Port Lincoln celebrant Ngahuia Trewartha offering funerals at sea

Traditional funerals are rapidly changing – now an SA celebrant is offering a unique new service just for for ocean lovers.

Ngahuia Trewartha, celebrant, will conducting funerals at sea off Port Lincoln. Picture Che Chorley

Ashes to ashes is now ashes to ocean following the launch of a unique funeral service in Port Lincoln.

Ngahuia Trewartha, well-known as a local wedding celebrant, is now offering end-of-life ceremonies in the waters off the picturesque Eyre Peninsula city.

While scattering ashes at sea is a longstanding tradition, Ms Trewartha believes Ashes At Sea is the first time on-water funerals have been formally offered in South Australia.

She has partnered with the owners of the Oceanic Victor, a luxury vessel that can comfortably carry 75 friends and family – along with crew and staff – to allow ceremonies to happen on the eastern side of Boston Island. A big screen and PA system can be used for visual eulogies, and the vessel is licensed so that old friends can be farewelled with a toast.

Ms Trewartha said the newly established service has already received interest, particularly from ocean lovers keen for their remains to go back into the place they love most.

“Living in Port Lincoln, in a community that is really close to the sea, this is something people have spoken to me about in the past,” she said. “I became a civil celebrant three years ago, and I’ve been waiting a while for my own maturity to develop to a place where I felt this is something I could offer.”

Ms Trewartha said the traditional concept of a funeral – with a priest or religious figure overseeing a ceremony where a body is interred in the ground – was rapidly changing. “We’re in a time where people want to be heard, and put together a ceremony that resonates with their own family and their own beliefs,” she said.

“There’s a lot more diversity around what we think of as a funeral now.”

The Oceanic Victor. Picture: Supplied

Ms Trewartha said there was also an environmental element to scattering ashes at sea, with people more conscious of the amount of land traditional burial uses.

“People say to me, ‘everything returns to the sea’,” she said. “And the family can always return to the sea to visit them, feel that breeze on their face and remember the person they loved.”

More than 65 per cent of Australians choose cremation over other forms of burial, according to the Australasian Cemeteries and Crematoria Association.