People power

My regular walking circuit includes, just before the dreaded 132 steps, a flat concrete bridge across a small creek that drains mainly stormwater from the hill behind. It's an uninspiring affair, usually clogged with pine needles and leaves and other vegetable detritus which is overlaid each high tide by junk from the inner harbour which includes a dispiriting amount of plastic. The creek opens onto our only beach, which scarcely deserves the word, since it's more mud than sand and is constantly being colonised by mangroves, which get hoiked out now and then by the Sea Scouts whose hut stands over the water.

There are, um, prettier parts to my neighbourhood. But that may change, because this morning there was, head down and hard at work, an Asian man dressed in spotless white shorts and tshirt, busily raking debris out of the bed of the creek. He'd already worked along the scant stretch of sand at the edge of the beach, and made small piles of leaves, pinecones and other untidy things. I was delighted to see such public-spiritedness, even though I imagine he's probably just moved in nearby and is wanting to improve his outlook. I told him what a good job he was doing and that myself, I probably wouldn't have worn white to do such mucky work. He smiled cheerfully but clearly didn't understand much of what I'd said, so I waved and went on my way.

Asian people and rakes: such a busy combination. And so effective! If you include brooms and besoms too, there's nothing they can't leave looking better than they found it.In China we saw them scratching away in parks, public monuments, streets and building sites where here we would break out something macho with a motor, or at the very least an electric plug. It's good to be reminded of what people can achieve with simple tools, if there are enough of them - or even one man, if he's persistent. I'll be trotting down that hill tomorrow, to see what he's accomplished.

(I must say though, I was astonished in Xiamen, a big modern port full of skyscrapers and fancy new cars, to see a trail of little old men with shoulder yokes carrying rubble out of a building that was being altered, and dumping it in a pile on the footpath. Would a chute from the window into a truck have been too high-tech? (And none of this is to mention India, where women roadworkers still carry tin bowls of gravel on their heads.))

Thanksgiving

No pumpkins around here, or chrysanthemums or Indian corn cobs hung decoratively by their crisp dry husks. No turkeys either, apart from those sitting in the supermarket freezers waiting for the Christmas rush. And no tradition, lovely though it is, of taking a day every year to count blessings and be thankful for them and the friends and family you're sharing them with.

But I bet there aren't many people in New Zealand today who haven't looked at the sun shining on fresh green leaves, bouncy lambs, sparkling water, bright flowers and the faces of those friends and family, and been thankful that they're here, alive and cheerful and with good things to look forward to. Most of them.

Sorrow floats

So that's that, then. Another explosion this afternoon, even bigger than the first, which last night we learned had lasted 52 seconds and reached temperatures estimated to be around 1200 degrees. It's vindicated the decision of the po-faced police superintendant, who we were starting to dislike, who had stuck to his guns that no rescuers should be allowed down the tunnel while there was still the risk of another blast.

The chief of the mine, a former miner himself and a rumpled, open, straightforward bloke with bags under his eyes that have got bigger by the hour, is now anxious to recover the bodies but the possibility is that they may never be recovered: the mine may simply have to be sealed and abandoned as too dangerous to work.The levels of methane and carbon monoxide are still extremely high.

Seeing the parade of faces of the miners on television tonight was very sad: good guys, family men, cheerful in their photos, who'd signed on to do what they knew was a dangerous job, but never really thought they would die down there in the dark.

Who does? There's danger everywhere. Sometimes it's signposted, sometimes it's not. Mostly we get away with it. Sometimes we don't. Carpe diem.

Slow burn

Unlike up here in Auckland, it's been a hot, sunny day down on the Coast today. A good day to get out in that beautiful green and blue scenery and enjoy nature at its best, chill out, get life back into perspective.

None of that's been happening, of course. It's Day 5 and a rescue seems as far away as ever. There's bubbling discontent with the role the police have chosen to play, with the apparent foolishness of sending an unprotected electronic robot into a damp mine, with the short-sightedness of drilling one hole at a time down to the tunnel, with the refusal to allow family members to go to the mine entrance. People are getting angry.

They've been patient up till now, but they're reaching their limit, imagining their sons, husbands, brothers, sitting in the dark, waiting and waiting and wondering why no-one's coming for them. And that's the good scenario.

The rest of us around the country are reaching our limit, too. It seems time for someone to step forward and take some decisive action.

It's grim out west

Still no news - just heart-breaking details about the men trapped in the mine. Actually, one of them isn't: he's a boy, turned 17 the day before the explosion, and down the mine on his first day on Friday, too excited and eager to wait for his official start as a miner, which should have been today. What can you say?

The new bore hole isn't quite through yet. The gas situation is unknown, and potentially very dangerous for both miners and rescuers. Time is ticking away, and the visible effects of the blast that's damaged and blackened the opening of the mine is weighing on people's minds. There's a growing unease that this is going to end badly.

The West Coast has always been somewhat separate from the rest of New Zealand. It's historically remote, on the far side of the Southern Alps, wetter than most places and harder to earn a living in, whether mining for coal or gold, logging or farming on land that's really not designed for it. The Coasters take a more liberal view of some laws, have different priorities and standards; and they're tough. They'll shore each other up through this. There won't be much of that touchy-feely stuff that the media will be hanging out for. They're private. But it's going to be hard for them.

Still waiting

No news isn't always good news. It's been two days now with no contact with the trapped miners and, it seems, precious little progress towards their rescue. The problem is the gas hanging in the tunnel, that could easily be ignited by a random spark caused by the rescue party; so they're kicking their heels above ground waiting for the painfully slow process of flushing the methane out of the mine.

It must be agonising for the families of the men, waiting and waiting, with nothing so far to fix their hopes on, and trying not to notice that, more and more, the media are using the word 'recovery'.

It's not, by a long chalk, the Coast's first mining disaster: it comes with the territory. The last big one though was back in 1967, when 19 were killed in an explosion at the Strongman Mine. Of the others, the worst is the one in the mural above, on the wall of the Greymouth Star newspaper building. The Brunner Mine explosion in 1896 killed 65 miners - imagine that.

The cause was fire damp - methane - which hadn't been adequately cleared by the ventilation system. Already attention has focused on problems with the ventilation in the Pike River Mine - which is working the Brunner coal seam. Plus ça change, eh?

The 29

All eyes on the West Coast now, where 29 coal miners have been trapped over two kilometres inside a tunnel by an explosion at Pike River Mine north of Greymouth. Coming so soon after the Chilean rescue, it seems to be all too familiar a story: anxious family members at the mine entrance, officials making statements of no substance, reporters swarming to the Coast from all over the country, and everyone else with their fingers crossed, trying to imagine how it must be for the men trapped in the dark - which is the best scenario so far.

Without wishing to sound flippant, I have some idea, because last Friday I was deep inside a cave system at Charleston, also north of Greymouth, with Howie from Norwest Adventures. We spent several hours altogether getting to the cave entrance by minibus, minitrain and on foot, and then sweating through the dark togged up in thick neoprene and helmets before finally emerging along a river, floating on an inner tube and bumping over some rapids. Those inner tubes were a pain to carry as we scrambled through the tunnels, up and down steps, over boulders, squeezing through small gaps and narrow corridors, bent over when the roof lowered, and I had to remind myself frequently that I'd be glad of it in the end, and that at least I wasn't dragging a boat - completely in vain - for months through the Outback like Charles Sturt.

It was a good trip, though pretty physical, and the glow-worms at the end were spectacular, much better than at Waitomo - but the most memorable bit was when we stood in a huge open area, turned off our headlights and, at Howie's suggestion, imagined how we would cope if we'd been one of Los 33. Even knowing there were eight other people right beside me and we were doing this for fun, it was disturbing to lose sight and hearing so completely. Though in Chile they had light in their shelter, it was still a salutary experience of the isolation and vulnerability they must all have felt.

No-one at the moment has much of an idea what the conditions are for the trapped men at Pike River. All we know is that there was an explosion caused by methane gas and 29 are missing. Tense times.