This is the roadside memorial to the 29 miners of the Pike River who lost their lives in the 2010 explosion. There is a larger Memorial Stone in Greymouth, laid in a ceremony in 2011.
The presence of this memorial is all the more poignant for those affected as none of the bodies were ever recovered from the underground mine. A battle for entry to the mine has raged ever since the day of the blast, going well beyond the safety reasons first cited, becoming legal and political. In 2017, the newly elected Coalition Government appointed a Minister responsible for Pike River Re-entry, (Andrew Little) and a Pike River Re-entry agency.
There is a proposal to have the mine land incorporated in Paparoa National Park and the Great Walk under construction there to include the mine site. New Zealand Songwriter Dave Dobbyn wrote a piece called 'This Love' for the Orpheus Choir of Wellington in 2013.
Here in this layby memorial park beside a valley electrical substation, is a collection of family and individual memorials that only symbolises a resting place for the unrecovered men. This is where protests and gatherings take place when the discussion around the re-entry to the mine gets heated.
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