KEY POINTS:
The plan was simple, yet veiled in secrecy.
At 8.30am, a red truck, equipped with a crane, would pull up alongside the offices of the Grey District Council in Greymouth, mayor Tony Kokshoorn would jump aboard and lead the mission to retrieve the town's war memorial pillars.
A
small team of locals had been assembled - to try to avoid confrontation - for the daring raid on rural land 35km south of the town.
The Herald had been told to keep the raid under wraps and to hang back to avoid tipping off the Mawhera Incorporation - a prominent Maori trust and West Coast landowner - which had the pillars removed under the cover of darkness, to the disgust of the community.
Mr Kokshoorn told the Herald a day before the raid that he wasn't sure what to expect, but would not back off if things got physical. The issue was too important.
As it turned out, he needn't have worried. When he and his team rolled into the Arahura Valley yesterday morning, the stand-off that had prompted the secret raid had already been resolved.
Mawhera chairman Maika Mason, after days of silence and the urging of Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen for a resolution, agreed yesterday to let the pillars be retrieved.
Mayor Kokshoorn was a happy man after supervising the loading of the pillars on to the truck for their return to Greymouth.
"It's an excellent outcome. It hasn't been confrontational."
The four pillars, bearing the names of West Coasters killed in World War I, were taken early on Sunday from the entrance of the old Grey Main School - a site Mawhera is developing into a shopping mall. When the pillars were removed, the Historic Places Trust was in the process of trying to get them registered for their protection.
Mawhera has claimed the dispute came about after miscommunication between parties with an interest in the memorials. But Mr Kokshoorn said Mr Mason owed the people of Greymouth an apology.
"Mr Mason has to take responsibility for it himself, and that way his mana will be restored and we can all move on."
Mr Mason appeared in no mood to apologise after brokering the deal yesterday. Asked about the anger the incorporation had caused, he said: "Well, we were upset about the foreshore and seabed."
Roger Devlin of the Grey Main School reunion committee said he went to the site where the pillars lay yesterday morning and met Mr Mason. It was arranged that Mawhera would gift the pillars and accompanying fence and gate to the committee for relocation.
"They are back in Greymouth and negotiation is always better than an argument," Mr Devlin said.
The committee wrote to Mawhera last year about the pillars. A reply was sent to the wrong place and "it just kind of compounded from there and got put away".
"It could have all been avoided ... What's happened has happened and I don't want to blame anyone."
Mr Kokshoorn said the pillars had now taken on a whole new meaning.
"They represent something now that was really a statement about how precious war memorials are. You do not meddle with people who have gone away and given their lives for us overseas. I think it's important that all councils around New Zealand now register anything that is a war memorial, even if it's gates or anything, and it's important we do that and it helps actually save them."
Local runanga spokesman Rick Barber, a minor shareholder in Mawhera, said they supported the "cleaning" of the valley where the pillars had been put, and "taking this wrong and helping put it right".
"A lot of it is a corporate-commercial issue, that's caused it, with no consideration to civic responsibility. [Mawhera] has got some way to move on that.
"It's an absolute disappointment the way a commercial entity of any sort has acted and behaved, and especially Maori, because we are meant to uphold higher than anyone the taonga that represents people's sacrifice."
One of the four pillars is broken into three pieces, but will be repaired. It is still to be decided where they will be placed.
