A meeting was held recently to resurrect the Ida Valley Cemetery Trust, following the cemetery's restoration. More than 140 people, many of them descendants of people buried there, gathered at the site in October 2010 to mark the work.
The first burial in the cemetery, of John Trenbirth, was 140 years ago, and the most recent burial was in November 1945, trust chairman Jeff Sawers, of Alexandra, said. After that the cemetery trust went into recess.
"Now the cemetery has been restored and the trust reformed, the cemetery will be reopened again for interments as part of our service to the community," he said.
"There are people that have already expressed an interest, who want to be buried there and are keen to buy plots, and of course, there are many families with links to this area and to the cemetery."
The cemetery group planned to register itself as a charitable trust, Mr Sawers said, so it would then be able to seek funding to undertake more work, such as installing concrete beams as a base for headstones.
Known both as the Moa Creek cemetery and the Ida Valley cemetery, the facility is near the old Moa Creek Hotel on Crown reserve land. It is surrounded by farms.
Although there are 16 marked graves, a total of 34 people are known to be buried there.
Mr Sawers wants to hear from anyone with information about the people in the 18 unmarked graves, as the trust tries to piece together the site's history.
Ground-penetrating radar will be used to hopefully locate all the unmarked graves.
The first burial on the site was on flat land, near a small hill, but most were on the hill crest.
Two Chinese headstones from the cemetery, which had been stored at Central Stories Museum, have been cemented back into their original site. They face east, while all the other headstones face north.
There are plans for an entranceway interpretation board listing the names of all those known to be buried there.
The cemetery trustees are Mr Sawers, Devon Beechey, of Christchurch, and Jillian Cameron, of Bannockburn, all descendants of those interred, and Russell Nevill, of Moa Creek, who owns an adjacent farm.
