the Health Department but only seven filled at the moment, so more members would ease that load and help us work towards progress.”
