Skeleton discovery made during beach walk

A French tourist has discovered a human skeleton on a beach at Cape Reinga that Far North iwi say is from ancient burial grounds they recently had to “tidy up”.

Clment Vix stumbled across the bones on Tuesday while trekking along Werahi Beach, just a few kilometres south of the northernmost point of New Zealand.

Vix reported the skeleton to police the same day, through the Paihia police station intercom.

However, the 32-year-old tourist said: “I’m not sure the information was taken seriously.”

“We were just walking on the sand dunes and we found some bones. You could recognise everything directly. There is no doubt [the bones were human].”

The Weekend Herald has seen photos of the skeleton but at the request of local iwi have not published them.

Vix yesterday followed up his initial approach to police and sent an email with photos of the bones and GPS coordinates for the find.

Police confirmed they had received Vix’s report on July 28 and were making further inquiries.

However, it was not clear if police had been up to the site.

Far North iwi Nga¯ti Kur¯ı trustee Sheridan Waitai was distressed when told the bones had been uncovered.

“Those are our old burial grounds. We had to bury a whole lot during Covid to try to tidy up the area.

“A lot of the tourists hunt around for them and uncover them. Which is one of the reasons why we had the road closed and didn’t reopen it, to give us time to move those bones and bury them into certain places.”

State Highway 1 was closed 5km from Cape Reinga from March 26 to May 29 by Nga¯ti Kur¯ı for spiritual and cultural reasons during lockdown.

Waitai said they would send someone from the iwi today to deal with the unearthed bones.

“It’s a shame that these ko¯iwi (human bones) have come forward. Its will be because of the moving landscape with the weather and so much rain.

“We will be deploying a team to sort out and bury them once the weather has cleared up again.”