It ruled an empire, once...

Year 9 student: What does 'le Pays de Galles' mean?
Teacher (me): Wales. Do you know where that is?
Student: Isn't it in that island above France?

High in the Andes

Great excitement in the household yesterday when the Firstborn, who's doing a week's internship at the NZ Herald, got a story on the front page. All her own work: idea, undercover research, interviews and writing. And she wouldn't tell me her source - very professional. Even more thrilling, the story was taken up by National Radio, featured on TVNZ and even got into the Sydney Morning Herald. What glory!

It was about how to cheat urine drug tests at work, which are evidently becoming quite mainstream here. When I was in Peru, I was faintly astonished that Chuck from St Louis steadfastly refused even to sip a cup of coca tea because he was worried that it would show up in tests back at work three weeks later. Though the leaves are what cocaine is derived from, in this form the effects are very mild, we were told.

The rest of us were drinking it several times daily, to combat the effects of altitude sickness. You'd never drink it for its taste, which was like green tea but more bitter though fortunately weaker. It was kind of a mission for me though, because it was part of the reason I was in Peru in the first place, having studied South America in Geography in the sixth form and been fascinated to learn about the Andean Indians and their physical adaptations to living at high altitude (short stature, larger lungs, more blood to transport what oxygen they could get) and also their dependence on coca leaves. The tea is so mainstream that you can buy it in teabag form, but we drank it like in the photo - our hotels had baskets of dried leaves on the breakfast buffet.

I didn't notice much effect from drinking it, though when I chewed the leaves, which you're meant to do with a lump of wood ash to help convert the chemicals, it certainly made my lips numb. I didn't get any sort of high. Our driver chewed the leaves constantly, to keep from getting sleepy on the long, long, long Panamerican Highway, and on the winding roads up through the Andes. All the Indian people did: it's such an old custom that statues and portraits of them have one bulging cheek.

Our highest point was the pass between Arequipa and Chivay, at 4800 metres. We certainly felt the effects of that: nausea, blinding headache, gasping for air but never quite able to take enough in. Our guide, Joana, watched us like a hawk and wouldn't let us nod off even though we were sleepy, because then we'd breathe more shallowly and feel even worse.

We stopped at the pass which was scattered with cairns of stones: apparently not just a Been Here thing, but a way to get a wish. Bending over made the headache worse, so I just put one pebble on top of someone else's cairn. Afterwards Joana told me I'd just reinforced that person's wish - but by then we were lower down and I'd got what I'd wanted anyway: no more headache.

That trip around Peru, it was a struggle at times, but it was absolutely brilliant.

Hier le monde

It's a French day today: teaching it at school and talking to the French assistante in the staffroom, writing a Reunion story in my free periods, answering a request for captions for a New Caledonia piece in next week's Herald (I think). Oh, and a friend is going to Paris soon for the first time, and is naturally excited about that.

So, France? Reunion? Mauritius? Tahiti? Monaco? New Caledonia? Akaroa? There are so many French-speaking countries that I haven't been to: Vietnam, Switzerland, Belgium, the Seychelles, Vanuatu, Quebec... and that's not mentioning all of those in Africa, where I have yet to set foot. The French were all over Africa like a rash: the British were such busy colonists, you can forget that the Frogs were at it equally enthusiastically. But they were, and just as insensitively.

That was the nub of the New Caledonia story: that after years and years of being dispossessed and oppressed, the native Kanaks are gaining standing, pride and a future in the tourist industry. Naming the fabulously designed, yet curiously empty, Cultural Centre after the indigenous rights leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou (a brave man despite his girly name) was a start - but even better is their adoption in July of the Kanak Freedom Flag as the second official flag of New Caledonia, to fly in tandem with the Tricolour: the only country in the world to have two flags. Maybe one day, they'll all get along well enough to agree on one flag for everybody.

(Having said all that, I ought to mention that only this year was it agreed that the Tino Rangatiratanga flag should be allowed to be flown here on Waitingi Day.)

Absolutely!

I went to the launch the other night of the new Tourism Australia ad campaign here: "There's nothing like Australia". It's their latest attempt to come up with something as brilliantly effective as 100% Pure New Zealand. They've had some spectacular failures, it has to be said, such as the famously duff "Where the bloody hell are you?" in which the controversial line was delivered with an astonishing lack of conviction by the, er, distinguished Lara Bingle. Then there was the $40 million they invested a series of ads directed by Baz Luhrmann linked with Australia the movie - which unfortunately turned out to be a real clunker (though the scenery was spectacular).

This one also has its critics. "So negative to have 'nothing' as the key word" one told me. "Hokey," said another - and sure, that irritating earworm of a jingle is musically pretty uninspired. But it sure is belted out with great enthusiasm, the photography is excellent, and they even managed to get a bit of humour in there ("That's not a bear"). The whole feel of it evokes Paul Hogan's "Throw another shrimp on the barbie" ads so many years ago, and the casual, unsophisticated, fun image is clearly what the Aussies feel comfortable with - and why not? Let's hope it does the business for them.

It's a clever move to have got the Australian public contributing to the website, and even cleverer to have made provision for Kiwis to insert their own recommendations. New media - the way of the future.

The presentation was pretty dramatic, in a black room in the Hilton with dry ice swirling about, the whole thing started with a tremendous didgeridoo performance by a man wearing a suit of lights, followed by dancers ditto. Simple but effective.

The didge was the best bit for me, played with an electric guitar accompaniment: an unlikely combination, until you've heard it. I came across it for the first time at an Aboriginal arts festival last year at Barunga in the Northern Territory. We'd sampled the roasted turtle in the daytime, watched the spear-throwing competition, admired the art, listened to stories and then, after dark, sat on the grass to listen to the concert. It was our second of the trip, and Nicky Bamba at Merrepin had been so good that this one wasn't measuring up at all - until Yilila came onstage. They were brilliant: didge with electric guitar and drums, energetic dancing, great singing, traditional dress. Unique. (Photo by Peter Eve)

Tremor-ndously sad

In sympathy with the Canterbury earthquake, we've had a sinkhole of our own open up in the henrun, quite big enough to swallow a dozen chickens.This one's caused by stormwater and is, so far, a mystery to the three separate contingents of Council workmen who've come to look at it and suck their teeth before going back to the depot and passing the buck to yet another department. It looks like being a saga that will run and run.

Auckland isn't much bothered by earthquakes, not being near a fault-line (though, it must be said, the one under Christchurch was a surprise to all the experts) - our threat is the arguably more dramatic possibility of a volcanic eruption. Further down the North Island, they've had a bit of seismic action this week, raising the eyebrows of the general population though the geologists are unexcited. Down in Canterbury, they've had more than 300 after-shocks up to 5.4 on the Richter scale, which are prolonging the agony for the people who are tired and edgy, and pushing some buildings into the next category of damage: green to yellow to red.

News footage of big diggers biting away at old friends on the streets has been upsetting: architects have said, "Pah, they were thrown up in the first place and had no great aesthetic merit" - but we ordinary people liked them, they were part of our daily lives and it's sad to see them go. It's hard not to suspect the demolition people of a certain gung-ho enthusiasm, and the architects of salivating over all those opportunities to make their own mark on Christchurch.

It's such a pretty place, with its brick and stone buildings, green parks and big trees, with the Avon gliding through the centre of the city edged by weeping willows and busy with bossy Mallard ducks. It's the Garden City.

Strong

Poor old Christchurch is battling with high winds now - just what you want when an earthquake has wrecked your roof and left buildings teetering. There have been some amazing pictures coming through, of gaping cracks in roads, crazy-paved paddocks and huge changes of level, and horrifying cracks in the walls of the brick and stone buildings that give Christchurch its character - but most dispiriting of all are the districts where liquefaction took place, the water-logged sandy soil pouring up to the surface and burying floors, gardens and roads under a thick grey sludge.

One of the worst-affected parts of the city is Avonside, built on the floodplain of the river, where there's been lots of damage to houses. I'm wondering how my old school has coped, Avonside Girls' High. In the city, thankfully the Cathedral and the Arts Centre (formerly the Canterbury University Townsite, where I did most of my degree) were earthquake-proofed a few years ago, and have apparently stood up well to the shaking. I remember when I was at school, the engineers came through and we had scaffolding up for ages as various bits of decorative mouldings were removed from the roof and frontage as they were deemed quake hazards - but when I was there in '02 for the 75th Jubilee, they appeared to have been replaced. Does this look earthquake-proof to you?

We used to have earthquake drills at school, as well as fire drills. At the command "Drop!" we had to scramble under our desks, or kneel down with our hands over our necks, facing away from the windows if we were in the hall, until the shaking stopped, and then use the fire exits. My fourth form teacher was Miss Oliver, a short, immensely fat woman with an even more immense double frontage, who amazed and appalled us all by not only crawling under her table too but, with a great deal of puffing, then got back to her feet and, defying the laws of physics, squeezed herself through the hole in the platform outside the window (our classroom was in the old homestead of the property the school was built on) and climbed down the ladder. An astonishing sight. I bet she boasted about it for years.

The new Art Gallery, by the way, it turns out is the Civil Defence command HQ: what faith that shows in the trustworthiness of tempered glass.

Feeling shaken

Whoa, 7.1 earthquake in Christchurch early this morning! Centred only 30km outside the city and, even onlier, 10km deep - or shallow, rather. News shots are showing collapsed buildings in the city centre, rubble in the streets from fallen masonry, huge cracks in the roads, sink holes, lots of flooding from burst water pipes, state of emergency declared, curfew in place tonight. Nobody - so far - killed, thank goodness. And it's a sunny day there today, which is a blessing.

I remember the Inangahua earthquake in 1968, also 7.1, but centred about 160km north-west of ChCh. That one happened early morning too, and I woke with my bed shaking, the blinds banging against the window frame and all the neighbourhood dogs barking. That's the only big one I've ever felt, and from what people are saying, it was nowhere near as violent, prolonged and frightening as this one.

There's been talk of having to rebuild the city, but that sounds rather alarmist: it's not like the 7.8 Napier quake that really did destroy the town in 1931 (so it was recreated as an Art Deco city). This one looks to have done a tiresome amount of infrastructure damage - amazingly though not to the futuristic, all-glass Art Gallery - but probably Christchurch will look much the same again once it's all fixed. Eventually: it's going to take ages. I hope it will get back to its familiar, pretty self, anyway. It's my home town!