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The West Australian mining town of Leonora is a community in a constant state of mourning.
In the past 18 months alone, six young Aboriginal people have committed suicide.
Matt Taylor is the town's undertaker, and three weeks ago he buried his own son.
"If I compartmentalise it into the role as an undertaker, I'm somewhat desensitised to that, that happens. But as a father — it's not nice," Mr Taylor said.
Leonora sits within the Goldfields-Esperance region, which has one of the highest rates of Indigenous suicide in the country.
Mr Taylor said his community was struggling to understand how to change the outlook of young people.
"It's almost being normalised, that grief and tragedy is acceptable," he said.
"We have circumstances, yes, where there are accidents, there are natural causes of death, that's normal, that's acceptable, and we will deal with that on a daily basis.
"It's the tragedies such as suicide, death before age is due, or non-natural circumstances that bring the most grief to people and that people don't understand."
Brendon Anderson was one of hundreds of people to attended Mr Taylor's son's funeral.
He had to bury his own child in the Leonora Cemetery.
Following his son's accidental death he contemplated suicide himself.
"Sometimes I thought I might go out and get drunk and go hang myself or something, just to get away from this," Mr Anderson said.
But the rest of his family pulled him back.
"My boys and my daughter were in my ears, they were always there for me," he said.
"And I had my oldest brother, always explaining to me, 'You're right my brother, we're here'."
Mr Anderson said he believed alcohol and drugs were a major factor in Leonora's high suicide rate.
"Alcohol plays a big role, alcohol's the one that's pushing them to do it," he said.
"Because if they were sober, they wouldn't do it.
Mining has long underpinned the local economy. But the downturn has wiped out many local jobs and left the town's youths with little hope for the future.
"If we had more things here for them to do, maybe they wouldn't be drinking as much as they are, instead we've got nothing in Leonora at the moment for them," he said.
Maurveen Muir is a St Johns Ambulance volunteer. She was the first to arrive at the scene of one of the recent deaths.
"I've seen death, I suppose, through family members passing away," she said.
"But that affected me."
Ms Muir believed a total reform of services was required. Currently mental health support, as well as drug and alcohol counselling, operate as a fortnightly drive-in, drive-out service from Kalgoorlie, 230 kilometres away.
"I don't know how a person, who's feeling really low, is going to pick themselves up, day after day after day if the service is leaping in and out."
Matt Taylor agreed that a complete overhaul of suicide prevention services was the only solution.
"Booking appointments to suit a social service provider that's coming from another town on their chosen day, doesn't suit our people," Mr Taylor said.
"It would be nice to have those services available when we need them, not when we're told we can have them."
Topics: suicide, mental-health, drugs-and-substance-abuse, drug-education, regional-development, regional, death, aboriginal, indigenous-culture, indigenous-policy, leonora-6438
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