There is no profession more indispensable to the community than the funeral director. It is a calling that demands our respect and confidence.

It is also one we’d prefer to pretend did not exist. Yet one way or the other, all of us will eventually meet the man in the black mourning suit or the lady in white - although we’ll do just about anything to avoid it.

So what really does happen when our time has come? Jim Eames goes behind the closed doors of Australia’s funeral industry. He takes us from the mortuary to the graveside, and explains everything in between, including the art of embalming, the mysteries of coffin design, the mechanics of being buried at sea and the luxuries of the hearse.

From bush to the city, from the bizarre to the eccentric, Jim Eames lifts the lid on the Aussie way of death in this yarn-filled, informative and sometimes poignant look at life’

s last great event.

Jim Eames is the author of The Country Undertaker, the very funny memoir of his father’s life as a bush undertaker. Trained as a journalist, Jim was Qantas’s Director of Public Affairs for many years. He now lives in Gerringong on the south coast of NSW, but spends a lot of time travelling Australia collecting tales of bush life.