Well done City Care for taking pride in job

Give credit where credit is due is a motto that urges people to express approval, or even admiration, whenever it is merited.

This week I decided I had very good reason to give credit to an organisation I suspect gets more brickbats than bouquets from an ungrateful public.

I am talking about City Care, a company contracted to do outside work on behalf of South Wairarapa District Council.

On Wednesday photographer Lynda Feringa and I had reason to go to Greytown cemetery to interview, on site, an upset Greytown man and his daughter over the theft of a World War I Gallipoli veteran's Anzac medallion.

The medallion granted to old soldier Percy Pope had been chiselled off his headstone after gracing his burial place undisturbed for 40 years.

As far as a story for the newspaper went it was not one that reflected well on whoever was responsible for the despicable act, but while there I could not help but comment on how well kept the cemetery was.

My parents, paternal grandparents and aunts and uncles are interred there so I notice changes, good and bad.

The cemetery is immaculate, I am pleased to tell you.

It was beautifully groomed and the City Care staff were there spot killing weeds and generally making sure the cemetery was in tip-top condition.

I am not one to pass out compliments lightly but I felt obliged to wind down the car window as I passed the City Care worker on leaving the cemetery to congratulate him.

In the old days Greytown cemetery could look a bit wild and woolly, especially a large section at the rear which was more often than not a tangled mass of branches and weeds.

So much so that legend has it a coffin bearing the body of a 1918 flu epidemic victim which had been overlooked for burial was discovered in the undergrowth decades after the unfortunate flu victim died.

It is fair to say the more heavily populated front section of the graveyard has always been fairly well kept but the condition of the entire complex last week was testimony to the pride City Care are taking in their work at the cemetery.