THE most common question crematorium worker Garry Bellenger hears is: Do you cremate two bodies at once?
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“There’s lots of urban myths,” Mr Bellenger, the family services manager at Newcastle Memorial Park, said.
These myths will be debunked at the crematorium’s 80th anniversary celebration and first open day on Saturday.
Many people throughout the Hunter would be familiar with the Beresfield site, which has conducted more than 140,000 cremations since it was established by a consortium in 1936.
“It was the first NSW crematorium to open outside of Sydney,” Mr Bellenger said.
“There was a bit of uproar to set this up here and many protests. They had to fight to set it up.
“Most people in 1936 were being buried. It’s changed totally now, though rarely you do get a burial.”
The opening was front page news in the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miner’s Advocate in July 1936.
“There are objections to this form in the disposal of the dead, but we are living in an age when considerations of health and hygiene are forced upon every one of us, and when we survey the vast areas of land that are taken up for the purposes of tile burial of our dead and we realise that as the years go by and the masses of the populations come to their inevitable destiny, our civilisation will be faced with a serious problem if our ancient method of disposal still continues,” the report, on July 20 1936, said.
The site now conducts about 1500 cremations a year and 1-2 burials a month.
The crematorium officially opened on July 18, 1936, two days after the site’s first cremation, of Frank Herbert Slapp.
The three directors at the time were John Archibald Green, James Pickles and Richard Seed.
For the Greens, it became a family business with John Green’s son Ken Green and then grandson Barry Green taking over, keeping it in the family for 60 years. Barry Green will return for the open day.
Mr Bellenger said people often had lots of preconceptions and questions regarding the cremation process, including two common, but completely untrue, beliefs.
“The two big myths I hear a lot are: ‘you cremate two bodies at once’ and the other one most people ask is ‘I’ve heard that you re-use the coffins’,” he said.
The free open day runs from 10am-3pm on Saturday with crematorium tours held every half hour from 11am-2.30pm.