Thompson Family Funerals has been helping the district say goodbye to its people since 1918, just after the First World War. A business just doesn’t last that long without a strong connection to the needs and values of the community. It will come as no surprise to learn that Thompson Family Funerals also gives back to the local environment. Most recently Thompson Family Funerals partnered with Fifteen Trees to contribute 100 trees to a regeneration project with Newstead Landcare.

Newstead Landcare has been restoring understorey plants along the Loddon River at Newstead for the past 10 years, having developed a plan for the river with the local community. We are currently focused on the area where the Muckleford Creek joins the Loddon – a broad area with many large old River Red Gums but no understorey. Our efforts over the years are gradually bearing fruit with lovely stands of Silver Wattle, Correas, Tree Violets and Black Wattles, interspersed with patches of native grasses, rushes and sedges. Birdlife in the area is certainly diversifying and we are regularly visited during our plantings by Eastern Yellow Robins (pictured below) that come in for any grubs we may have unearthed in our diggings.

Many thanks to Peter Thompson (Thompson Family Funerals), Colleen Filippa (Fifteen Trees) and Frances Cincotta (Newstead Natives)

Patrick Kavanagh | President | Newstead Landcare.

 

We think this has a beautiful synergy with Thompson Family Funerals’ core work. Saying goodbye to our loved ones can be so hard. How heartening to think that part of them lives on in the goodwill of the region they called home. Somewhere, not too far away, a living plant finds its feet and settles in for generations worth of service to its community. Just like Thompson Family Funerals itself.

Video from Newstead Landcare. 

Writer – Sarah Hart.

Sarah is an artist whose passions include the stories and experiences of women and narrative driven creative work. Her aim is to delight, to reveal glimpses of everyday beauty, and to celebrate flights of the ordinary. Sarah works across a range of media, with an abiding interest in pen and ink, mixed media and the human form. You can find Sarah here.