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Hokitika Cemetery

West Coast, South Island

SEAVIEW

Out of town and out of sight, seaview is an elevated plateau with excellent views of the Tasman Sea. The place is abandoned and windswept with its history as a mental asylum. The mental facility spreads over 150 acres with timber buildings still labelled with their original use. At its peak there were over 500 residents, the town’s jail, chapel and swimming pool.  It is a dilapidated area and access is by walking up the hill towards the ghosts of former residents. Fittingly the area is used for search and rescue exercises by the police training units. The Hokitika cemetery is at the back of the Seaview complex.

Hokitika Cemetery

Hungerford Mausoleum was built to house grief. The grand monument has the two infant sons of Thomas Walter Hungerford and his wife Eliza (née Delany). Both the sons were also named Thomas Walter and died in Feb 1873 (aged 18 months) and Feb 1874 (aged 10 months). Local court bailiff Thomas Christian (d. 2 April 1878 aged 52) is also buried in the mausoleum. The grand monument is unusual in New Zealand rural cemeteries. The Victorian edifice is an excellent example of the early use of concrete.

Hokitika, West Coast, South Island, New Zealand
Hokitika, West Coast, South Island

INTERESTING FACT

Drowning, either while crossing the Hokitika bar or attempting to cross a river, was such a common death that it became known as the West Coast Disease, and between 1865 and 1870 more than 40 deaths by drowning were recorded.  Amongst the earliest burials in the cemetery are those who drowned after a boat ferrying passengers from the steamer SS Lady Darling to shore, on 29 July 1865, was overwhelmed in the surf: Allen Thomas, Robert Turner, Edward Samson, unknown Thompson, John McIntosh, George Hawkins and Henry Heron or Hearn.

Wikipedia

Chinese burial practices with firecrackers, the burning of funeral paper money and the clashing of cymbals deeply upset the locals in 1898. The local paper was full of complaints and subsequently Chinese interments were allocated to a distant part of the cemetery. In 1902 15 Chinese graves were disinterred for return to China. The bodies were on the ill-fated SS Ventnor which sank outside the Hokianga Harbour.

INTERESTING FACT

The first Jewish burial in the cemetery was in 1872. John Lazar, who had been Mayor of Adelaide, Provincial Treasurer and a prominent Freemason, was buried in Hokitika in 1879.

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