Forebears gone - and forgotten?

Auckland man Bruce Groves travels north several times every year to tend to the graves of his mother, Kathleen Dixon, and grandfather Robert (Bob) Henry Dixon, in Kaitaia's public cemetery. But the state of the older graves at St Saviour's Anglican Church, including those of some of his forebears, was disappointing, he said last week.

Mr Groves spent part of Monday and Tuesday removing weeds from about half the graves in the old part of the cemetery, on the southern side of the church, but gave up on Tuesday afternoon when the heat and the size of the job overwhelmed him.

He said he had expressed his disappointment to the church vestry, which had removed what he described as a rusty old shed from the front of the cemetery, for which he was grateful, but the vestry believed that the job of maintaining graves fell to the families.

"I don't really disagree with that, but some of the people buried there don't have families in the area, or families at all," he said.

His great-great-uncle, Henry Havelock Thompson, the engineer who built the road through the Mangamuka Gorge, and Thompson's father, both of whom were buried in the original part of the cemetery, would have contributed a great deal to the church over the years, he added, and deserved more respect than they were receiving.

He also noted that the headstone marking the grave of Rev Joseph Matthews, who founded the Kaitaia mission in 1834, was all but obscured by grass and agapanthus, which were thriving throughout that part of the cemetery.

Mr Groves believed the church had an obligation to the founding members of its congregation, at least to the extent of keeping their graves weeded, and if that was not possible he expected the families to take care of their own.

A spokesperson for the vestry said plans were in hand for upgrading the church yard in its entirety, but while the vestry accepted responsibility for mowing the lawns, it was up to the families to care for the graves.