Waikumete Cemetery, all 108ha of it, is joyful in its sorrow. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Joanna Mathers visits Waikumete Cemetery, a place of rest for 90,000 humans and the site of the 1918 Influenza Memorial – the last truly deadly global pandemic.
When summer's at its height, the light in Waikumete Cemetery takes on a hallucinatory quality. The gentle slopes of the old section are particularly susceptible to the magic: tumbledown and crooked headstones the only solidity in a shimmering sea of green.
Earlier, the wildflowers bloomed. Exotic escapees and descendants of flowers laid on graves in decades past, parts of Waikumete are now a wildflower sanctuary. It's a rarity, the unchecked growth of these interlopers but here they exist in harmony with New Zealand natives and provide a feast for insects.
Waikumete Cemetery, all 108ha of it, is joyful in its sorrow. It holds the remains of 90,000 humans: the oldest graves date back to 1886. There is so much tragedy here – a section for stillborns, graves holding entire families. It's also stunningly beautiful and, for those who like joy tinged with pathos, quite heavenly.
Cemeteries have always held a special fascination. When I was much younger, I spent an evening travelling around Auckland in a double-decker bus listening to The Smiths. One of the stops was a cemetery: "Meat is Murder" was graffitied on its stone wall.
Symonds Street Cemetery was another favourite when I had a predilection for tight black PVC and listened to Bauhaus. It made sense then, 25 years later when I relocated to Glen Eden, that Waikumete would be a magnet.
It is a place to linger, to walk with the pre-schooler or take slow car rides with my mother.
On the hills are mausoleums for the West's wine families – the Corbans and Nobilos. The Muslim section, with graves uniformly facing Mecca, is nestled next to a Jewish burial ground. It's Auckland's history in (often crumbling) stone.
Waikumete Cemetery took on a particular significance with the arrival of Covid-19. It's the site of the 1918 Influenza Memorial– the last truly deadly global pandemic. One hundred and twenty years later, here we are again. Aotearoa, in our small and sensible way, knocked the bugger off: beyond our bubble, it rages, unabated.
The last pandemic arrived in New Zealand as World War I ended. The unsanitary and cramped conditions of soldiers fighting in the war saw the contagion spread quickly overseas.
Its source of its entry into our country is uncertain but, when a false Armistice Day celebration on November 8, 1918, saw New Zealanders taking to the streets in celebration, its spread was exacerbated. It peaked over the next few weeks.
Killing an estimated 9000 New Zealanders within three months, the 1918 flu's symptoms included fever and shortness of breath. As lungs were deprived of oxygen, the skin would turn blue. The lungs would fill with blood and victims would suffer nosebleeds and coughs, drowning in their own fluids. It was a fast - and often deadly - process.
Waikumete Cemetery is the final resting place for around 450 of those taken by the flu in 1918.
Linda Bryder, professor of history at University of Auckland, explains that when more space was needed to bury the bodies piling up in Victoria Park (being used as a temporary open-air morgue after the city's morgue became too full) a special train was put on between the city and the cemetery.
"Once the coffins arrived at Waikumete station, they would be placed on a cart, drawn by horses, to [Waikumete's Chapel of Faith in the Oaks]," she says.
Here the bodies would rest, briefly, before being buried. The burial spaces were allocated according to faith: Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, non-conformist. Or for those without the means (or family) to afford a headstone, a pauper's grave in the public burial area.
There are many ummarked graves in the cemetery.
Thirty-five men were employed at Waikumete to dispose of the dead. They would work all day, heaving soil and, when it grew dark, they would dig by lamplight.
The 1918 flu hit certain demographics particularly hard. People aged between 20 and 40 were particularly susceptible; as were Māori. Of a national population of 51,000, 2200 Māori would be killed by this flu.
The total death toll of 9000 represented over half of those killed in the four years of the war.But the duration of the Spanish flu outbreak was less than three months – starting in October 1918 and ending by Christmas.
The black slab of stone honouring the 1100 plus whose lives were taken in 1918 by the influenza outbreak is located in the Anglican Division E section of Waikumete Cemetery.
It states, in part: "This memorial marks the final resting place of many of the 1128 men, women and children who died as a result of New Zealand's worst epidemic." Behind it is a long rectangle of raised ground, intersected by slight indentations.
The location of the memorial and the wording has led to a grisly urban myth: that Waikumete is the site of a mass grave. That victims of the epidemic were thrown into a pit, hurriedly covered with dirt.
This myth was lent gravitas by being featured in the beautiful Finlay McDonald and Ruth Kerr-edited tome, West: The History of Waitākere, published in 2009. It states Waikumete is "home to a mass grave, filled with most of the 1128 Aucklanders who died in the influenza epidemic of 1918".
It's bloodcurdling but completely without merit.
In a rather chilly kitchen space next to Waikumete's main chapel, Auckland cemeteries operations manager Sheree Stout shows me a record of who is actually buried in the space behind the memorial.
"You can see that the dates on these records – there were no burials here past 1915," she says.
"This was three years before the influenza epidemic. But I've been told they still teach this [the existence of the mass grave] in history classes at high school."
Stout has a long history with the cemetery, acting as the head sexton until recently and living on site. She loves it here ("I've not seen any ghosts but I'd want to") and knows its labyrinth of plots and sections.
We drive along "snakes gully" an old section with a multitude of twists and turns and past "goat hill", an undesirable, hilly section where at least one murderer, who was hanged, is buried.
When Covid-19 hit, it was Stout's role to find land in Auckland's cemeteries for potential victims.
"It was really hard to estimate how many we should allocate: we eventually decided on 600. None of these plots have been used."
Comparison is useful here. Without lockdown, Covid-19 could have been so much worse.
Bryder explains that while there was a public health response to the 1918 epidemic, medical science was so lacking that authorities were ill-equipped to make informed decisions. They tried.
"In 1918 public health authorities banned public gatherings and in early November, Auckland closed all schools, pubs and hotels, public halls, billiard rooms, shooting galleries and other places of entertainment. Race meetings and dances were cancelled," she says.
But it wasn't strictly enforced. One the supposed "treatments" was an "inhalation chamber" in the Auckland Post Office, where the sick would gather en masse to breathe in steamy air to clear their nasal passages. A breeding ground for contagion.
The lockdown of 2020 and the subsequent eradication of Covid-19 from the New Zealand public, is striking in contrast.
"The approximately 9000 people killed in the flu pandemic in 1918 would equate to 42,000 deaths today," explains Bryder. "This is why lockdown was so vitally important."
Post-lockdown, Waikumete Cemetery has been busy.
"It's been really surprising, just how many people have been visiting since we came out of lockdown. For everyone one person we may have had visiting a body of a loved one, we are now getting three or four."
In 1918, many of those whose loved ones died were too sick themselves to farewell their loved ones.
"In some cases, a number of bodies have been interred at a time when relatives or friends have been incapacitated by illness," reported the New Zealand Herald, November 22.
"A complete record has been kept and, by applying to the Town Hall, relatives and friends will be advised of the exact location of graves."
It was not a failsafe process: "There were arguments in the cemetery between families over who was buried where," says Bryder.
These records remain. During my visit Stout takes me to a locked room, filled with filing cabinets. They contain the typewritten details of all those buried at Waikumete, including the flu victims.
"It's often the best way for us to locate the details of those who are buried here," she says.
The details all exist digitally but, "a misplaced letter can make it impossible to track down someone online, so we can come here to the original documentation."
In the fever dream of the Covid-19 world, happiness is elusive. But at Waikumete, contemplating our past and our present, it's impossible to not feel a depth of gratitude: for sensible leadership, for our "team of five million" and our commitment to each other.
At Waikumete Cemetery, the final resting place for so many killed by the ravages of pandemic, such gratitude can take on the flavour of joy.
The shorts are designed to be worn over everyday clothes.