Huon Gray, with daughter Jane Kinghan and granddaughter Cassandra Kinghan, wants to save his grandfather's gravestone. Picture / Alan Gibson
One hundred years ago this month Waihi man William Gray lost his life in a nightmare mining accident.
Trapped beneath the ground when fellow miners went on strike, the 33-year-old father of three was unable to escape explosions meant only to detonate rock.
Now his grandson, 81-year-old Huon
Gray, wants help to restore the elder Gray's gravestone - a majestic, skyward-pointing angel bought with compensation from the mining company.
In the past two years, Huon Gray, a World War II veteran who lives in Waihi, has seen the angel develop a forward lean as the ground beneath the grave subsides.
He fears the angel will collapse, robbing the Coromandel town not only of a century-old monument, but a relic of mining history.
"It wouldn't be nice to see it fall on its face," he said.
Standing about 3m tall, the carved angel was commissioned by Mr Gray's grandmother, Gertrude, with some of the hefty £3000 payout she received.
"She went all out," Mr Gray said.
He learned the story of his grandfather from Gertrude, who told him that William was part of a gang contracted to sink mine shafts while others dug for gold.
On the morning of the accident, he had gone down the shaft to place explosives to blast away rock.
By 12 o'clock, he had lit the slow-burning fuses and was ready to go up.
But the men operating the hoists to pull Mr Gray's gang to the surface went on strike at midday, leaving the men underground at the mercy of the dynamite.
Huon Gray is not sure if anyone else died, but said his grandfather was left with a large chunk of rock embedded in his forehead.
"In those days, the doctors weren't game to remove it and he died three days later."
William died on November 13, 1906 and on the gravestone is remembered as a "devoted husband and father".
"Loved and respected by all who knew him," the inscription reads.
The angel tomb is about 1km from the historic Waihi pumphouse, which has just been moved 300m to save it from collapse.
Mr Gray hopes engineers will help with a smaller but no less worthy preservation effort. "What I need most is muscle and some mechanical method of propping [the angel] up."
