Andrew Smith, CEO of InvoCare in the North Chapel of the Northern Suburbs Crematorium in Ryde where digital technology has been added such as the big screen pictured to add to the modern requirements for funeral services. 14th June 2012.  
THE NSW Governor, Marie Bashir, today formally opens the Northern Suburbs Memorial Garden and Crematorium's new function centre, a recognition that baby boomers want to celebrate rather than mourn loved ones and themselves.
The new Australian way of death offers on-site BYO wakes in function rooms, skyline lounges, accommodating between 100 and 300 with finger food, savouries, and sandwich menus available from $13.50 to $22 a person.
The new Skyline Cafe, open six days a week, offers coffee and cakes.
Even death cannot escape the internet, with relatives and friends able to sign into heavenaddress.com, a funeral industry memorial webpage that not only assures a form of eternal life but permits the downloading of personal photographs and tributes, all while they are looked down upon by giant digital screens running grabs from the dear departed's time on Earth.
Before the wake, vision and sound from the funeral service can be webcast across the planet while the ceremony itself is conducted in a high-tech maze of giant screens, light shows and sound effects.
The memorial park is one of 14 crematoriums operated by InvoCare, and the chief executive, Andrew Smith, said the new facilities were simply a response to how Australians increasingly saw death.
''Boomers are now dealing with their parents' deaths and will soon face their own mortality ,'' he said. ''Their attitude is not necessarily as much about grief.''
Some choose to go in their own style. There are white coffins to be drawn on, some boast photographs of surfers, trees, cars, the national flag and NRL teams. The AFL is holding out on logo trademark grounds. A ''green ending'' is also coming, offering second-hand timber coffins, organic food for wakes and a carbon price offset for cremation.
The old shibboleths against cremation have faded so that a crucifix and pictures of Jesus and Mary are unveiled for Christian ceremonies in one of the northern suburbs chapels although they are shut away for other funerals.
After a century, the Cremation Society of NSW's campaign seems to have beaten interment. Only 35 per cent of funerals involve burial and with Sydney's cemeteries bursting, the Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens has room to go on forever.
Overlooking Lane Cove River National Park, the crematorium's four chapels splay out beneath a Tuscan tower amid garden paths and conifers designed by Frank l'Anson Bloomfield in 1933 to evoke northern Italian architecture, a style, he said, that aimed ''to abolish the gloomy surroundings of the vault and the graveyard''.
The grounds are a ready reckoner to changing ways of remembering the dead. Brick walls with plaques from the 1930s gave way to small free-standing cement pegs during the 1950s. These days they do black granite. Christians' memorial plaques cluster in rose gardens - which relatives can prune annually - while Asians tend towards water features and intricate gardens.
Three new cremators were installed last year. Their work takes about 90 minutes. A viewing room has opened for people from cultures who wish to stay with loved ones until the end.
Famous Australians memorialised include three prime ministers, the poet Banjo Patterson, author May Gibbs, singer Slim Dusty, Victa lawn mower inventor Mervyn Victor Richardson and INXS's Michael Hutchence.