Location: Domain Avenue, Timaru
Access: Public cemetery, visit respectfully
Associated years: First World War, Second World War and later returned-service remembrance
Associated people/groups: Commonwealth war dead, returned servicemen, families, widows, children, descendants
Timaru Cemetery tells the quieter afterlife of war. The New Zealand War Graves Project records separate areas for services’ interments and notes 7 Commonwealth burials from the 1914 to 1918 war and 18 from the 1939 to 1945 war. NZ History also records official First World War graves at Timaru Cemetery.
This stop is not only about those who died during war. It also connects to returned service people, veterans who died later, family memorials, children left without parents, widows, and people whose service shaped the rest of their lives. Cemeteries help visitors see that war did not end with an armistice or surrender. It continued in bodies, families, finances, grief and memory.
The cemetery and the Crematorium are key locations for ANZAC services.
Find a WuHoo: Look for military symbols, service numbers, regiments, family inscriptions and names also found on school or town memorials. This area is well marked. If you stand at the memorial wall, look north and then slightly west, there is an area where a large tree once grew. The tree has gone and the area has very few headstones. I am told that this area was used to bury those who died from influzena. The flu was brought to New Zealand after the war.
