Anthony Levin
All of us at Grave Matters would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we are recording from. We pay our respects to the Cammaraygal people and their elders, past and present. We also acknowledge the traditional owners from all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands and other
First Nations territories from which you are listening.
Nadine J. Cohen
A warning this episode contains sexual references and graphic discussions of death and suicide. Please take care.
Gabrielle Simpson
And when we opened the door and went in, we were just like, "Oh my God. We were there for three days because he'd lost - He was losing blood. So it was like there was enough blood in the bathroom to go, yep, he died there... Oh, no. It continued. And in the lounge room and in the dining room and in
the kitchen and then back around to the lounge room like it was in a circle.
Nadine J. Cohen
Welcome to Grave Matters, a lively look at death.
Anthony Levin
Nadine J. Cohen. Hello.
Nadine J. Cohen
Anthony Levin. Sawadee Ka!
Anthony Levin
Ooh, Thailand.
Nadine J. Cohen
So, Lev, where do you sit on the cleaning spectrum from, say, all boy uni share house to my late dust-obsessed mother?
Anthony Levin
I am your late dust-obsessed mother.
Gabrielle Simpson
Oh my God. Mummy.
Anthony Levin
And having been to your house, I think I know the answer. But what about you? Where do you sit?
Nadine J. Cohen
Look, I'm not fanatical. My house is always tidy. If not spotless. I could probably dust more. Sorry, Mum. Also, my friend's giant, insanely fluffy Maine Coon cat has been living with me this year and I have just accepted that the house will never be spick and span as long as he reigns.
Anthony Levin
Yes, I can relate to that. I feel the same way about my son.
Nadine J. Cohen
He does shed a lot. Anyway, today we're talking about the messes that few people are willing to mop up. Forensic cleaners were thrust into the spotlight in 2017 with "The Trauma Cleaner", an incredible book by our lovely friend Sarah Krasnostein about an extraordinary woman who pioneered this space.
Now we're sitting down with another trauma cleaner for a firsthand chat about cleaning crime scenes, squalid houses and other sites most of us never want to see. In today's episode, we ask, "What is it like to spend every day in the coal face of death, dereliction and decay? • • And what is the
Anthony Levin
Okay, Nadine, given our topic today, what's the worst thing you've ever had to clean up?
Nadine J. Cohen
Oh, okay. One thing, like the first thing that comes to mind is, I was in Byron Bay on schoolies with my girls and we were staying in one of my friend's parents had a house there and there was a smell that just got worse over a couple of days to the point where like we had to find it. And you know,
we were 18 so we also like weren't very good at anything and we basically located a bin outside that. This is horrible. But there was just like, it was just, there was just. There must have been a dead animal or meat or something in there and there was just maggots everywhere. And all I remember is
we just wheeled it down the road. I can't even remember where we took it but. And you've just got like, say like 14 screaming 18 year old girls taking turns at like pushing this bin so as like not to touch it very much.
Nadine J. Cohen
So like, I mean that's, that wasn't necessarily cleaning but like that. I'm still traumatised by that. We talk about it all the time. We're all still quite traumatised by it. I'm sure.
Anthony Levin
I mean they do say the best way to clean up a problem is just to push it onto someone else's property.
Anthony Levin
Yeah. Yeah. Wow, that's a good one.
Nadine J. Cohen
Yep. How about you?
Anthony Levin
I've cleaned up a few poo-namis in my time as a parent, but that's nothing new. I think the hardest thing to clean was, was the sort of storeroom slash garage at my mum's property after she passed. And that was... It was tough. It hadn't really been managed well for some years and there was a lot of
Anthony Levin
So today we're speaking with Sydney based clean queen, Gabrielle Simpson. Gabrielle has been attending crime scenes, hoarders houses, unattended deaths and other misfortunes for 25 years, working closely with New South Wales Police, New South Wales Health and other state and federal departments.
She's deeply committed to helping people in the throes of tragedy and those struggling with family violence, mental health, and substance abuse.
Nadine J. Cohen
Gabrielle Simpson, welcome to Grave Matters.
Gabrielle Simpson
Thank you.
Nadine J. Cohen
So for those unfamiliar with trauma or forensic cleaning, what do you prefer to call it?
Gabrielle Simpson
You know, there's a number of different areas. Most people call it forensic cleaning, but we can cover a number of areas and without it being too sort of like full on and scary, I actually have three categories for the cleaning that we do. I have general cleaning where I sort of say I go to your
house, my house. I'll whack on a pair of gloves to clean your toilet, but without frightening people too much. It's like we're not touching anything unless we've got gloves on. And then we have, like, neglect cleaning where it's in the scope of, like, hoarding squalor. So, yeah, you're gonna double
glove. You're in mountains of dust and dirt, rat faeces, cockroach faeces, spiders crawling all over you. You know, a bit of a higher level of PPE. And then my third category is critical cleaning, where we completely have to protect our skin. Sometimes we have to cover our eyes in case we have
splashes of body fluids that could affect our eyes. And of course, a mask. A mask to decrease any smell and again, to reduce any risk of any body fluids splashing into our mouths.
Nadine J. Cohen
Yeah, and those are generally murder scenes or crime scenes.
Gabrielle Simpson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nadine J. Cohen
And apart from houses and housing, are there other sites that you regularly attend?
Gabrielle Simpson
Oh, we'll go anywhere, anywhere. The amount of jobs that I've done and the places I've been are just crazy. People dy - homeless people dying under major freeway bridges, accidents, workplace accidents.
Anthony Levin
So it's not always a dwelling that you're going to. It could just be any kind of setting outside.
Gabrielle Simpson
Even - We've even been into the Royal National Park outside, three times.
Anthony Levin
See, my kind of common sense brain would tell me, well, what could there be that needs to be cleaned up in a natural environment like that? Can you elaborate on what you were doing?
Gabrielle Simpson
All right, with the three that we did, the first one was where there was a young couple, homeless, sort of camping.
Gabrielle Simpson
And one of them got injured or killed by the other, and their belongings were left there. And it was right near a railway sort of station in a very sort of remote part along the river Hawkesbury way. Another one we did... You know, it was in the media a lot, unfortunately, where a young girl fell
when she was swinging from a concrete structure at a quite a popular tourist destination along the coast in the Northern Beaches. And at the exact same spot months earlier, this horrendous trail of blood from a car park 200 metres down to a lookout. Like, excessive amount of blood, blood all over
the handrails and nothing, No body, nothing. And even though we weren't called by the police to clean it, it was the National Parks. Like, a week later, I'm at that police station going, so, what was with the blood at the... And they said, gab. We sent helicopters, we sent rescue. We found nothing.
We checked all the hospitals, nothing. So to the best of my knowledge? Nothing.
Anthony Levin
So, Gabrielle, you have encountered some pretty hairy situations. How does one become a trauma cleaner in the first place?
Gabrielle Simpson
All right, so what started this was... I'd left the fashion industry, wanted to be a florist, got out. I'd always worked two jobs, full time and part time, and I thought, I'll do cleaning part time and I'll do office cleaning. Anyway, so around the time the Olympics are starting, myself and two
other staff members, we were at this swimwear company and it was the last day of our three month probation and we all got the sack, and I just went, right, that's it, no more, no more. So I ran a heap of ads in the "Wentworth Courier". I'd already secured some office cleaning and just filled my week
with domestic cleaning. Anyway, networking I met this older guy that had a lot of experience in window cleaning, Gary James, and he had all this really old advertising up in Queensland. And he was contacted by a facility management to check syringes and sharps out of stolen cars. It's quite common.
You know, we're going back 25 years, 23 years ago, cars would get stolen. They'd sell the spare tire to get 50 bucks to get a hit, and then they'd shoot up in the car and they'd just disregard the needles. So you had tow truck drivers who were at risk of having an exposure to a sharp. So I went,
yeah, okay, I'll do that. And it was through an insurance company and they sent this guy up from Melbourne to train me in a day. And I was just blown away when he was telling me that he does forensic cleaning. So I thought, yeah, I could probably do that. So I kept in touch with, I think his name
was Michael. He gave me a few tips on what to do. I did some, some very basic sort of New South Wales Health training courses. Then Gary influenced me to take out Yellow Pages advertising that I just could not afford. And within no time, it paid off. So I was very fortunate that, you know, that
advertising I had got me in with the police. So I then started cleaning body fluids in the police stations, their vehicles and the Corrective Services in their cells. And that was like a real eye opener. And then it just expanded from that where I'd get calls to do private jobs, I'd get referrals. I
was getting a lot of contacts through New South Wales Health with social workers, and it pretty much just exploded. And then in 2005, I just went, ah, no, I think I'll delay paying my next BAS [Business Activity Statement] to the ATO, and I'll go to America. So I went to America and I did a course
in forensic cleaning and sort of came back and went, wow, you know, I've really got this now, so never look back. But it's just, you know, each year it just changes. And the last five years have just been absolutely crazy.
Nadine J. Cohen
In what way?
Gabrielle Simpson
Well, COVID number one.
Nadine J. Cohen
And what was going on during COVID? What were the types of sites that you were attending?
Gabrielle Simpson
We started out on like the 6th of January, because I look after quite a large chain of hotels. We were doing COVID cleans in their hotel rooms. And, you know, just the panic over all of it. We couldn't get to half of what we were being called to. Like we were being asked to clean, like Flying
Doctors or something, or Air Ambulance. I'm like, no, I can't squeeze you in. And I say I was in a couple of situations where I was like, especially in a jail, looking at where they'd isolated someone. And I was like, yeah, this person is really sick. This person is really sick. To me, that was high
risk that I could get COVID and I didn't get it until well after both lockdowns.
Anthony Levin
I mean, the quarantine situation in New South Wales prisons was pretty serious at the time. And I can remember dealing with a lot of the issues that flowed from that in my work too. Do you still get calls about people dying in prison? You mentioned that earlier.
Gabrielle Simpson
We're in the prisons quite a bit. It's not all death related. It's mostly just body fluids and, you know, they have a duty of care for their staff as well as the next prisoner that comes in that, you know, areas are clean. It can be pretty sad going in there because you've got a lot of people that
are coming off drugs. They've been in the system for maybe two days, sitting in a police station, moved to bail court and they're very sick. Yeah, you get a lot of mental health and that's really, really sad, that - And what can be really sad is they'll just bounce between bail court to the
hospital, bail court to the hospital, and this could go on for a week and they're not getting the proper help they need. It's not happening quick enough. And each time that happens, we're called there to clean up body fluids.
Nadine J. Cohen
Gabrielle, can you take us back to one of your first jobs, one that's maybe stuck with you all these years?
Gabrielle Simpson
The most common forensic clean that we do is an unattended death, where someone dies at home alone and they're not found. And it's purely because society has changed so much over the years. More and more people are living alone, not marrying, no children. I remember my first one, it was pretty bad.
This lovely old lady who lived in a terrace in the Inner West had passed away and it was a two story terrace. Her property was very minimalistic. She hadn't done a lot of repairs over the years. Where she passed away, • • • • • there was a huge hole in the floorboards at the bottom of the staircase
and they'd all run down into this, you know, into the underneath of the house. So that was pretty tricky and pretty full on for my first ever clean. And some of them are full on. Full on. You're ripping up floorboards. I haven't done any tiles. Yeah, probably some loose tiles. But generally because
the property, you know, the fixtures and fittings need to be removed. We've pulled out staircases where people have hung themselves because of fluid damage. Yeah, it's just gone through.
Anthony Levin
Something we were thinking about was, what are the limits of this work? And it seems like you're saying there are times when you have to say, I'm sorry, I can't clean this. The death that's occurred here has resulted in an unfixable situation.
Gabrielle Simpson
Correct. It's very, very, very tricky to... In fact, it's pretty much impossible to clean a car if someone's decomposed in it.
Nadine J. Cohen
And is that a case of you'll get called in and you'll visit the site and just be like, I can't. There's nothing I can do.
Gabrielle Simpson
You do that. You can't, you can't. And I've. There was one I went to where a man had driven his four wheel drive into a tree. All right, so the amount of blood that went over all the cabin of the car. No way, no way. And then when you looked at the car, just write it off. It's not worth keeping.
Nadine J. Cohen
And if you had to do that in houses where people are still living.
Gabrielle Simpson
We had a squalor house once where this family, the father had worked with animal welfare and the combined lounge room and dining room was like a whole kitty litter and raw floorboards. And when I first went in, I was just like, just set fire to the house. We fixed it.
Gabrielle Simpson
Yeah, we fixed it. Actually. We've had two really bad ones. Two really bad ones. But my first one, and because it was under the lounge room, was the garage. So you could go down there and look up and see where it's all seeped through the joins of the floorboards. So my first initial thought was just
set fire to the house. But we fixed it and we went back months later. So the mother and daughter and son were there and we cleaned it all up. And we got, you know, I said, get the floorboards sanded and resealed, get the underneath painted. Went back and just went, wow. They finished all of that.
The mother and daughter went to some auctions and completely refitted the kitchen and the bathroom on the smell of an oil rag. And the house looked amazing. Then we had another one with this really, really lovely woman. She was an only child and she had some disabilities and she had something like
five cats, three birds. We never saw the dog. The dog went to be looked after by someone while we cleaned. And no kitty litter or dog faeces had been moved out of the house in eight years.
Anthony Levin
Oh, my goodness.
Gabrielle Simpson
And she'd hoarded tin cat and dog food, so the tins weren't opened and they were bubbling. But I had a good excuse every day. I can't be here today. The police want me. So you guys just. So I really didn't do much there. I really chickened out.
Anthony Levin
That's actually a fantastic admission because you would probably have one of the hardest stomachs I could imagine for doing this work.
Gabrielle Simpson
I actually - I was needed elsewhere. But one of the first things we did was we cleaned up the garage. And I'm a terrible repurposer. And I'd scored this beautiful recliner chair. So I put the recliner chair in there for the client to sit in while we were cleaning. And we called in the RSPCA, she
ended up surrendering all of the cats but one. And I think she had two or three birds. And the RSPCA said, when the girls are here cleaning, bring the birds outside. And the birds look terrible. But by bringing them out every day to the garage with us in a space of three or four weeks, they were
different birds. And then again when it was finished, we had all the floorboards sanded and sealed, moved the recliner in... place looked a million dollars.
Anthony Levin
You mentioned earlier that when you go to these jobs, you notice little things and it tells you things about a person's lifestyle.
Gabrielle Simpson
Oh, yeah.
Anthony Levin
And I've read that one of the things that can be common in trauma cleaning when dealing with death is the number of people who enjoy an ice cream as their last treat before they die. Is that something you've come across a lot?
Gabrielle Simpson
A lot. Magnums, A lot.
Anthony Levin
I was just kind of floored by this because it's such a... I don't know, it was such a very humanising part of the story that you don't necessarily hear, that the person is enjoying pleasure.
Gabrielle Simpson
Yeah, especially like unattended deaths. Cause literally, you know, the body's found, police are called, ambulance are called. You know, it's just general duties police. The detectives might turn up. Then forensics come. Last thing that happens is the transporters will take the body away and then
police just get next of kin or whoever to organise the cleaning. So we're coming in and everything is more or less untouched. So you sort of look around and, you know, we can pinpoint, like, what time of day they died, what sort of mess the transporters made, which they usually do, what kind of
Magnum they like. Well, the last one I did, he just had his takeaway Thai dinner. That was it. There was no sweets and he had no food in his fridge. He couldn't cook. So, yeah, you just see what last movements of people are, and especially if it's sudden. And then I say this. One of the most common
unattended deaths that will occur, that someone passes away, is liver failure, substance abuse, alcohol. You know, there was one once where we could clearly see that this guy had liver failure. And he died on the lounge. And we'd finished and I just went, hang on a minute, I'm just gonna go check
the toilet. And when I checked the toilet, I was like, oh, my God. It actually started here. He's left the toilet sick and moved to the lounge.
Anthony Levin
And is that information that you share with police, for example? Cause you're almost thinking,
Gabrielle Simpson
No, no, you don't.
Anthony Levin
You don't need to.
Gabrielle Simpson
No, you don't need to.
Anthony Levin
Because it's not like they're investigating the cause of death.
Gabrielle Simpson
It's the coroner's court that do that.
Anthony Levin
It's just interesting to me, the way that your mind works, because you're thinking almost like an investigating officer.
Gabrielle Simpson
Oh, yeah, you do. On very rare occasions, you might have a couple, and one might be away and the other one passes away. So we had this woman, she was visiting - it was Christmas, she was visiting her family in Queensland. And, yeah, her husband died. So when we went there, she'd arrived back home
and she was staying with the neighbours. And when we opened the door and went in, we were just like, oh, my God. And we were there for three days because he'd lost. He was losing blood. So it was like there was enough blood in the bathroom to go, yep, he died there. Oh, no. It continued. And in the
lounge room and in the dining room and in the kitchen and then back around to the lounge room like it was in a circle. So here he is, bleeding. Okay. He still went to the fridge and got a drink. So we had a call from this lovely couple who lived in Sydney and their dear friend had passed away at his
weekender. So we actually went there twice. So the first time we went there, we cleaned up where he'd passed away on the lounge and it was pretty bad and it was a very hot summer and he was quite an eccentric, quite wealthy. So then we went back a couple of weeks later to bring the property up to
scratch. It was quite funny and very, very eccentric. All the interior was just like, wow, you know, talking like Faberge, eggs, Liberace. No, no, just, just, just incredible.
Gabrielle Simpson
Yes. So, you know, we had this lovely husband and wife and they were telling, they were telling us, you know, what was happening with his estate. He'd left money for their two boys for when they turned 21 and he'd left a certain property here, there for other people. And I thought, how gorgeous is
that? Anyway, so, you know, we're cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Like we did the deep clean of the property and I hadn't noticed this before, but, you know, I hop in the shower to clean the shower that he had stuck on the tiled wall, this massive dildo. It was gorgeous. And so even though, you know,
he'd passed and it was really sad the day that we were there, we had a lot of fun and I'm sure if he was around, he would have been laughing his head off as well,
Anthony Levin
I'm sure. I mean, you have to surely in your line of work find ways to enjoy the work.
Gabrielle Simpson
Oh, you have to, you have to.
Nadine J. Cohen
So you've been doing this a really long time now. Is there anything that still surprises you?
Gabrielle Simpson
Yeah, the amounts of times that there is a sixth degree of separation for jobs that I've been to. In recent weeks we had one where we, we'd finished and we were talking to the mother and just in conversation, I quickly put together that I knew her daughter. And there was another one many years ago
where there was a suicide where this man who lived with his mother self harmed, ran out of the house and jumped in the pool, in the swimming pool. So we started outside and then by the time we got inside and got into the bedroom, I was like, oh my God, I know this guy. There he is with his
girlfriend. Like in my 30s, I used to go to parties with them.
Gabrielle Simpson
And then there was another one where someone had taken time off, you know, three weeks holiday off work and was due to go the last week of their three weeks on holidays with someone else. And that friend's flown up from Melbourne, can't contact them, and has gone to their unit and found them
deceased. So we've gone in and cleaned. And then I go, oh, my God, this guy used to work with my brother 20 years ago.
Nadine J. Cohen
So obviously this is very heavy and very heartbreaking, and raw work. How do you protect yourself emotionally and mentally?
Gabrielle Simpson
Well, for myself and my staff, we all talk about the jobs and we all work together and we all see and point out to each other what's happening and what has happened. That's one of the biggest things where we talk about things. I do say this. We do get quite desensitised because there's a lot, you
know, we've seen it all, we really have seen it all. And all of us together is number one. I've never really had any staff member that's gone, no, I can't do this, or can you please organise some counselling or something? We've never had that.
Anthony Levin
I just want to dig into the trauma aspect for a minute, if that's okay. Because you hear people who work in other areas of life, like paramedics, talk about how the uniform operates as a kind of armour that enables them to be more detached or dissociated from what happens. But then something can
happen in your life outside of work that can pierce that.
Gabrielle Simpson
Oh, yeah.
Anthony Levin
And people say that there is a kind of compounding effect of the exposure to that trauma, whether it's vicarious or direct. Has that happened to you in your life?
Gabrielle Simpson
No. You know, like when I was 40, around 40, I went and had counselling for family dramas. Okay. And that's when the counsellor sort of went, you are so cut out for this work. Because what I learned then, if I'd known when I was age 4, I should have just packed my bags and said, see you all later.
I'm going, I don't need any of you. I can look after myself. Goodbye. I say this. Every family has a dirty little secret and a trauma. People are faced with all sorts of different things and it affects a lot of us in a lot of different ways. I also think what happens to you is a very young child
reflects on you later on in life and the makeup of who you are. And even now, you know, for some of my staff that have been with me sort of like the last five to seven years, girls that are in their late 20s and now moving into their 30s, I just look at them and I think you have grown so much and
you have gained so much more experience. And it's not just with the work that we do, it's life experience. And it's made them stronger and more knowledgeable. And it probably doesn't help that they hang out with me as well. Yeah.
Anthony Levin
Do you think having more life experience makes you a better trauma cleaner?
Gabrielle Simpson
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Gabrielle Simpson
I'm just exposed to so much. I just see so much.
Nadine J. Cohen
So you work a lot in the aftermath of death. What have you learned about how we as a society handle death or don't handle death?
Gabrielle Simpson
Over the last couple of years, or maybe sort of like the 10, 12 years, there's been a bit more awareness, especially with our elderly. And I know the police have set up some things, you know, just checking on people and even, I think our state government in general, where, you know, there's a weekly
or a couple of times a week calls put in place to check on our elderly, so we don't have unattended deaths. This is what I think is really terrible, how society deals with death in public situations. This is appalling. Years ago, I dropped the girls at a job and I said I'd be back in an hour.
Anthony Levin
Gabrielle told us a devastating story about a man taking his own life in a busy shopping centre.
Gabrielle Simpson
But what was more appalling was people videoed him. And things like that are put on social media before police are able to... identify the person to contact their next of kin. And it's wrong. It's so wrong. That happens all the time and it frustrates our police as well and our ambulance.
Nadine J. Cohen
I remember that.
Anthony Levin
This is on a - very much a tangent, but you keep referring to the girls. Are there any men that work in the industry or in your company?
Gabrielle Simpson
I have had men work with us, but at the moment, with the girls I have, I'm sticking with them. Someone was trying to plug someone to come and work the other day and I'm like, no, no. I think I'm too old and set in my ways.
Anthony Levin
Is it a bit gendered in that way? The profession?
Nadine J. Cohen
Cleaning is gendered
Anthony Levin
Generally. Yeah. But I wondered if forensic cleaning has the same bias. It sounds like it does. Or maybe bias is the wrong word... but...
Gabrielle Simpson
This is probably really sound discriminating. I prefer that it's just us girls because as soon as you have a guy in the picture, they just want to start calling the shots. All right. And it's not going to work with me.
Nadine J. Cohen
I know. Anthony does it all the time to me.
Anthony Levin
Gabrielle, do you think differently about your own death because of the work that you do?
Gabrielle Simpson
I'm just like this. You just never know when your time's up. That's my biggest thing.
Nadine J. Cohen
Gotta have a fridge full of Magnums.
Gabrielle Simpson
Actually, I do.
Nadine J. Cohen
Me too, but not for that reason.
Gabrielle Simpson
Yeah, but just in general. Like, I do a lot of driving. Even over Easter. I had a call from the police and I've been doing crazy hours and I thought, oh, no, bugger it, I'm just going to go now at 20 to 12. So I'm home by 3 or 4 in the morning, drove all the way up to Katoomba, had one set of lights
turning back onto the freeway to come down the mountain. Even though the light went green. I sat there and I watched this huge truck just not even want to stop. Yeah. So I think for the amount of, like travelling and driving I do, which is insane, that probably scares me the most for death.
Anthony Levin
What is the most rewarding part of your job?
Gabrielle Simpson
Walking into a job and seeing whatever the mess is that we have to clean. Smelling it, just looking at all the... urgh. You know. And all I do is look at it, that when it's finished, it's going to be clean and there won't be any smell. That's the biggest thing. And for all of us, we all get that
buzz. And sometimes, you know, these jobs can take a couple of weeks.
Nadine J. Cohen
So then what's the most challenging part of your job?
Gabrielle Simpson
All right, so these are the things that sort of go. Make me go a bit sort of... aaargh!
Gabrielle Simpson
The adrenaline and the anxiety rush between getting the phone call and getting access and looking at what you're doing, like, we're all like, especially me, like. And then you get there and you go, okay, great, we can do this. You know, it'll take a day, it'll take two. What I find really
frustrating, maybe a couple of things with certain clients in certain areas. No sooner have you put the key in the door to have a look at what - or you've said, yes, we can do it. And you haven't even unpacked your gear to start. They're like, so when will it be finished? And a lot of it, it's
purely about layers. I have a young girl that works with me now and she's just finished a degree in mortuary autopsies. 21. I love her. She's got the brain of a 38 year old. So over Christmas we're doing our first decomposition on a mattress, and we're going through the layers of what needs to come
off the bed, cut out of the bed, the mattress, right down to the carpet. And she's like, Gab, this is just like an autopsy, the way you go through the layers. So it's annoying that, you know, like, we're under enough pressure to get this fixed as quick as we can because we could have two more, or
we're behind, we're putting you in front of someone else. And that frustration. People don't understand. My hands are going 24/7. Like, you can't touch your phone, you've got gloves on all the time and answering your phone and talking. I hate phone calls, especially business hours. I have to train
everybody to text me. And especially if we're on a job together, we're working as a group. We've all got to be communicating at all times. So ideally, when you get a private job with the family, I generally like to say, okay, I just like to communicate with one family member and one family member
only, or one person from a real estate agent. Not five of you, just one. Because I don't want to have to repeat myself to all three or five of you all day long because I'm not going to get the work done. So they're the things that drive me nuts.
Anthony Levin
We touched on this a little bit earlier, but we haven't asked you squarely. What are the most difficult substances, stains, smells to eradicate?
Gabrielle Simpson
Probably, say, cat urine. But generally, like, if it's on carpet, you get rid of the carpet. And if there's floorboards underneath and they're not sealed properly, you just get them sanded and resealed. If you were to get floorboards that are just, like, rotting, clearly you just get rid of them. I
Anthony Levin
In terms of, like, sorry, this is graphic. But in terms of human remains, is that particularly difficult to clean?
Gabrielle Simpson
Yes and no. All right, all right. I'll say one that's really horrible. Yep. One area. Gunshot suicides. Depending on how much power the gun has, the bigger the mess. And usually it happens in bedrooms and you might end up with a spray of body fluid and tissue that could be a metre square, or you
could have every single thing in that room, everything. And it's not just a case of wiping it off. You have. Generally people will do it and they'll shoot themselves in their head. So we have, you know, our hair, our skin, we have this white fat. We have our skull, which is like honeycomb, but that
white fat, it's worse than chewing gum. Unlike brickwork, to get off. And then to add to that, you can get the whole room cleaned. And yes, you'll be removing carpets. You can steam clean, you know, mattresses or whatever to make them smell better. You can have things smelling better, but generally
you need to repaint that room. Because different parts of our body, different smells. And whenever someone does that, it's like that room has this stench. Like the fish markets.
Nadine J. Cohen
You've said twice, getting the smell out of the mattress, or getting the layers out of the mattress. Why are the mattresses being kept?
Gabrielle Simpson
Oh, no, you gotta dispose of them.
Nadine J. Cohen
Yeah. Okay. But you've gotta get rid of it first. For biohazards.
Gabrielle Simpson
Okay, so there's been a lot of changes within our waste regulation and really, really tough logistics. Getting a truck to tip it, you know?
Nadine J. Cohen
So what do you do? You...
Gabrielle Simpson
So now we're left with - We cut up mattresses. We have to cut them up.
Nadine J. Cohen
Yeah, right.
Anthony Levin
Okay, that's interesting.
Gabrielle Simpson
I have to cut them up.
Nadine J. Cohen
Yeah, that's interesting.
Gabrielle Simpson
And you just keep cutting and cutting and cutting. Separate what's infected. And then the rest of it, we wrap it up and we can get rid of it for $105 at the tip as dry waste. Or we strip it all the way back, and then it can be recycled metal after we clean it up.
Nadine J. Cohen
We're almost done traumatising our listeners. But before we go, Gabrielle, what would you like people to say about you at your funeral?
Gabrielle Simpson
Well, I like what was said to me at the club the other - I go to my local bowling club. Cause it's walking distance from my house. And I was in the court - like in the smoking area with all the boys. And one of them goes, yeah, got the biggest balls here. I went, who? And they all went, you. And I
was the only woman there. So I think I'm very - And I think I sort of said this as well. Like, I really - I am a loudmouth. And I will really, really stand up and throw tantrums and yell and scream, especially if I see something that's not ethical or someone being taken advantage of. I am a
troublemaker. But all for the right reasons. All for the right ethical reasons. I've always been like that. In a way. I say this: protector. And that's what I learned when I was 4. At age 4, I was like, there's no one here to protect me. I've got to protect myself.
Anthony Levin
Imagine you're on your deathbed. What do you confess
Nadine J. Cohen
That you can say on the podcast?
Gabrielle Simpson
I'd be more like this. Can I have a glass of wine and a cigarette, please? I would confess to what? I say this. I have no secrets. I'm straight up. I always tell it like it is. I have nothing to hide. Just maybe how dirty my floors are at my house.
Nadine J. Cohen
So, Gabrielle, thank you for joining us on Grave Matters.
Anthony Levin
Yeah, thanks so much, Gabrielle.
Gabrielle Simpson
That was fun.
Nadine J. Cohen
So that was Gabrielle Simpson. And I'm going to be processing for days to come. What are your thoughts?
Anthony Levin
Well, my thoughts are I'm wondering what happens or what might happen for my family if I become an unattended death. I don't plan to die alone on a hot day or anything like that. But, you know, you still want to get your, your life in order so you don't leave a mess behind. And I'm a pretty tidy
guy. But I'm going to make sure that the man cave is, you know, presentable, that there's nothing incriminating there. That, that's probably the thing I'll take care of.
Nadine J. Cohen
You have a man cave?
Anthony Levin
Well, I mean, I haven't spoken about it, but
Nadine J. Cohen
Yeah, we're gonna have to have so many conversations about that.
Anthony Levin
No, I don't have a man cave, but I will in my new house.
Nadine J. Cohen
Okay. Deeply - Like, this is a whole other episode. There may be a bonus on man caves.
Anthony Levin
Okay. What about you? What are the things that you're left with after that, rather confronting at times conversation?
Nadine J. Cohen
Well, I was also thinking about, like, what I didn't want people to find or see in the event of a quick or unattended death. And most of them I was like, are like on my computer or on my phone. I mean, there's the usual sexy toys and like, I want my sheets to have been changed recently. Like, I
don't, like, there's certain things like that.
Anthony Levin
Clean underwear.
Nadine J. Cohen
Clean underwear, all of that. But just things in my technology life.
Nadine J. Cohen
That I don't want people to find.
Anthony Levin
Your computer is the real closet.
Anthony Levin
Yeah. And I know it is.
Nadine J. Cohen
Yeah, I know.
Anthony Levin
Thanks again to Clean Queen Gabrielle Simpson. Next episode, we talk to Professor Toby Walsh about artificial intelligence, the singularity, and whether death robots are coming for us all,
Professor Toby Walsh
Not from outer space, but off our laptops.
Nadine J. Cohen
If this episode has raised issues for you and you'd like to seek mental health support, you can contact Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36, or visit beyondblue.org.au Also, Embrace Multicultural Mental Health supports people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Visit
embracementalhealth.org.au. For 24/7 crisis support, call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or in an emergency please call 000.
Anthony Levin
Grave Matters is an SBS podcast written and hosted by me, Anthony Levin, Nadine J. Cohen, and produced by Jeremy Wilmot. The SBS team is Joel Supple, Max Gosford, Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn and Philip Soliman. If you'd like to get in touch, email audio@sbs.com.au. Follow and review us wherever you
