MAKING A LIVING OUT OF THE DEAD!

AMY HOEY DEALS WITH DEATH EVERY DAY OF HER LIFE

- Paul Ewart

How much do you know about funerals, coffins, and embalming? Despite death being the only absolutely certain thing about life, most of us shy away from the subject. For Melbourne-based funeral worker Amy Hoey, however, there’s no flinching or shuddering.

“I’m totally unfazed!” the 38-year-old tells New Idea. “In fact, dead bodies haven’t ever really bothered me.”

The stereotypical image of a funeral home worker is a pale, solemn, male mortician, yet Amy – who is smiley, bubbly and wears pink lipstick – couldn’t be further from this. So how did she end up working with the dead?

“I have always had a fascination with the human body,” she says. “Looking back, I think I would have made a great surgeon.”

Leaving school at a young age to pursue a career in hairdressing, Amy loved the creative element that came with hairstyling, but “wanted more”.

Undertaking a dental assistant traineeship, she then enrolled to study specimen and blood collection, which saw her land shifts in a hospital.

“It was here when I had my first experience in a morgue and I just knew that was what I wanted to do,” she says.