Urn with no name found in Hawke’s Bay orchard two years after being swept in during Cyclone Gabrielle

• A Hawke’s Bay orchardist found an unmarked urn while picking up rubbish at an orchard near Ōmāhu Marae.
• Shanae Tong handed the urn to Reverend Zhane Tiopira Tāhau, who is trying to find the whānau.
• Tiopira Tāhau hopes to reconnect the urn with its whānau or lay it to rest if unclaimed.

An unmarked urn thought to have been swept into a Hawke’s Bay orchard by Cyclone Gabrielle has been found almost two years on.

Now the search is on to find out where it came from and whose remains are in it.

Korokipo Rd orchardist Shanae Tong found the grey urn with no etched words on the outside sitting under a grass patch that she walks past almost daily on Monday, January 13.

Tong works on an orchard on Korokipo Rd, near Ōmāhu Marae.

She was picking up bits of rubbish around the orchard, which is roughly 500 metres downstream from St John’s Church in Ōmāhu, and was on her way back to the main shed at the end of the day when she saw “a bit of white” sticking out from the grass.

“I just went up to it and low and behold – it was an urn,” Tong said.

Tong said the orchard she works on was swamped by flooding in Cyclone Gabrielle in February 2023.

The Reverend Zhane Tiopira Tāhau, the minister of Ōmāhu Marae, and the urn that was found in an orchard nearby. Photo / Jack Riddell

Since then she has continued to find debris including bale wrap, logs and other miscellaneous rubbish hiding in grass and under branches at work, but nothing of significance until she found the urn.

“I just thought ‘oh god, this is someone’s loved one, this isn’t good’ and thought to myself ‘what the hell do you do?’”

Tong posted a picture of the urn to social media and an overwhelming response from locals told her to take it down the road to Ōmāhu Marae, whose urupā (burial site) across the road at the church was desecrated by the cyclone flooding.

Tong then got in touch with the Reverend Zhane Tiopira Tāhau, the minister of Ōmāhu, and she handed over the urn to him on Friday after a karakia.

Tiopira Tāhau is now trying to find out who the urn belongs to, though he isn’t certain it is from the urupā.

“We’ve completed a massive search for human remains scattered right throughout the community, as far as a kilometre down the road,” he said.

“So, it wouldn’t surprise me if it did come from our urupā, but we’re still trying to work that out.”

Tiopira Tāhau said the urn could have come from another property flooded further up the Ngaruroro River but was hopeful someone would recognise the shape, colour or design.

“The main thing is we’re just really hoping to be able to reconnect them with their whānau and where they come from,” he said.

If no one does come forward to claim the urn, Tiopira Tāhau will consult his community on the best way forward, but says he will most likely lay them to rest.

“At least we’ll know where they are if a person or a whānau ever reach out,” he said.

“But if they are one of our whānau or if they were displaced from the urupā, we are very thankful that they’ve been returned back.”

Tong said she was happy she found the urn and got the word out about it, but she was still sad someone had lost a family member.

“It is a little bit upsetting but at least it’s found, and he or she is not sitting in a random orchard without anyone knowing where they are.”

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and spent the last 15 years working in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin, and Napier. He reports on all stories relevant to residents of the region.