Sacred to the Memory of
GEORGE STANLEY
(signalman of H.M.S. Geranium)
who died June 30th 1919
aged 26 years.
He has answered the signal.

HMS Geranium

Arabis Class Sweeping Sloop. Launched 8th November 1915. Transferred to Australian Navy in 1920. Used as a target and eventually sunk on 24th April 1935.

Quarantine Burials on Somes Island

Most of the following names appear on a large memorial monument adjoining the Somes Island Cemetery and the road from the wharf to the top of the island. It seems likely that more quarantine burials occurred than are known about, and that only by searching the records of each ship quarantined there that most burials will ever be known.

Originally many of the graves had their own headstones or markers. However, around 1970 the Dept. of Agriculture decided to gather up the what was left of the scattered headstones and replace them with a single large monument. One headstone, that of the signalman of the HMS Geranium, was subsequently reinstalled by the War Graves Commission. Another, that of Mary Rudman, is still in its original place.

The monument lists the names shown below and is headed with the inscription: "This Memorial was erected in 1971 in honour of those who died on Somes Island. They are interred in the burial ground in which this monument stands or elsewhere on the Island."

After thirty years stored in the bull pen/stable, four inscribed headstones and two others that have lost their inscriptions (a wooden cross and a concrete slab) were laid within the wooden picket fence surrounding the monument in late January 2000. These were then rededicated.  

In late Winter, many clumps of jonquils appear and flower around the area covered by the old cemetery.

There are no internees buried on Somes Island. This is because most died off the island (i.e. in hospital) or, as in the case of the only WWI death on the island, his body had to be taken to Wellington for an autopsy. They are buried at Karori Cemetery.