SPACE HELD BY CEMETERIES

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29749, 16 February 1962, Page 3

SPACE HELD BY CEMETERIES

Twenty-Five Acres A Year Estimated

"The Press" Special Service WELLINGTON, Feb. 14.

An estimated 25 acres a year was being taken up for burial grounds in New Zealand, said Mr J. A. McPherson, director of the Auckland City Council parks and reserves, at the New Zealand Institute of Park Administration conference on the subject of modern crematoria.

Some members of the conference were of the opinion that too great an inroad on valuable property was being made. “Crematoria have come to stay,” said Mr McPherson, who gave Auckland as an example. In that city last year there had been 1500 cremations, compared with 1000 burials. Mr D. C. McKenzie, director of parks and reserves for the Palmerston North City Council, said that in Palmerston North there had been 264 cremations and the same number of burials. With the advance of surgery and metal repairs to bones a minor post-cremation disposal problem had been created, said Mr J. Walker, an architect, of Palmerston North. Hard metals used in the repair of bone fractures were not destroyed in the ordinary cremation process, and had to be got rid of otherwise.