Please note this is available in electronic format only. It will be sent to you via email when your order is complete.
by Trevor McClaughlin
"Today, Australia deals with death like most other western countries, in a deodorized and distant manner. Perhaps the tragic images from Ethiopia and Somalia which have appeared on our television screens have helped desensitize us and prevent us from making any deep public display of our grief.
Occasionally,we trespass upon the private grief of individuals by reading death notices in newspapers or about the funerals of the rich and famous. In private, of course, things are very different and, in practice, Australia has a rich variety of ethnic groups each of which celebrate death in their own distinctive fashion.
But superficially and in the main we seem to be heading in the direction of an American way of death as represented by their funeral parlour slogan - You die and we do the rest!"
This article gives the author's impressions of changing Irish-Australian attitudes to death and covers the very precise information sometimes contained on Irish-Australian gravestones.