About 45 graves in Arrowtown Cemetery will soon be adorned with clay poppies, thanks to a former resident, a Nelson retiree, and the village’s Returned and Services’ Association (RSA).
Following this Saturday’s Armistice Day commemorations, marking the end of World War 1, the RSA will lead a community working bee at the cemetery on Sunday to clean up headstones and gravesites, and place clay poppies on the graves of those died in WW1 and WW2.
Arrowtown RSA president Rosemary Chalmers says there were 24 men from the village who lost their lives in WW1, another 19 in WW2 and two during a war in South Africa, buried in the cemetery.
The idea for the clay poppies, made by Nelson’s Brian McIntyre, came from former resident Peter Chisholm.
Chisholm, originally from Invercargill, had a long association with Arrowtown, including two stints as a resident — moving here first, in 1982, to help build The Remarkables skifield and returning a decade later after a stint overseas, before moving to Nelson in 2008.
Chisholm tells Mountain Scene he believes the ‘‘no.1 group’’ this generation should have respect for is WW1 soldiers.
‘‘Just because of what they went through, what they were made to do and what they witnessed — they were lambs to the slaughter.’’
In Nelson, he met Brian McIntyre, who started a group to look after the 150-year-old Wakapuaka Cemetery, which is closed and was neglected by council.
Hard at work: Brian McIntyre, of Nelson, works on a large-scale clay poppy
‘‘You’d come across a marble headstone, where mum and dad had died, and their son was mentioned as ‘died at Gallipoli’, or somewhere overseas.
‘‘I thought, ‘there must be some way to recognise them?’’’
He subsequently asked the Nelson Community Potters to create clay poppies to be placed on those headstones, which were ultimately funded by Chisholm.
Initially, 600 were made, some of which were placed in Nelson, before the Remembrance Army got wind of the project and wanted some, McIntyre says.
With the community potters short on time, the 81-year-old learnt how to make them himself about two years ago.
To date, he’s made more than 6200, some of which will be placed on resting places in Arrowtown on Sunday.
Chalmers says while it’s been tricky to contact relatives of those lost in WW1, many of the families of people who died in WW2 are ‘‘really supportive’’ of having the poppies put on their loved one’s headstones.
‘‘It’s really lovely to be able to have them recognised,’’ she says.
‘‘It’s really important — lots of people walk around the [cemetery] and for people to see, ‘he served for our country’, it’s pretty special.’’
Along with popping on the poppies, Chalmers says Sunday’s work will also include a headstone clean-up, identifying where further repairs might be required and organising for that to happen, and for crosses to be placed on some unmarked graves at a later date.
Armistice Day commemorations begin at the bottom of the Arrowtown cenotaph at 10.45am on Saturday, with the community clean-up, at which anyone’s welcome, from about 11am Sunday.
