15/10/2025
Q. So Dad, you've been a funeral director now for over 40 years and we've been talking about cremations. After the actual cremation process when you've got the ashes, where in New Zealand can you scatter and where can you not scatter your ashes?
A. Really good question. I think in the last 10 years or so it's become quite poignant.
Before that people did whatever they liked but with our protocols becoming more culturally sensitive, shall we say, that a lot of tangata whenua have been very specific about where they don't want you to scatter ashes. And that's been good because it's got the conversations going about should we actually be scattering them in the waterways and should we be scattering them on the beach. The reason why that's a good question is people often in the old days used to scatter them around things like the rose garden.
Karori in Wellington was a really good example. Roses started to die. So when you think about some of the ashes process that I talked about earlier, when you're taking the carbon out of the ashes and you're left with zinc and calcium and magnesium, it's a lot of minerals but it's nothing much that the plants really love.
In fact, you end up often killing the plants. So, they had to ban the scattering of ashes around the rose gardens at the cemetery. Amazing, eh? So, when you think about that and then you transfer that into if too many people scatter them in a walkway, that's not good for the fish.
So, you do need to think very carefully about where you scatter ashes. But in New Zealand, in law, the body is no longer a body once it has been cremated. So legally you can scatter them anywhere.
Morally, very different story. And obviously when we say legally, well, you can't scatter them on someone else's property. And there is a whole thing about whose property is it, if it's the governments, if it's Doc’s.
Who are the guardians? So, you really need to get the guardians permission to scatter them. So, some of the do's and don'ts, I suppose, about ashes. If you want to scatter them on the golf course, well, you should get permission from the golf course.
Great idea. I do know of someone who didn't get permission and happened to walk around a little by little with a hole in their pocket, but that's another story. Do's and don'ts, don't scatter them in the rose garden, as I said.
If you're going to put them somewhere like you want to scatter them at home, just think about, is that going to be your home forever? I often encourage people if they want to plant a plant or a tree, again, great idea, but trees and plants die. So if you do it something like, I suggest they use a big pot, put the ashes in the pot and put the plant on there. If they move house, they can move, the pot can move with them.
So, if they want to do it in a native bush area or a beach or something like that, if they have permission from that place to do it, great. But again, I often suggest they do it in a specific spot so they can go back and remember it. Be amazed how many people say it was by the big tree.
Well, there's a lot of big trees, you know, and that's why you'll see on walkways and things, often people will have a seat that they've memorialised and it's usually where the ashes are scattered, somewhere very close. Do you have any common recommendations about areas people could scatter? Yeah, so I just thought I'd show you the process really. When you're scattering, we take the ashes out of the box, and we literally have a drawstring bag.
So, we can open the drawstring bag, and we can actually scatter them that way. The recommendations are, make sure it's not a windy day. That makes really good sense.
When you think about, the ashes are quite heavy because they're zinc and calcium and magnesium, but they're also very fine and amazingly they will blow. So I've scattered ashes at sea with people before and the trick is that you wet the ashes down first so that they're heavy and they fall. Very simply, think about where you're going to scatter them.
Think about the wind and think about how you want to do that. So, one of the lovely things we do in one of our local churches is that they have an ashes area around the outside of the church. Now, when we put ashes there, we actually put them in the ground.
We don't put them in a box, and we don't put them in a bag. We actually all have turns at pouring them into the ground. So they go back to nature, go back to dust from which they came.
You mentioned going out to sea and scattering ashes. Do you have any unique or funny stories about scattering ashes? I've got lots and lots of stories actually about ashes, but probably the most fun one was against myself and that was a lady who had seen me many times before she died. She was the first New Zealand helicopter pilot, and she wanted me to scatter her ashes up over the Maungakotukutuku here in Kapiti.
So, I went up in a helicopter, not a plane. I have done them from a plane and that's another unique story. But in a helicopter, it's different from a plane.
A plane, they try to blow back in, so you've got to get your arms right out the window, so the ashes go backwards, not forward. With a helicopter, I didn't realise that they blow down. Of course they blow down, that's how a helicopter works.
So, the guy put me in what I thought was a seatbelt so I could lean over in this little bubble helicopter. Imagine the sort of deer-shooting helicopter. You lean over to put the ashes out, but it was actually a deer-shooting harness which are designed to go right out and over for that job.
So somewhere between here and there, the ashes went. But I had to land very quickly in the helicopter because I needed to change my pants. So yeah, there's some cool stories, but can't share all of them sadly.
Q. What about people that don't scatter ashes and bury them? What are other things they can do?
A. Yeah, so burial itself, whether it's ashes or a body, there's lots of different things you can do. You were asking me before about Viking funerals. I reckon we should talk a bit about that in the next video, but certainly about natural burials and where and where you can bury ashes or a body.
