Commemorative healing with Project Norden

A message from Project Norden

Project Norden is a veteran charity started by Luke Kearney and Jasper Muller in 2025 with a vision to help reduce veteran suicide through the creation of veteran wellbeing activities which simultaneously honour fallen soldiers. 

The idea for our project came about while Luke and Jasper, 2 ex-paratroopers who served together in Iraq and later in the police force, were navigat­ing medical retirement and DVA processes. They began cleaning the graves of local servicemen as a way to give back to their community. 

When visiting the North Tumbulgum ceme­tery, Luke and Jasper found the grave of Private Daniel Maye, who was killed in action in the Bat­tle of Passchendaele in 1917. Maye’s memorial was completely unreadable due to mould and debris, so they went home, gathered some cleaning sup­plies and returned to restore the grave. In doing so, they realised the immense healing power in commemorating the fallen in this way. 

So, Project Norden was created – a charity that Luke calls a ‘commemorative healing project’. We aim to bring together veterans, building com­munity and purpose, improving veteran mental health and wellbeing while remembering and sharing the stories of our fallen. 

The name Project Norden honours the late Richard Norden VC, a decorated soldier and later an Australian Federal Police officer who was trag­ically killed on duty in 1974 at the age of just 24. 

Project Norden has had more than 80 veterans involved in numerous grave-cleaning events across south-east Queensland and the NSW north coast, as well as several veterans joining in from across the nation. We have cleaned over 400 graves, attending to 16 locations across Australia, 3 in France and one in Germany, and have been able to mark 2 veteran memorials that were pre­viously unmarked. 

Luke and Jasper have also begun filming timelapses of the cleaning process and post­ing these on social media with a voice-over sharing the story of the fallen soldiers. 

Our aim is to eventually be able to take groups of veterans overseas to clean the graves of Aus­tralian soldiers who did not make it home. We have been engaging with the Office of Australian War Graves and have approval from the Com­monwealth War Graves Commission in London to take groups to Europe to join our volunteer program and help tend to graves located within the region. 

To help build towards this goal and better sup­port ongoing local projects, we are seeking major sponsorship or grants from any interested organ­isations and accept donations via our website. 

Project Norden welcomes and encour­ages all veterans and their families to come and help out with cleaning graves by join­ing our events or by sharing graves they are cleaning in their own region. Further infor­mation about upcoming events is available at www.projectnorden.org or on our social media pages across all major platforms.