Bluff's WW1 memorial to George and Ian (Roy) Mckenzie once again stands tall on Bluff Hill, after up to 40 locals and members of the original search party helped carry and raise a new flagpole to the fallen Southland brothers on Saturday afternoon (11 Nov).

The Bluff siblings were both killed on 27th September 1916 at the Battle of the Somme.

The new flagpole and plaque, the culmination of a 4-year community restoration project, replaced the original totara pole that was crafted and erected by the brothers' father Alexander McKenzie in 1918.

Up to 40 original search members and locals help carry the new Mckenzie Brothers memorial flagpole to the original site on Bluff Hill. Photo: NZ Remembrance Army/Facebook

Nature, wildfires, the elements and time had all but lost the brothers' original memorial, until a chance conversation overheard by Bluff RSA member Peter Robertson reawakened the story and prompted a search to refind the long lost site.

Volunteers physical searches through Bluff Hill's gorse, blackberry and regenerating scrub had proved futile.

However on the 6th November 2021 a helicopter, funded by a Bluff local and carrying two senior citizens who remembered the original flag pole, successfully narrowed the search area.

The original totara Mckenzie Brothers Memorial flag pole is found under bracken. Photo: NZ Remembrance Army/Facebook

This led search volunteers Mervyn Guise and Martin Mackereth to an overgrown outcrop.

As Guise and Mackereth fought their way through the bracken, they struck what they thought was a fallen tree.

But as the pair scrambled over it, Mackereth ran his hand across the trunk before famously saying to his search mate "trees aren't square are they?".

The pair had finally located and unearthed the missing flagpole that had been lost for over six decades.

News of the discovery was quickly radioed back to fellow search member and Southland war memorial restorer Ann Robbie.

Sensing the significance of the moment Robbie, also an experienced bagpiper, immediately struck up her pipes to sound the success to the delight of the other distant searchers.

The heavy century-old flagpole now resides on permanent public display at Bluff's RSA museum.

The new flagpole, funded by the Department of Veteran Affairs and locals Vaughan and April Fisher, was specially designed to withstand the environment.

Robertson said he had mixed emotions as he reflected after the completion of the job.

He said he felt sorry for the people who weren't there now, especially Ann Robbie (who died earlier this year after a battle with cancer), but also absolutely rapt for the people who had been there for the whole journey; the search team, the carry down team and the locals.

"The people who got in behind it were bloody amazing," he said.

Robertson said after the last team of volunteers had finally bolted the new flagpole into place and raised the flag, they sat for a while talking.

While thinking of the two lost Bluff brothers, the thought that immediately came to everybody's mind was, "[would] be nice to hear the bagpipes."