Peter and Maria were mourned by people who loved them. So how did they end up in unmarked communal graves?

Elaine Grady with a portrait of her friend Peter Giesel, whose remains were placed in a communal unmarked grave in Sydney in June. Photograph: Drew Leventhal/The Guardian

The track marks have dried in the mud beside Peter Giesel’s unmarked grave. The digger is long gone, although other signs of work remain.

A disused shovel. A traffic cone. A stretch of earth where the soil is yet to settle, sandwiched between an old set of headstones and a dirt walkway at Sydney’s Rookwood general cemetery.