Man devastated to learn crematorium has misplaced baby boy's ashes

But when Mr Mol contacted the Norwood Park crematorium to retrieve his boys ashes from their niche in the childrens memorial garden, he was told the ashes could not be found.

Mr Mol says the revelation was the worst kind of shock, as he and his former wife, Ruth Freeman, had been visiting the cemetery and laying a flower by their sons plaque every year since he died in 1978.

That's the hardest part, going there every year for his birthday and then now knowing that he was never there in the first place, he said.

Fortunately, my wife passed away not knowing.

He said staff at the crematorium had initially stalled on his request for several weeks, before finally admitting that the ashes couldnt be located.

What they did say was that apparently the ashes were put in tubes and buried next to the wall, not in the wall, he said.

The lady who spoke to me said, We looked for your son's ashes, and we did find a few things that shouldn't have been there. And I thought, well that's nice, who else is in the same position as I am? Who else's ashes are missing?

Timothy Mol had lived for less than three hours after he was born premature in February, 1978, and while the couple went onto have another child, Ms Freeman had never recovered from the loss.

Having been semi-quadriplegic since an accident in her early 20s, she had been told she probably wouldn't live another five years, much less have children.

Mr Mol said his ex-wifes last dying wish had been to finally fly free with the boy she never got to know, and for their ashes to be scattered together on Mount Kosciusko.

It's hard to lose your son once, but it's harder to lose him twice, he said.

Norwood Parks general manager Stephen Beer confirmed on Thursday that a comprehensive search had been carried out on all the likely areas of the memorial gardens.

For the record, we're going to re-dig, he said.

We've been to the archives and sourced all of the information that we can. Obviously all of this stuff was done under prior management, so it's a bit difficult to track, but we have managed to find another area that we feel they may have been lodged, so at the moment our staff are digging those now to see whether we can locate them.

He said he was absolutely confident that no other families would find themselves in the same position as Mr Mol, should they attempt to retrieve a loved ones ashes from the crematorium.

He said Timothy Mol's ashes had originally been placed in a niche in a memorial wall, but that some time in the 1990s, they had been moved, with the familys permission, to the newly created Childrens Court garden in the crematorium grounds.

It was here that Mr Mol and Ms Freeman visited each year on Timothys birthday.

Mr Beer also confirmed that staff had discovered one tube of ashes in the wrong spot when searching for baby Timothys ashes.

We found one box that was just moved along a bit, it wasn't directly under the plaque. That wasn't an issue, he said.

We're very concerned about it, we hate this sort of stuff when it happens.

This is the first time that it has happened since I've been here. I've been [here] in different capacities for about 11 years.

Mr Mol said that after growing tired of dealing with crematorium management, he brought up the issue with member for Ginninderry Tara Cheyne, who then raised it on Thursday at an annual reports hearing before the Legislative Assembly.

"Eddy reached out to me because it was too difficult for him to continue to pursue this," Ms Cheyne told Fairfax Media.

"I followed up with Norwood Park on Eddys behalf in September requesting details about the process that had been undertaken to locate Timothys ashes, and seeking assurances about Norwoods processes. I received a response to my letter this week.

Norwood has only advised that their attempts to locate Timothys ashes were meticulous, with no further detail provided. They have advised there is a database where they record the ashes they hold, and that it is update daily. But if this is so, I do not understand why Timothys ashes cannot be found. Norwood has questions to answer."

She said it was unclear what other recourse was available to Mr Mol, which is why she was raising the issue with the City Services directorate.

"I appreciate it was more than 25 years ago that the ashes were moved and I am aware Norwood was under different management at that time," she said.

"However, this is Norwoods business and this is someones son."

Director-general of the city services directorate Jim Corrigan said it was the first he had heard of the issue, and would look into what recourse was available.