Hello Robin...
Not sure if this what you meant but here goes :-)
Depending on how much effort you want to put into it there are several ways to find death or funeral records in NZ, although most require you to actually be NZ-based.
As John said, the easiest is
BDM NZ Historical deaths. This website lists deaths of people born before July 1931 (eighty years ago). Also all deaths pre-1961 (fifty years ago), which is not what you want.
As Althea said the
NZSG Burial Locator CD can give you a year of death and a place of rest. Plus sometimes a note of what papers ran a funeral notice. Available at most medium sized NZ libraries. Very comprehensive pre-2000-ish. Less so post-2000-ish.
You can
search individual cemetery databases if you have a rough idea of the location. It's basically what the Burial Locator does although it's more up-to-date.
Most medium-sized libraries also have the Dept of Internal Affairs produced microfiche listing B's, D's and M's from the mid 19th century up to 1990. However if all you know is a name (and not a year of death) it means you have to look through a lot of fiche to find each individual. And then the only info you will end up with is a year and a location. Plus a folio number which will enable you to order a death certificate.
I think BDM microfiche were discontinued in 1990 and from then on all NZ BDM's have been on Disk/CD (but I may well be wrong :-). Auckland Central Library is the only place I know of which has a publicly accessible
BDM NZ 1991-97 on computer. Other major libraries may hold the CD as well.
The
Enid Seton-Kellaway Collection is a compilation of death notices from New Zealand newspapers 1957-1984 available on fiche at several local libraries.
The Evening Post Obituaries Clippings Collection 1927 - 1977 a.k.a
The Jim Pearce Index is a searchable CD of the Wellington-based Evening Post newspaper, available at most larger libraries.
The Press, a Christchurch-based newspaper, has a downloadable index of death notices from 2000 to 2010
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/about-us/reader-services/2259796/Death-Notices-List-of-NamesYou can search the Auckland-based newspaper, the
NZ Herald, for death notices from the last year-ish (although it says from 1 Jan 1900). The searching is actually carried out by a US-based search engine so is pretty indiscriminate as to what constitutes NZ.
The
Napier Library Newspapers Index is a general collection of names, but includes B's and D's, from 1986 to 1999 from the (Napier) Daily Telegraph and its successor Hawke's Bay Today from 1999 onwards. The database is still a work in progress.
The
NZ Card Index and
Index New Zealand (INNZ), plus their predecessor
NZ Biographical Clippings, 1890-1988 are all general databases but all list many deaths. The first two are on-line, the third is on microfiche (but I do wish ancestry.com would digitise it as it's very comprehensive)
Memory Tree and
NZ Obits are commercial websites which both index death notices from NZ newspapers. They cover from 2006-ish onwards. They're primarily pay sites but their indexes are helpful.
If a person has died and left a Will the NZ Archives search engine
Archway will sometimes have a record of it. This can give you a rough year and location.
I'm sure there are many other resources but nearly all of the ones I've mentioned are available at a local library or available online so are easy for us newbies to access.
Regards
Beg
