{"id":919707,"date":"2026-10-07T18:50:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T18:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/919707\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T18:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T18:50:13","slug":"sydneys-king-of-town-hall-ended-up-in-a-paupers-grave-his-support-workers-are-shocked-they-werent-told-sydney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/919707\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney\u2019s \u2018king of town hall\u2019 ended up in a pauper\u2019s grave. His support workers are shocked they weren\u2019t told | Sydney"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most homelessness support workers in Sydney<\/a> knew the \u201cking of town hall\u201d.<\/p>\n

The rough sleeper was a familiar presence in the heart of Sydney\u2019s central business district. He\u2019d sit on the town hall steps, offering cheeky advice to passersby and playing music.<\/p>\n

The self-proclaimed \u201cking\u201d took a degree of comfort from life in the city centre. He slept beneath the steps, in an alcove near the train station.<\/p>\n

He was housed for a period but struggled without the connections he made daily on those steps.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was funny, engaging and very well-known across homelessness services in Sydney,\u201d says Jon Swain, an adviser to the Australian Alliance to End Homelessness<\/a>, who has held senior roles in homelessness coordination in local and state governments.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a massive personality. If you did outreach in Sydney, you knew him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before he died, Swain and other support workers helped the man get into aged care housing support.<\/p>\n

But it was what happened next that shocked them.<\/p>\n

When the man died this year, the New South Wales<\/a> government designated him as a \u201cperson without means\u201d and took over responsibility for handling his remains.<\/p>\n

It then buried him in an unmarked grave at Rookwood cemetery in May, in the same plot as four strangers. Swain had no idea this had happened until he was contacted by the Guardian.<\/p>\n

At least 17 other Australians who were clients of Sydney homelessness support services have also been buried in communal unmarked graves by the NSW government, the Guardian can reveal.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

The revelation forms part of a three-month investigation that has identified hundreds of unmarked communal graves<\/a> used to bury disadvantaged Australians.<\/p>\n

Using evidence from family and friends, analysis of cemetery registries and aerial and satellite imagery, the Guardian has found that \u201cpersons without means\u201d are being buried in bare patches of earth between walkways and old headstones around Rookwood in western Sydney. The vast majority of the graves do not have a plaque or tombstone.<\/p>\n

\"AerialAerial imagery shows new graves appearing at Rookwood cemetery between 2025 and 2026 \u2013 Nearmap<\/p>\n

The investigation has prompted an immediate apology from NSW Health, which oversees the process, as well as calls for prime ministerial intervention<\/a>. The NSW health minister, Ryan Park, has signalled he wants to end the use of unmarked communal graves.<\/p>\n

The practice has shocked the homelessness support sector. Major providers like the St Vincent de Paul Society say they were not aware burials were happening in this way.<\/p>\n

A homelessness manager at one service, who asked for anonymity, said: \u201cThe sector has never been made aware of this practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese people were loved at some point in their lives, they were somebody\u2019s family member or friend. A crowded, yet lonely and desolate end and just like their life on the street these men and women are afforded no privacy in death, and no final resting place of their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

The practice is particularly galling to Rev Bill Crews, the head of the Rev Bill Crews Foundation, a support service based in Ashfield.<\/p>\n

Crews makes a point of conducting funerals at his own foundation\u2019s expense when he learns that a client or former client has died.<\/p>\n

But the Guardian\u2019s investigation has found three individuals buried in the communal graves who were former clients.<\/p>\n

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Crews says he was never told about the three cases. \u201cThey would all have had a dignified funeral and a proper cremation, their ashes would have been scattered,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Crews has known about the use of unmarked communal graves and has been raising concerns with the NSW government for many years. But he says he has had no response.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am so glad now it is coming out. I think nobody believes it, in a way, because it\u2019s not talked about. Nobody believes it, so nobody has pushed for change,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

There are rules for how NSW Health is supposed to manage burials of this kind. It is required to do everything it can to secure funding from family, friends and others for a funeral.<\/p>\n

The policy also recommends the agency check with \u201corganisations the deceased may have had an association with while alive\u201d, including charities, to see whether they will help fund a funeral.<\/p>\n

\u2018I am so glad now it is coming out.\u2019 Rev Bill Crews has tried to raise the issue of unmarked communal graves for years. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Swain says that is not occurring.<\/p>\n

He says many people who experience homelessness spend their lives feeling forgotten by the state and as though no one cares about what happens to them. The slow rebuilding of hope in an individual when support is provided is one of the most powerful things a support worker can witness, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is why it is so troubling to think that, at the very end of a person\u2019s life, they may have once again been let down,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is something profoundly unsettling about the idea that a person could live through such exclusion and then be buried in a way that seems to further diminish their individuality and humanity one final time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Homelessness Australia\u2019s chief executive, Kate Colvin, said governments needs to do much more to prevent premature death and improve healthcare for rough sleepers, but also treat people with dignity and humanity when they die.<\/p>\n

That includes by \u201cconnecting to the services and community that were in touch with the person who has passed\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen someone dies homeless it is often the final indignity in a life marked by poor luck, misfortune or injustice,\u201d Colvin said. \u201cIn so many cases, people who die homeless also die early, and their homelessness is a huge contributing factor. To further aggravate this by burying them in an unmarked communal grave should be beneath us as a society. Surely we can do better.\u201d<\/p>\n

NSW Health acknowledged that it has not always treated those without financial means with the dignity and respect they deserved, and said it was \u201ccommitted to changing the way we work\u201d.<\/p>\n

The NSW government has signalled greater cooperation with community and charity groups to seek funeral funding.<\/p>\n

Metropolitan Memorial Parks, which operates Rookwood, said it has not been funded to provide markings on graves for burials of people without means. A spokesperson said: \u201cThere is no evidence to support claims that public burial locations are placed between old headstones, on walkways or in open trenches\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most homelessness support workers in Sydney knew the \u201cking of town hall\u201d. The rough sleeper was a familiar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":919708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-919707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/919708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}