‘Get it looking beautiful again’: Rissington Cemetery cleared of silt

Clive Meehan and Rachel Train clear the gravesite of an old friend at Rissington Cemetery earlier this month. Photo / Paul Taylor

Before Cyclone Gabrielle hit Hawke’s Bay, Rissington Cemetery was the first site residents would pass by on their travels home to Rissington or Pātoka.

Seeing it buried in the February 14 floods - just across the now-destroyed Rissington Bridge on the outskirts of Napier - has not been easy for residents of those rural communities.

Pātoka residents Clive Meehan and Rachel Train went down there at the start of this month to clear the gravesites of their old friends and former Pātoka farmers Andrew and Alwena Andrews.

“It was just full of silt, and I was waiting for my wife to come across the river on the boat [due to the bridge being washed away], and we thought, ‘There’s no good in standing around doing nothing’.

“So we thought we would take some shovels and wheelbarrows down and just [help Rachel] dig around Alan’s grave to get rid of all the silt and just get it looking beautiful again.

“We did that, and over the following couple of days I think we kind of set the precedent, and everyone has been getting in there and started digging it all out.”

He said the cemetery was now looking a lot better and the whole community had been doing amazing work helping one another out, looking to get back to some form of normality.

“That is probably the one good thing to come out of this whole situation. I’ve met people that I didn’t even know lived up there, and we go and help each other out.

“Then we might have a barbecue at the end of the week and catch up again, and kind of make new friends in a community that you have been in forever.”