By Casey Neill
Muddy boot prints and the lid of someone else’s grave were the last things Maria Sampey thought she’d find on her son’s final resting place.
The Greater Dandenong councillor and her husband Brian visited their son Paul’s memorial at Springvale Botanical Cemetery on what would have been his 39th birthday, Tuesday 25 October.
He died from a brain tumour at the age of 19.
“I’m so upset. It’s awful,” Cr Sampey said, in tears.
“What sort of staff have they got, to be so uncaring?
“I think this is terrible.
“The marble slab should have been placed on the grass further away and not on another person’s memorial.
“Have they been doing this all along and I just happened to catch them?
“What were they thinking?”
She complained to cemetery staff and said she was offered flowers to place on the grave as compensation.
“I don’t want it to happen to anyone else,” she said.
“Management told us that procedures were going to be put in place so that other people’s memorials in future will not be trampled on.”
A spokeswoman for cemetery manager Southern Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust (SMCT) said it was “an active and operational cemetery, with burials occurring on a daily basis, often in established areas in the cemetery”.
She said rigorous standards were in place for grave digging operations.
“When burials are occurring in established areas, care is taken to minimise the impact on adjacent gravesites whilst balancing the health and safety of visitors to the location and of the cemetery employees undertaking the grave digging operations,” she said.
When the Sampeys visited, she said, an adjacent gravesite was being prepared for a burial.
“The visiting family were offered support and provided with time in the cafe whilst the burial preparations were underway, completed and the area returned to its usual condition,” she said.
The spokeswoman said the Sampeys were advised of the time they could return to the area, and provided with further support including a floral arrangement for their visit.
“Our customer care consultants remain in contact with the family,” she said.
