In February 2011, 104 relatives of the 257 people who died when an Air New Zealand flight hit Mt Erebus in 1979 visited Antarctica. They are shown here at a service at Scott Base, where a koru memorial was placed. This was the second Erebus disaster memorial in Antarctica. The first was a cross located on a lower slope of Mt Erebus.

In 2004 (the 25th anniversary of the tragedy), New Zealand poet Bill Manhire wrote a commemorative poem, 'Erebus voices':

The Mountain

I am here beside my brother, Terror.
I am the place of human error.

I am beauty and cloud, and I am sorrow;
I am tears which you will weep tomorrow.

I am the sky and the exhausting gale.
I am the place of ice. I am the debris trail.

And I am still a hand, a fingertip, a ring.
I am what there is no forgetting.

I am the one with truly broken heart.
I watch them fall, and freeze, and break apart.

The Dead

We fell.

Yet we were loved and we are lifted.

We froze.

Yet we were loved and we are warm.

We broke apart.

Yet we are here and we are whole.

(Bill Manhire, Lifted. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005)