Spe­cial com­munity projects to be unveiled

Rachael Comer
12 Dec 2025

It will be a Sunday full of his­tory in Timaru with the unveil­ing of a monu­ment to those with unmarked graves in the town’s cemetery, and the open­ing of the new home for a spe­cial life­boat.

At 10am, a memorial for those who rest in free ground and unmarked graves will be unveiled at the Timaru Cemetery, in memory of more than 700 people who were never given a marker of their plot.

A com­munity-led project, his­tor­ical researcher Roselyn Fauth began look­ing for Ann Wil­li­ams’ grave site in late May after research­ing the region’s whal­ing his­tory and real­ising her burial loc­a­tion did not appear in any records.

In unsuc­cess­fully search­ing for her rest­ing place, Fauth also learnt of the site in Timaru’s cemetery that did not have grave­stones. They formed what was known as the “pau­per sec­tion” of the cemetery.

Fauth thanked those who had enabled and sup­por­ted the project, includ­ing Timaru monu­mental mason Les Jones.

Burial records pub­lished by the Timaru Dis­trict Coun­cil show more than 700 people rest in “Row 0” and the sur­round­ing unmarked sec­tions, Fauth said.

About 250 were still­born babies.

“For dec­ades, their pres­ence has been known only to the quietly kept registers and the small num­ber of fam­il­ies who car­ried that loss.”

Fauth said it had been “deeply sober­ing” learn­ing about the indi­vidu­als in Row 0.

“I had assumed that fun­ded buri­als were only for those who were poor, but that was not always the case.”

She said some people had been passing through the dis­trict when they died, some had no next of kin who could be reached in time, while oth­ers were vic­tims of acci­dents, sea res­cues, pan­dem­ics or viol­ence. “Some were wid­owed and left with almost noth­ing to live on. They were real people, with real stor­ies and a wide range of back­grounds.”

She was grate­ful that the coun­cil and the gov­ern­ment ensured every­one could be bur­ied with dig­nity. “Yet it is still sad that those who could afford to buy a plot had the priv­ilege of a memorial, while oth­ers car­ried the social weight of a pau­per’s grave.”

Mean­while, at 2pm on Sunday, the his­toric Alex­an­dra life­boat while be pulled by cly­des­dales to its new home at Timaru’s Car­oline Bay behind the Sound­shell.

The build­ing has been an almost twoyear fun­drais­ing project for the Timaru Host Lions Club, after it launched the $350,000 project to get the boat out of stor­age and back out on dis­play again.