The time and place at Kaikohe where famed Ngapuhi warrior Hone Heke's bones will be buried next month will not be publicly announced until the night before the internment.
Te Matarahurahu hapu leader David Rankin - who holds Hone Heke's mere - said the late formal announcement was to conform with Maori custom. He expected hundreds of people to attend the burial ceremony.
Two years ago, Heke's bones were removed from a cave near Pakaraka, where they had lain since 1850, when the great chief died.
The bones were threatened by contamination by sewage soakage from a housing development, Mr Rankin said.
The remains had been moved to a temporary site at a wahi tapu outside Kaikohe, and the time was now right for them to be buried in a new and final resting place.
Heke's grave site was ''high on a hill'' where the bones would be well out of the way of any household septic tank pollution, Mr Rankin said.