Eve Lamb
It’s a topic quite a few would prefer not to think about.
But death and what must happen next is something everyone must face sooner or later, and a special free discussion hosted by the Castlemaine Library this evening is about to take a look at the topic in an unexpectedly fun – and environmentally aware – fashion.
Feed Me To The Roses is the evocatively named title of this evening’s hour-long “frank but fun information session on environmentally conscious body disposal methods”.
It’s being presented by death literacy advocate, Death Cafe co-host and artist, Castlemaine’s Hayley West.
“How I present the topic is serious but I want to normalise the conversation,” Haley told the Express.
Hayley said it would focus on three environmentally conscious body disposal methods, including natural burial, human composting and water cremation.
“I’ve just presented the same session at Gisborne and Woodend and had great feedback,” she said.
“I’ll be talking about three different types of body disposal, which have much smaller environmental impacts.
“The most fascinating one is human composting, which is not available in Australia yet.”
Hayley said her area of interest, which led to the completion of a Master of Arts degree and an exegesis entitled ‘Remnants of the Dead and Demands on the Living’, followed a lot of personal loss in her own family, a family that eschewed the topic of death.
“I lost my parents quite early. I’ve had a lot of death in my family from a very young age but growing up it was not talked about,” she said.
Now, Hayley believes in empowering the community by sharing practical knowledge, including knowledge of new technologies and of legislation impacting the choices available for being laid to rest after the inevitable has arrived.
Her practice spans more than 20 years of research, exhibitions and international residencies and together with others who share her concern to facilitate healthy discussion around the subject, she annually hosts several local Death Cafes, with the dedicated Death Cafe Castlemaine Facebook page detailing dates as they are set.
“It is good for me to share this knowledge with the community,” Hayley said.
She is also on the board of the Castlemaine’s Cemetery Trust and presents a weekly radio show, aptly titled Dead Air, which broadcasts on 94.9 MainFM Mondays 10-11am with past episodes available on Mixcloud streaming.
This Thursday evening’s Feed Me To The Roses session is part of Dying to Know Day, an annual campaign aimed at empowering Australians at all stages of life to live and die well by opening up healthy conversations about death.
It gets under way from 5.30pm and while free to attend, bookings are requested via the Castlemaine Library website.
