This article was first published in the Tararua Tramper Volume 91, no 9, October 2019
A Ramble to Kime, Karori Cemetery
August 14 2019
Karori cemetery is just the place for a leisurely ramble along narrow roads and paths, with tidy plots near the entrance and a wilder unkempt look the further in you go. Cabbage trees, eucalypts and tree ferns drop their branches everywhere and small trees grow in grave plots.
We found May Vosseler’s family plot with Fred Vosseler’s ashes buried underneath her plaque. Then a tidy little plaque for the first person to be buried in the cemetery-Frederick William Fish, a premature infant who died on 3rd August 1891. It was interesting that all the Chinese graves we saw, many in red granite, were beautifully kept.
The grave of Esmond Kime is somewhat broken and the lead lettering hard to read on the discoloured stone. He died in Alpha Hut in June 1922 but his name lives on through the huts we still use. More wanderings, reading headstones, having lunch near the Greek Orthodox inhabitants then Carole led us to a magician’s grave which, according to tradition had his broken black wand attached to the concrete slab.
Two weeks later a couple of us went back to clean the Kime headstone with water and detergent which made the lettering clearer for a photo.
- Party members
- Margaret Foden (scribe), Carole Haigh, Virginia Frost, Barbara Ogilvie, Kath Kerr, Ann Wild, Peter Nixon and Jean Morgan