Calls for Erebus memorial

The Mount Erebus disaster claimed the lives of all 237 passengers and 20 crew on board. Photo / File

A Hawke's Bay man whose parents and sister were killed in New Zealand's worst air disaster will give a drive for a national memorial another "nudge" when he meets with new Tukituki MP Lawrence Yule on Friday.

David Allan, who took parents Malyon and Marjorie Allan and younger sister Jane from the family's home in Remuera to Auckland airport to catch Antarctic scenic flight Air New Zealand TE901 on the morning of November 28, 1979, says the push to have a national memorial to the 257 who died later that day in the crash into Mt Erebus needs to be kept up.

He says the most logical site would be in the Auckland area where the majority of the passengers and crew were from, but it also needed to be somewhere where people could visit and reflect.

New moves to reflect the enormity and national significance of the tragedy come with the approach to the 38th anniversary next Tuesday, Mr Allan saying "excuses and procrastination" have been frustrating, and along with other family of those who were killed sees little issue with whether a significant memorial should be put in place.

In September he called on political parties to state their support or otherwise, John Key (now Sir John) having said when he was Prime Minister that he favoured one.

Memorials have been placed on Mt Erebus and other places, including at Waikumete Cemetery in Auckland.

However, a group which includes Erebus families says: "There is presently no public memorial in New Zealand for the accident where all 257 names are together."

The patron of the Erebus National Memorial group is Lady June Hillary, whose second husband was the late Sir Edmund Hillary.

Her first husband was Peter Mulgrew, who died in the Erebus crash, and who had been a student of Malyon Allan's at Greenwich Naval College in England.

A spokesman for the group, the Rev Richard Waugh, said it had first approached the Ministry for Culture and Heritage about a national memorial early last year.

"There's frustration, particularly from families, that there hasn't been more advance."
He said the group had sent emails about the matter to three ministers in the new Government, including to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who is also the Minister for Culture and Heritage.

The group wants a national memorial to be ready for the 40th anniversary of the disaster in 2019. It envisages a "special place for the families affected by the tragedy, and for all New Zealanders, to remember the accident".

Rev Waugh indicated the group's frustrations had been made worse when "Pike River has had such attention" - a reference to the Government's creation of an agency to make decisions on manned re-entry of the West Coast coal mine in which 29 men died in November 2010.

He said New Zealand continued to be profoundly affected by the Erebus tragedy.
"We have been pleased to work with the ministry ... but progress has unfortunately been very slow."