In Australia, fewer than one in three expected deaths takes place outside an institution, but eighty per cent of people say they would rather die at home.

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A few kilometres from the town of Armidale in northern New South Wales, a gravel driveway sidles around the curve of a small hill and ends in a yard of barking dogs at the back of a low dark-brick home. In 1968 Hugh and Katherine Baden* came to live on this property, one hundred and sixty acres of undulating grazing land. In the decades that followed they wove themselves into the fabric of the community: working, volunteering, socialising, pursuing various hobbies, putting three children through local schools.