A former Oamaru man wants to do something to remember the lives of hundreds of people whose graves were destroyed at the Oamaru Old Cemetery in the 1950s.
Research in the 1990s confirmed the general ground of the Oamaru Old Cemetery, marking the graves of as many as 800 people, was levelled and grassed in the 1950s, and another 360 plots were created on the same piece of ground.
The original plots, blocks 101 to 116, lay below the current block, 209 to 220 along Perth St.
Geoff Pye, now of Cromwell, has made a submission to be considered for the Waitaki District Council's Reserves Management Plan suggesting appropriate signs be provided at the cemetery to include, but not be limited to, names, dates of burials, block and plot numbers and, where available, maps or plans of the old general ground area.
Another consideration is a memorial beam of some type where families can place small plaques in memory of family members whose graves have been lost.
''My family has two relatives buried there, for me it is a great shame that there is now no way of paying respect to them,'' Mr Pye said.
He also believes there are other areas in the Oamaru Cemetery that might have been affected.
Mr Pye has set up a Facebook group called ''Oamaru's 'Lost' Graves'' to gather information and assist family researchers to better understand what happened.
He is also gauging interest in his proposal to erect a more detailed memorial.
''My main thrust is that there should be more recognition in it. There's a lot more interest in genealogy now, and it's very confusing,'' he said.
''A group approach will be an advantage in pursuing this.''
Mr Pye was in Oamaru on Monday and Tuesday and met Oamaru historian Helen Stead to discuss in detail the history of the area.
Between 1866 and 1959, the Oamaru cemetery was managed by the Oamaru Cemetery Trust.
The cemetery, subsequently becoming known as the Oamaru Old Cemetery, was divided into blocks according to religious affiliation.
General ground was set aside for those who, for whatever reason, were not buried in these blocks.
In 1959, after the area was levelled, grassed and reallocated for new burial blocks, the management was transferred to the Oamaru Borough Council.
Mrs Stead said she had been pushing for recognition in the form of a physical memorial, including a map of the original plots, for about 20 years.
''If for no other reason, so it doesn't happen again,'' she said.
After extensive research, Mrs Stead, who shares her knowledge of the history of this incident during her guided tours of the cemetery, said there were still many details of the cemetery's history that remained a mystery.
She said the original general ground, known as the ''pauper's ground'' , was hilly and rough.
The decision to reconstruct the area was made at a time when the Cemetery Trust was ''mismanaged'', having lost many members during World War 2.
Heather Clark, the daughter of monumental mason Ernest William Williams, remembers being ''horrified'' as the headstones were dumped and ground reallocated in the 1950s.
As a child, Mrs Clark spent a lot of time at work with her father at the Oamaru Old Cemetery.
''I do clearly remember [reconstruction] happening and being very upset about it,'' she told the Otago Daily Times, from Australia.
When her father found out that headstones had been removed and taken to the dump, he took ''as many as he could'' to Williams Bros Oamaru Ltd, at 59 Greta St, where they lay alongside the building for years.
''I don't know what happened to them, which is a pity, really,'' she said.
Many of the dumped headstones were likely to have been made by either her father, or her grandfather, Ernest Albert Williams, also a monumental mason.
''It'd be interesting to know where they [headstones] are. I'd really like to know where they finished up,'' she said.
Mrs Clark, who has lived in Australia since 1979, said she was pleased Mr Pye had raised the issue again and was determined to get answers.
Waitaki District Council parks officer Mike Kwant said Mr Pye had initiated discussions and council would be watching with interest to gauge community support for a more detailed memorial.
As well as a plaque, in memory of all those buried in the general ground between 1872 and 1953, Mr Kwant said the Lees, Moore and Evans families erected a headstone in 2006, in recognition of their 14 family members whose graves had been affected by the destruction of original graves.
A memorial book was prepared by the Waitaki District Council in 2000, naming and detailing all of those whose burial sites, between blocks 101 and 116, were disturbed.
It is now on the council website, after a request from Mr Pye.
