IT'S a conundrum faced by booming cities everywhere: should open land be used to bury the dead or to feed the living?
At La Perouse in Sydney's south, it's a conflict that's playing out directly on an arc of Crown land above the white beach of Yarra Bay, close to where the First Fleeters made landfall.
Botany Cemetery, with burial space left for 10 years at most, wants to annex the neighbouring Chinese market gardens for a renewable tenure cemetery, which means grave sites are bought for a limited period.
The expansion has received encouragement from the state government, which owns the site, but the tenant farmers who work the plots, heritage advocates and Randwick Council believe the heritage-listed vegetable gardens should be preserved.
The market gardens have been worked by Chinese for at least a century. Two farming operations produce bok choy, fresh herbs and other vegetables for local grocers, restaurants and Flemington markets. Part of the site has been vacant since a third business closed last year.
Now, Randwick Council is moving to rezone the gardens from residential to small lot rural ''in recognition of its contribution to local food production, biodiversity, heritage and scenic values''. If successful, cemeteries would be a prohibited use. Strong community interest in having access to locally grown vegetables was a factor in the council's decision, a spokeswoman said.
The proposal goes on public exhibition in a few weeks.
The cemetery trustees' first expansion plan, initially approved by the former Labor planning minister Tony Kelly, fell foul of the O'Farrell government's decision to scrap the Part 3A planning law last year.
Jason Wasiak, a consultant town planner for the cemetery, said the trustees believe the market gardens will not be viable in the long term. They are offering a long-term response to the critical shortage of burial space, he said.
''We're not out to land grab as might be the perception. We're just trying to put forward a solution in the broader public interest.''
Mr Wasiak said the cemetery's plan would keep about 40 per cent of the site as market gardens and generate income through burial services. The trustees have asked the council to make a special exception permitting cemetery uses on the site.
But Gordon Ha, a second-generation farmer who took over a two-hectare plot from his father more than 20 years ago, said he was confident the market gardens would be protected. ''It's looking good,'' he said.
Business was viable and demand for locally grown food was increasing, he said.
If his business was forced off the site, it would have to move to the city's western fringe due to the lack of available land nearby.
A spokesman for the Crown Lands office said it ''is mindful of the community need for more cemetery space whilst respecting the heritage use of the site for market gardens''.
Consultation with stakeholders is continuing, while the rezoning will be determined by the Planning Minister, Brad Hazzard.
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