Our Story Timeline

Peter Tobin Funerals in Ballarat became a division of Tobin Brothers Funerals on 1st March 2020.

Tobin Brothers Funerals launched their ‘Healthy Minds at Home’ video series, a free community service provided by Tobin Brothers together with Consulting Psychologist Jacqui Louder.

During the height of the Covid-19 lockdown in Melbourne, Tobin Brothers developed an online initiative to help people develop and maintain a healthy mind at home. Jacqui Louder joined the Tobin Brothers Facebook Community offering practical tools to help maintain good mental health during lockdown and beyond.

Expanding on their original Memory Maker app, launched in 2011, Australia’s largest family owned funeral company Tobin Brothers Funerals launched their world first Build Your Own Coffin or Casket feature.

Tobin Brothers Funerals has always believed that a funeral should be as unique as the life being celebrated and by downloading Memory Maker, family members can design a funeral with even more choice, control and personalisation than ever before. They can select from a wide range of coffins and caskets, view them in 360 degrees and compare each choice and cost to help with their decision.

The apps new build your own coffin or casket feature allows family members to individualise the design by choosing from a large range of shapes, colours, handles, drapery and floral arrangements to match. Reviewing is instant and the final result can be enlarged on screen for examination and approval or adjusted as desired.

“Everybody is unique and their tastes are also unique. People like different things in fashion and decorations. Why should it be any different for a coffin or casket? That’s why we’ve designed the Tobin Brothers coffin or casket,” says James MacLeod.

“At Tobin Brothers our Memory Maker takes transparency to levels not seen before in the funeral industry. We are the only funeral company in the world where you can build your own coffin or casket.”

Tobin Brothers Funerals first launched their Jewish Funerals division on 10th May 2018 to cater to the needs of their growing Jewish community. This includes specialist staff, processes and product inclusions to accommodate the specialised requirements for Jewish Funeral Services.

The Tobin Brothers Funerals catering division ‘Diamond Celebrations’ launched on 1 July 2017. Diamond Celebrations operate as independent caterers for a wide range of events from corporate conferences to birthdays and weddings, they cater the vast majority of services held at Tobin Brothers Chapels and also offer home delivery of comfort foods across Melbourne Metropolitan.

Tobin Brothers held their first #SayItNow Initiative.

An initiative founded in 2016 and continuing each year since, #SayItNow is designed to inspire people to reach out to those they love and tell them how they really feel about them – before it’s too late.

Each year various ambassadors share their touching stories by expressing their appreciation for the impact a mentor, family member or friend has had on their life. Whether it’s a family member, an old friend, or someone who was influential in their lives, Tobin Brothers urges everyone to use #SayItNow to tell that special person about the impact they’ve had on their life and what that has meant to them.

Tobin Brothers Funerals Managing Director, James MacLeod says that “Too often, our people have witnessed the heartache suffered by families and friends who did not have an opportunity to acknowledge the impact a loved one has had on their life before they died.

“We felt compelled to develop #SayItNow as a way of reminding people not to wait until it’s too late to express your thoughts and feelings to the people around you. #SayItNow is a wonderful opportunity to encourage people to celebrate their important relationships by sending messages of gratitude to their loved ones.”

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In line with the company’s commitment to transparency, Tobin Brothers Funerals launched the ‘A Day in the Life’ YouTube series in 2016.

“I felt very passionate about giving the community more information about what happens behind the scenes. After all, we are caring for our client families’ loved ones and I want them to know that our people are professionally trained, appropriately qualified and most importantly, caring.

We received remarkable feedback from the ‘A Day in the Life’ series which looked at the work of funeral planners, celebrants, funeral directors assistants, and our communications centre. To measure the success of this series, you need look no further than ‘A Day in the Life of an Embalmer’ which has now received in excess of 1.9 million views on Youtube.”

Jennifer Burge, an embalmer with Tobin Brothers Funerals for nearly twenty years says she is delighted there’s been such a positive response to the video for a number of reasons:

“I think it helped dispel some of the myths and misinformation about the embalming process and it was presented in a very dignified, discrete and non-sensational manner.”

Watch on Youtube

The Tobin Brothers Funerals ‘Little White Chapel’ opened in South Morang on 19th July 2016.

Tobin Brothers Funerals Branch location opened in Diamond Creek on 28th September 2016. This historic facility, once an Abbey, offers families a choice of two exquisitely decorated chapels and a superb refreshments lounge.

Acutely aware of the need to meet client family demands for the latest digital media playback and connection, Tobin Brothers Funerals outfitted each of its chapel locations with identical state of the art audio visual technology.

This enabled the webcasting of Funeral services so that a funeral could be viewed and heard live from anywhere in the world – a forward-thinking initiative implemented well before the developments of 2020 where live streaming became a necessity.

Webcasting

The Tobin Brothers Funerals Sunshine chapel was renovated and reopened as the ‘Legacy of Life Chapel’ on 28th October 2015.

(On 15th January 2026, Tobin Brothers closed the Sunshine Branch location, concluding 30 years of operation at this site).