Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Wandering boots that wander tour: Day 17 Day in the cemetery




By the numbers
1 cemetery
4.32km
6,210 steps

At first I was not sure what I was going to do today once I woke up, but being in Whangarei has been the relaxing part of the trip so far and you never know the day could have been pretty easy. I learnt that I would be visiting the cemetery at Maunu as several family members happen to be there.

Once I sorted myself out and was ready to leave, Claude drove out to the Maunu cemetery in Whangarei as the plan was to check on my great grandparents grave. Here was my other grandparents I wanted to have a look at since I knew the grandmother had passed on earlier this year and I wanted to see if she had been placed with her husband down within the ashes plot, I had been there last around 2008, which says how long I was down that part of the cemetery. Claude and I found the Lissington plot pretty quickly as we were going to lean the growth off. I used a paint scraper, while not the official tool to use but this wasn’t something like a historic grave. The moss did move pretty well and later on we were suggested the use of bleach to get the grime out where the name cavities were. After placing fresh flowers, we sought the advice from several workers as we wanted to talk to the operators about an issue to do with burials. I was fascinated as these guys were headstone / stone masonry type people and they were lifting a headstone onto the back of their truck maybe to include more words. They actually helped to arrange with the caretaker or an appointment since he wasn’t in the area in an hour or so.

After chatting to the workers, we were looking for several other headstones that I was generous enough to turn my data on for the Whangarei Cemetery search. We were in the correct area, but had to look at nearly every headstone for the Alexander grave. I couldn’t see it, but Claude did find it. We hunted down several other people in the family. It was then the day was starting to heat up a little bit and I was feeling hot. I wanted to find Jim Watson’s ash berm as I had wanted to know if Marjorie had been placed with him. Since it had been around 2008 that I had last been there, I couldn’t quite remember exactly where he was and it was annoying. Turns out Berm D was a little further down than what we had thought and it was Claude who found him. I would have likely missed him as I was pretty sure the last time I had seen it the stone had been bright and cheery. It wasn’t this time around and no additions to the ash berm. It was by this time that we could visit the cartakers office and soon found we could use existing graves for ash internments and would be cheaper. You could after playing tetris place around 24 lots of ashes onto the one plot. I found this to be interesting.

I wanted to do two things after leaving the cemetery other than having lunch. I wanted to visit Kmart where I would buy two new pairs of shorts as the pair I have with me has several holes in them and need replacing and I got a shirt for good measure. Sure an extra pair of clothes, but this will sort me out while I travel on the rest of my trip. I found the lady at the checkout to be pleasant and that the Christmas rush had already started. I thought it strange that there were no CDs or DVD in the Kmart store in NZ.  The last thing I wanted was to visit Reyburn House as they had a book on the Hokianga that I wanted, but I also wanted to see if they had any other books on the local area. Last time I bought a book on the Hokianga it had been the last one in print at the time. Funny how I can seem to find hard to find books, but those I dont lend to anyone at all. They may travel with me, but I will post them sometime soon. Once we got back home, Donna turned up to show us some one home movies that had been recorded onto digital as they were old ones that could have been from at least the 1960s if not earlier so that was a pretty good job to do so. Another type of family history preserving by saving old video recordings to save for future generations. All I seem to be doing is looking up old newspaper articles, but I think I find plenty of other things regardless. 

Link

Whangarei cemetery search

No comments:

Post a Comment