Bells will toll for 257 dead

Cathedral bells will toll 257 times in Hamilton tomorrow morning, once for each victim of New Zealand's worst peace-time disaster.

Church services nationwide will mark the 25th anniversary of the tragedy in which the 237 passengers and 20 crew of a DC-10 sightseeing flight to Antarctica died when the plane hit the base of Mt Erebus on November 28, 1979.

Seven Anglican cathedrals have received melted snow from Erebus to sprinkle in memory of those killed on Air New Zealand flight TE-901.

Services will also be held at Scott Base and nearby McMurdo Station in Antarctica, which will be attended by Sir Edmund Hillary and Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff.

Water taken to Antarctica from New Zealand's highest peak, Aoraki-Mt Cook, will be used to honour the Erebus victims.

Mr Goff hopes to fly by helicopter, weather permitting, to a memorial cross near the crash site about 50km from Scott Base to lay an artificial wreath on Air NZ's behalf before rejoining Sir Edmund for the services.

Sir Edmund will read a poem which Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship winner Bill Manhire composed in Antarctica for the occasion.

The Hamilton service will start at 9.45am and include another poem about the disaster, by lay Canon Jocelyn Marshall, a prominent hymn-writer who lost three aunts and an uncle from both sides of her family on Erebus.

Auckland will host three ceremonies, of which a noon service at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Parnell will be the main focus of the country's commemorations.

This will be preceded by a simpler service at 10am at a memorial garden established at Auckland Airport for the Erebus aircrew.

The final memorial will be a wreath-laying ceremony at 4pm beside a mass grave at Waikumete Cemetery, where 44 unidentified victims were buried after a marathon effort by police and autopsy teams at Auckland University's Medical School to identify the rest.

Governor-General Dame Silvia Cartwright will give the main address at the noon service.

Bible readings will be delivered by Maria Collins, widow of the Erebus flight captain Jim Collins, and by Air NZ chairman John Palmer. A period of silence to honour the dead will be broken by a solitary bell at 12.49pm, the exact time of the crash a quarter of a century ago.

IN MEMORY

Services tomorrow for the Erebus crash victims include:

* 10am, Auckland Airport.

* 10.45am, St Peter's Cathedral, Hamilton.

* Noon, Holy Trinity Cathedral, Parnell.

* 4pm, Waikumete Cemetery.