Whangarei District Council will hold a ceremony next week to mark the return of smashed headstones to a cemetery that was bulldozed 50 years ago.
About 1100 people were buried in the cemetery between 1880 - 1940. The council demolished the cemetery in the 1960s, saying the site was too wet and hard to maintain.
Cemetery manager Helen Cairns says people with ties to the cemetery were upset when contractors found headstone fragments in the Onerahi seawall where they were used as fill.
She says the pieces of headstone will be blessed and returned to the old Kioreroa cemetery on Tuesday, to form part of a new memorial.
