Karamea Cemetery, Karamea, West Coast.

Date: [unknown]
Location: Ōpārara Loop Road, Karamea

Location
There are two cemeteries in the Karamea District.

Karamea Cemetery is located north of the Karamea River on the Ōpārara Loop Road, Karamea, West Coast, 7893 New Zealand. Coordinates: -41.24760, 172.12975.

Karamea Cemetery Entrance

The old Karamea South Terrace Cemetery is located south of the Karamea River on South Terrace Road, Karamea, Buller District -41.26011, 172.11285. By road the distance is about 5 km. The early 1870s Karamea Special Settlement was also located south of the river.

History
Located 95 km north of Westport, Karamea is a small town adjacent to the Karamea River and the Ōtūmahana Estuary, near the northern end of the West Coast region of the South Island of New Zealand. Apart from a narrow coastal strip, the town of Karamea and its local area are completely surrounded to the south, east and north by Kahurangi National Park. The road beyond Karamea ends at Kohaihai. Used for both the town and the district, Karamea is a Maori word thought to mean "red ochre" or to be derived from of "Kakara taramea" - "the smell of speargrass leaves." Radiocarbon dating of shell middens indicates occupation in the period AD 1400 to AD 1600 and that the site was used by Māori as a temporary stopping place on the route down the coast to collect pounamu.

Special Settlement: In the early 1870s, the Nelson Provincial Government chose Karamea as a site for a Special Settlement Area, partly because the area was known from a gold rush 7 years earlier, but also that it had a harbour with steamers passing regularly along the coast. The first settlers to arrive in Karamea were landed from the steamer "Charles Edward", on 27 November 1874 and were mostly immigrants from four ships that arrived at Nelson between August 1874 and February 1875. Most of the 20 men who were landed and were initially allocated small sections of pakihi – flat boggy land with infertile, waterlogged soil high up on a terrace to the south of the Karamea River, had no experience of breaking in new land. Better land found on the Karamea River flats below the terrace, was eventually allocated. Women and children arrived in January 1875.

" Gold Mining": In his 1877 report on the goldfields of New Zealand to the Honorable Secretary for Crown Lands, Warden Willis wrote that Karamea was a new settlement at the northern boundary of the district under his charge. Warden Kenrick, in 1880, said that mining operations in Karamea were very quiet with a few partties of miners working on the beaches and up the river beds on low flats. By 1895 Warden Stratford reported that there had been no recent developments at Karamea, Oparara or Cascade Creek with none of the large areas taken up being worked.Twenty two special quartz claims had been granted by Warden Rawson in 1909.

Interments
The earliest interments as listed on 30 April 2019, were the few records held for the old Karamea South Cemetery and are dated from 1876 to 1885. Goldmining began during the 1860s and there would have been burials duing those years, but there appear to be no records for those interments. There is also a gap between the last listed burial in the old cemtery and the earliest year listed for burials in the (new) Karamea Cemetery was in 1887 and which is still open for burials in 2023.

John Adams Grave.

John Adams Lone Grave

Separate from both cemeteries, there is a single grave near the Adams Flat Hut (replica built in 1999), about four kilometres north of the Karamea Cemetery . John Adam's Grave and slab hut hut date back to 1882 and the Fenian Goldfield.

John Adams died 28 February 1882, aged 49 years, and was buried two days later.

Karamea South Terrace Cemetery

The Karamea South Terrace Cemetery is located on South Terrace Road, Karamea, Buller District, West Coast, New Zealand. Coordinates: -41.26011, 172.11285. There appear to be only twelve known records of interments in there. Eight of these are for infants and children.

Three from the Abbott family were Joseph, 9 hours, buried 23 November 1876; Alfred, 11 weeks, buried 6 February 1877 and Margaret, 3 hours, buried 31 may 1879.

Four adults (and two infants) were:

Peter Coutts, aged 36, buried 22 April 1877; Benjamin Coutts", 85 years old, buried 10 June 1877;

Harriet Scarlett, 45, buried 4 March 1879 with an infant. Her son, John, 1 day old, had been buried in May 1877; and

Thomas Jamieson, aged 84, buried 1 February 1885.

Karamea Cemetery

The earliest known burials in the second cemetery were

Isabella Catherine McHarrie, age 2 years 4 months, buried 19 October 1887. A few months later, in February 1888, Wilhemina Martha McHarrie 1 year 1 month, was also buried.

Bertha Simkin, 5 months, was buried 12 November 1887.

There have been over 550 burials in the Karamea Cemetery. Names with multiple (10 or more) burials in the cemetery include: Allen (12), Jennings (10), Johnson (38), Lineham (16), Lowe (15), McNabb (11), Ray (12), Scarlett (15), Simkin (16), Simpson (33) and Smith (18). There were marriages between Simkin and Scarlett families and others.

The Karamea Cemetery Trust
In association withn the Buller District Council and Westreef, community volunteers keep the lawns tidy, help with operation of the cemetery and have even been gravediggers. Burial average about three or four a year and Karamea Cemetery is one of the least expensive cemeteries in the country in which to be buried.

Links

• Billion Graves [1]
• Buller District Council Council Database
• Find A Grave FindaGrave
• Karamea Cemetery layout and burials. [2]