Kihikihi Erebus memorial for Cecil and Jack Emmett. Photo/ Jesse Wood
November 28 marked 40 years since the Mt Erebus disaster in Antarctica.
Erebus was New Zealand's worst air accident, with 257 people losing their lives in the crash.
Air New Zealand Flight 101 was an 11-hour return sightseeing flight from Auckland to Antarctica that had been operating since 1977.
A memorial for 44 unidentified victims who were never found is at the Waikumete Cemetery in Auckland.
Cecil, 62, and Jack Emmett, 63, were on that flight. Originally from the Manawatū, they had been farmers for many years at Arohena where they had moved after applying for rehab ballots after the war.
Cecil was a nurse at the Palmerston North Hospital and Jack was a soldier in World War II. It is thought that they met at the hospital after Jack's return.
They didn't have any children owing to Jack's war injuries.
Cecil's brother-in-law Trevor Evans, 86, from Marton is the last survivor of that generation and he recalls how hard the couple used to work on their farm.
"They always used to complain about the fact that they'd just about kill themselves to keep an animal alive.
"They were out there virtually isolated, and we used to go up and see them occasionally but not that often because it was a bit of a marathon to get there."
Trevor and his late wife, Cecil's younger sister Margaret, travelled to the Arohena farm once and he remembers the Emmetts had an old canvas-top Buick.
"We'd all gone into town and the damn thing broke down just as we got into Te Awamutu. Cecil and Margaret's father was there and he was totally fed up with the situation, so he went down the road and bought a brand new Fargo Ute for them. They had that for many, many years."
"I can always remember walking down the paddock and the chap Oliver, he wasn't much of a farmer, I think he was more of a gentlemen farmer. He came over to the fence and said he had a cattle beast with a broken leg and asked what he should do with it.
"Jack said to shoot it and get it made into meat for the deep freeze. He said what sort of things should I get made into and Jack said sausages etc. So, he got the whole damn beast made into sausages. There was that many thousand sausages in the district it wasn't funny."
Passing through Kihikihi you're more than likely to see the Rewi Maniapoto Memorial. At the foot of the tree behind the memorial is a plaque on a boulder in memory of the couple.
The plate was gifted by Kihikihi Women's Division of Federated Farmers.
Although the plaque itself has begun to chip and break, people have made it clear that their memory of the pair has not.
Around the boulder are several items. A solar light sits in front so that the plaque is visible at night. Several small stones surround the rock, some have words of remembrance.
'Hard to say goodbye' is written on one.
'I'll be back. Love you both. Sharee' says the other, a message from their youngest niece.
Forty years on, many New Zealanders still recall where they were when they heard the news.
"The rest of the family actually didn't even know they were going on the trip. It was supposed to be a surprise to them, that they'd gone down there and well, the other sister happened to hear the broadcast and it was a bit of a shock to us really," said Trevor.
"We were actually lucky that we didn't lose two more in that Erebus crash. Her sister and husband _ they were going on it, but they got the flu and pulled out at the last minute."
Cecil and Jack doted on Trevor's children as they had a set of twin girls and twins were unheard of in their family. They thought they were "just a bit of all right".
In their retirement they settled onto a farm on Arapuni Road, Orakau. The farm was 100 acres [40ha], but they sold off half of it before they went to Antarctica.
In his retirement Jack had taken up photography. Although flowers were his main target, their travel south was so that Jack could take photos of the Antarctic.
They never returned.
"The whole saga was unbelievable from go to woah. Jack and Cecil had been in the process of changing their will and the lawyer in Te Awamutu got on his motorbike and went for a ride over to the east coast and was killed, so the wills were never finished. Then another lawyer took it up and he died of a heart attack. We found the unfinished wills in a drawer at the farm," said Trevor.
"They never got their wishes to dispense their wealth as they wanted to."
In 2011, Margaret visited Antarctica for closure.
"She was more than delighted. They interviewed her on the National programme and one of the questions was, if this hadn't been paid for by the government, what would you have done? She said I would have paid for it myself," said Trevor.
"It really shattered our family and it took her a long, long time to get over the Erebus crash. It really settled the whole thing down once she'd been down there."
Margaret died in 2016.
Jack had always wanted to own a Mercedes because of his war experience and had finally purchased one upon his retirement to Orakau.
"Because of the Erebus crash, they'd left the car at a motel up there and of course we couldn't shift the thing because we didn't have key. Cable Price told us if we could get into it and get the book, it would have the key number in it. I got the number of the key and we rang Cable Price and they contacted Germany. This was all in one day. Germany sent the numbers and the key was made in Lower Hutt.
"They held a 737 on the tarmac in Wellington and sent the key in by taxi. They sent it up to Auckland and we got it off the plane at about five or six o'clock at night. I can always remember them dropping the envelope out of the window of the plane to somebody waiting on the tarmac."
The Evans had never been to the Orakau farm before as Cecil and Jack had only recently moved there.
"We'd gone so far, I said to my wife, we're dashed near out to Arohena again. We've come past where they were. The old Indian chap opposite had gone over and taken the mailbox out because undesirables used to go around when there had been a death like that and break in."
A large crowd attended Cecil and Jack's memorial service at Kihikihi Presbyterian church on December 8, 1979.
"I can always remember about twice a week. My wife was working in Marton at a hardware place. They used to send down portfolios of photographs of rings because we knew Cecil had their mother's engagement ring on and we knew what that looked like.
"We used to have to go around to the Police station and I'd sit there while she'd go through these photo albums. I can remember one Saturday, because I was home, and this constable came up our drive and said, "we've exhausted all avenues of identification and we can't find the bodies of Cecil and Jack". So that was the final."
On the 30-year memorial, Trevor and Margaret heard from Inspector Gilpin that Cecil and Jack were apparently still in the fuselage of the plane. This was the first time they had received any information like that.
Trevor travelled to Auckland for the 40-year anniversary, but it was a different atmosphere to the previous memorials.
"I've been to quite a few of them and boy some of them get pretty heated but this one, there wasn't a murmur the whole time. Nobody objected."
At the private ceremony at Government House, Jacinda Ardern apologised on behalf of the government and spent time with the surviving relatives.
Trevor attends the memorials each year, a promise that he made to his late wife.
A scene guard is in place, and inquiries continuing, police say.