In the 1970s, Reverend Bill Crews had a friend. The man was homeless, and a member of the Stolen Generation.
"He sat beside me in one of my saddest times and I never forgot that."
Bill had left Sydney to study at theological college. While he was away, his friend died.
"During that time he died on the street. By the time I'd got to hear of it, he'd already been buried," Crews said.
"I have no idea where he is. And so, I can't go and say 'thank you'. That to me is just really painful."
'Buried ... in batches of 12'
When most people die, their family or friends arrange a funeral and burial or cremation, but for some people that isn't the case.
Crews is now the head of the Rev. Bill Crews Foundation, which helps disadvantaged people in Sydney.
"I often say we deal in death every day because basically we do," he said.
For more than 50 years, he has been arranging for proper burials of some of the unclaimed bodies in Sydney.
"A lot of homeless and kind of disadvantaged people they die early, way before their time," he said.
"It just gradually came into my consciousness that they ended up in a pauper's grave so I started to ask about that and found they get buried in the most undignified way in batches of 12. And I thought: 'that's wrong'."
The Legal Aid NSW website says in a 'destitute funeral' when the next of kin has been identified but can’t afford the cost of a funeral, the body is usually cremated.
"If the deceased's next of kin requests a burial instead of cremation, the deceased will be buried in a common grave," the website reads.
"The grave site is identified by a number with no other headstone."
SBS understands that bodies without a next of kin are buried in a common grave.
It's quite an emotional scene when we have the funeralBill Crews
When someone dies that he has helped, or he knows, Crews said his not-for-profit foundation steps in to arrange the burial. The foundation covers all the funeral costs.
"We spend a lot of time looking for families and trying to find family members. Often the person will have disappeared for years and the family don't know what happened to him or her. And it's quite an emotional scene when we have the funeral," Crews said.
"I've been kind of advocating about that for decades but nothing's happened much."
Bill Crews' foundation arranges proper burials for unclaimed bodies. Source: AAP / Dean Lewins
Responses from state and territory governments indicate that when someone dies, authorities try to contact the next of kin.
If that isn't possible, the body is taken care of by the government, often by the Public Trustee, who claims any assets they may have and organises the final burial or cremation.
That burial or cremation is known as a pauper's funeral. No government responded to questions by SBS News as to what that looks like.
People working in the not-for-profit sector in NSW and Victoria have told SBS the unclaimed bodies are buried in a group grave.
Source: SBS News
A 2023 report by Seniors Australia found the average funeral cost more than $9,076, up 20 per cent since 2019.
In Victoria, the Sustainable Funerals Group offers no-cost funerals for people who aren't able to cover the cost of a funeral, helping up to 900 people a year.
Kieran Worthington, who leads the group, said: "My father, Ted Worthington, was a funeral celebrant for many years. He had a vision of helping people who couldn't afford their own funerals.
"In the case of Victoria, the government didn't offer any financial assistance to people who needed funerals if they couldn't afford them.
"They would go to the coroner, which is still the case if there's no-one to claim a person when they pass away. And the coroner would wait until they had enough of them and they'd put them in a common grave, all of them."
The government tends to come to the party, because they recognise you're doing their job for them.Kieran Worthington
In most other jurisdictions, local governments offer some kind of support for people in financial hardship who aren't able to meet the full cost of a funeral, most often in the form of a one-off payment of around $500, although it varies state by state.
While the Sustainable Funerals Group currently only operates in Victoria, it's looking to expand to other parts of Australia.
"If we're not willing to fix it ourselves, or at least contribute to the fixing or the coordination of the fixing, then we're probably just asking too much generally of governments," Worthington said.
"We have to get together as communities and say 'Hey, this is what we need. This is what we want, And this is what we're willing to give up to make it work and we want you to sponsor it, we want you to support it'. And in that case, the government tends to come to the party, because they recognise you're doing their job for them."
Crews said dignity is something everyone deserves in death.
"It's basically human dignity. It doesn't matter who we are, we all are born the same way and we all die the same way, and we should be treated the same way throughout our lives. Why should it be that that some people are treated as if they're just of no account at all? It just seems wrong to me," Crews said.
And although he has tried to change what happens to the unclaimed dead, nothing has changed.
"I have brought this up often. And every politician I know thinks it's dreadful, but none of them have changed it," he said.
