When the 'new' cemetery in Ballarat North was gazetted in 1867, enough land was set aside to last it approximately 200 years.

With cremation becoming more popular, that timeline has been extended and Ballarat Cemeteries chief executive Annie De Jong estimated there was still 70 or 80 years left for the cemetery.

"Part of our responsibility, of course, is to ensure that we have locations available, that we have memorial space available and to plan in the future," she said.

"For cemeteries, planning into the future is planning for the next 50 to 100 years and making sure that we've got space available.

"Even though we've planned the road network for the next 70 or 80 years, we think that our master plan gives the flexibility for the future for future communities and cemetery management to change their mind and make it flexible to actually what the locations are."

Ms De Jong said the plan included improving the existing developed areas and carving out space for future developments well down the track and had a focus on sustainability.

"It is absolutely for the next 40 years, where we've specified what the memorials will be and after that, we've allocated spaces for whoever's managing it into the future to actually create different spaces depending on what the community would want," she said.

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"The key for us is around sustainability so ensuring that the new spaces we create are kind to the environment.

"There's a bit of a trend at the moment for natural burial where there's no markings on the grave and it's a bush area where people are buried and family know that they're in that area, we can tell them exactly where but there's no marking so it returns to a natural environment.

"The other ones are where we want to continue, for example, our birdsong walk, which is our rockeries and really low maintenance, low water usage areas. We're looking at being sustainable into the future and not having as much dependency on water, but also creating gorgeous garden spaces."

With COVID-19 upending the entire world for the last 12 months, cemeteries were no different. Ms De Jong said there had been a noticeable shift towards cremation over the last 12 to 18 months.

"I think that's where families are choosing either to put ashes together in one location, creating family locations, but not needing a number of different graves.

"We have seen a trend towards cremation and particularly over COVID, of course, where families couldn't be together, they're coming back now to actually place the ashes in a location and have family get togethers.

"I think the cremation trend is about being a little bit more flexible about where the ashes can go. Some are choosing to take them home and to stay with them until they're ready to choose a memorial and, of course, some scatter."

As Ballarat's population continues to grow, so too do the number of deaths in the city. As such, Ballarat Cemeteries has also started discussions with the City of Ballarat around planning for the provision of land for a third cemetery.

"Because we've got some time left, we've started some discussions with council around their forward planning and where we might look at placing the next cemetery in their planning scheme. We've just started some initial discussions with them about that so that with the growth of Ballarat, it's considered," Ms De Jong said.

"We're having conversations with council so that they can put in their forward planning an area for the next cemetery and what that might look like because we don't want to be in 50 years where the population is estimated to be over 150,000 and our next cemetery is an hour and a half's drive away.

"We want to make sure that there's some allocation in the future planning of where that might be and that's why we've initiated discussions with council.

"We'd like to see that we've got something in the planning, not necessarily purchased, but an idea of where that cemetery would need to be in the next 10 years because of population growth.

"We might not have purchased the land because we've got 70 to 80 years left on our existing site, but really you want to be clearing the land, getting it ready at least 20 to 30 years before then."

Ms De Jong said while the conversation may be uncomfortable, Ballarat Cemeteries was keen to receive feedback from the community on their end of life plans and how they could be facilitated in any developments.

"What we ask ourselves is what that looks like and what does the community want from us," she said.

For more information or to give feedback, visit www.ballaratcemeteries.com.au.

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