DOC orders driveway shift after Maori graves found

File photo / BOP Times

A Taranaki family have been told to move their 100-year-old driveway after the Department of Conservation found it runs across 160-year-old Maori warrior graves.

The driveway was unknowingly built across the graves of six Maori warriors who were slain during a tribal feud, Don Slater, of Bell Block, said.

Access to the property is beside the Taumata Historic Reserve which marks the site of the ambush of a Puketapu chief and his party in 1854.

Puketapu spokesman Grant Knuckey told the Taranaki Daily News the Slaters should act immediately, now that the gravesites had been correctly identified.

"You don't go driving over people's cemeteries. It's very distasteful. It [the new driveway] should have been done a long time ago."

After discovering the graves DOC said the Slater family needed to relocate their existing driveway, move the fence line and phone cables.

However, Mr Slater said moving his driveway would cause traffic problems.

"There will be more skeletal remains [through traffic crashes] if the proposal goes ahead."

The driveway was on a sharp bend and near the cattle underpass, he said.

"We have asked for a meeting at the gate [with all parties] to sit down and find an acceptable solution," Mr Slater said.

"There are huge issues to consider here."

- NZPA