Repairs underway at Hautapu cemetery

Work is already underway this morning on repairs to the Hautapu cemetery after it was ravaged by vandals on Monday night.

A grass area, berms and graves were deliberately driven on and torn up, causing an estimated $3,000 worth of damage. These costs will come from Council’s general maintenance budget, meaning other work to keep the district's parks and cemeteries neat and tidy will go undone.

Council’s community services manager Brad Ward said work has begun to remove large amounts of mud and turf torn from the ground, resow the grass, apply fertiliser to the new turf and remove tyre marks brandished into the concrete headstone berms.

Ward expected the damage would take months to repair, given the colder winter months.

News of the damage at the cemetery has reached local contractors and suppliers, including Cambridge-based PGG Wrightson Turf and Parklands Turf Ltd, who have offered to supply free grass seed and fertiliser and sow the seed, respectively, he said.

“We’ve had a huge response from the community. Its obvious people are generally sickened by what’s happened. To have two companies reach out to us quickly, offering their product and services speaks volumes.”

By this morning, more than 162,000 people had been made aware of the issue via the Council’s Facebook page. A post advising of the damage had been shared more than 600 times. Council had reported the incident to police first thing yesterday morning and provided more information late yesterday that had come back from the community.

“We’ve got the word out, and it’s now up to the police to take whatever action is appropriate,” Ward said.

“Our focus is getting the cemetery back up to scratch as soon as possible. These are precious, sacred areas that are valued by our community, and we won’t have them ruined by idiots.”