Gone to a wetter place: the Queenslanders disrupting the death industry with water cremations

The town of Capella in central Queensland is home to fewer than 1,000 living souls and has no grocery store.

But by Christmas it may be home to a machine worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that liquidises human remains into an urnful of white powdered bones.

The conversion of an old Anglican church into a water-based crematorium will be an expansion of the local business portfolio of Wendy and Mark Tasker, who run a nearby cattle property as well as forklift and rural supplies stores in town. But for Wendy – who also works part-time preparing bodies at a funeral parlour in the neighbouring town of Emerald – it will also fulfil a lifelong ambition.

“It’s always been my passion,” she says. “Even when I was a little child, I’ve always wanted to be a mortician. I know it’s strange … b