Ooh look! Something dreadful!

Geologists and seismologists probably can't believe their luck. There they were, tucked away in their laboratories with their rocks, fingering their core samples and quietly growing beards, and now all of a sudden reporters trailing cameramen are fighting each other to get them on national - international! - TV. Very exciting for them, and they probably don't mind that they're being asked the same basic questions over and over, that any twelve year-old could answer if they'd paid attention in geography.

I relieved in a geography lesson yesterday at school, and the absent teacher - clearly desperate - had just scribbled down 'Ask the HOD for an earthquake DVD' on the cover form. The first one he supplied about Kobe (ha! old news) wouldn't play properly, so instead we watched one about Haiti. "It's a bit gruesome," I warned the class of 16 year-olds. "There are lots of bodies, apparently." They weren't fazed: "Bring it on, Miss!" they said. But when it came to it, the shots of bodies falling from digger scoops into trucks, being shovelled into mass graves, of amputated limbs and bloody bandages, were shocking for all of us.

Even more shocking, in its way, was that the Haiti earthquake was over a year ago now. It was such huge news at the time, but faded away so quickly that when the anniversary came round the reaction was "Oh yeah, Haiti. How's it going there?" And of course the answer is, "Pretty much unchanged". But in the meantime our attention has flitted elsewhere, to the Chilean earthquake, to that volcano in Iceland that inconvenienced so many Westerners, to the fires in Russia, the floods in Pakistan, Pike River, the first Christchurch earthquake...

And now it's Christchurch's turn to be the curtain-raiser, forgotten as soon as the main act begins, eclipsed by something so much bigger and more dramatic. It's a valuable reminder, actually: that the suffering and struggling go on well after the world's grasshopper attention has flicked off somewhere else.

Not everybody's like that, of course: the Japanese USAR team (Urban Search and Rescue - the latest acronym we've become depressingly familiar with; less chilling even so than DVI, disaster victim identification) were preparing to leave last night after spending several weeks here searching for, amongst others, the remains of the Japanese students in the CTV building; and now are on their way back to Japan - not going home, but to their next mission. I hope they get to rescue some people alive this time.

Rise Up Christchurch*

It's been three months now since the Christchurch earthquake. The figures are appalling: $15 billion in losses and costs, making it proportionally twice as costly as Japan's quake and tsunami. In the central city there are 900 buildings to be demolished; in the suburbs, over 200,000 badly damaged homes. There are 300 km of broken sewers. And then there are the 185 people who died, and those who've had limbs amputated and other serious injuries.

There was a telethon on TV, the usual thing with celebrities doing silly things and urging viewers to donate, which they did; and there were also heartening accounts of survival, endurance and community spirit. Everyone has ideas about how to rebuild the city, and right now the main feeling is for low-rise, naturally enough with memories of the CTV and PGG buildings so fresh. It looks as though there's going to be some spirited debate about the Cathedral and the other signature buildings that everyone knew and loved: rebuild as they were, or replace?

There seems to be an idea that to put them back as they were would be architecturally dishonest and unimaginative, especially as they were anyway only mock-Gothic, built in the second half of the 19th century; and that the result would be fake. But that's what they did in Germany, when they lost so much of so many cities. Most of what I was delighted by and took photos of last week was reproduction, rebuilt in the 1950s and later to look medieval, reconstructions of buildings that had been destroyed. Evidently much of those half-timbered frontages with their decorated plaster and slate roofs are literally facades, with modern buildings behind. Is that dishonest?

There are plenty of new buildings, towers of glass and concrete, that architects presumably took pride in designing - but they aren't what I wanted to record in photographs; and they aren't what would have given the citizens comfort and reassurance after they had lost so much during the war. I do so hope that the people who rebuild Christchurch give at least equal weight to emotion, as to intellect.

* I'm afraid I don't know who to credit for this amazing photo taken from the Port Hills of the city at the moment of the 22 February earthquake, when Christchurch history split instantly into Before and After.

Broken

This is the statue of John Robert Godley that stands opposite the front of Christchurch Cathedral. Stood. It's now on the ground, broken, covered in dust from the collapse of the cathedral spire which lies in pieces scattered over the steps in front of the building. The cross from the very top lies in the rubble, still attached to part of the tip of the spire, 8 metres of it that was rebuilt in 1888 after an earthquake. Though the copper-green of the replacement was in startling contrast to the grey of the rest of the spire, it was such a familiar sight that people forgot what it signified. They'll remember now.

Godley was the founder of Canterbury and oversaw the establishment of Christchurch in 1850, so it's symbolic that his statue has been toppled from its base. It's not destroyed, though, and it will be restored. It's too soon to think about what will happen to the Cathedral and all the other historic and beautiful buildings that have been wrecked, though it seems inevitable that many of them will have to be removed completely.

At the moment the focus is of course on rescuing the people who are still trapped inside collapsed buildings, and on identifying the dead - 75 so far with 300 reported missing. Then it will be important to shore up the nerves of Christchurch residents, which have been shattered by 4000 aftershocks in the last 6 months, and now this (officially also an aftershock). And of course no-one knows what else may be in store for the city.

It's kind of ironic, but also maybe helpful to think about, that last weekend was the annual Art Deco Weekend celebration in Napier. It was bigger than usual, the 80th anniversary: in 1931 the city was totally destroyed, with 256 deaths, in a 7.8 earthquake, but was rebuilt in the style of the day, Art Deco. Now it's a unique, beautiful and interesting place that tourists flock to and where the earthquake disaster has been turned around into a yearly commemoration that unites the city. One day, I hope that's how it will be for Christchurch.

Daaa, da da, da-da dah...

Wow. One whole year since the first Canterbury earthquake and the end of normal life for everybody living there. Though it was a shock (sorry) at the time, to discover that there were fault lines where no-one had ever suspected them before, what's been more dismaying for all of us since last September 4th is to find that a big earthquake like that 7.1 isn't always a one-off spectacular - it can also be the pilot of a series. A long, long series that, fingers crossed, won't end up taking on the longevity of something like Coronation Street.

A new video of the Christchurch Red Zone shows a city that's almost unrecognisable: full of empty spaces, fenced-off pavements in front of crumbling terraces full of cracks and holes, rough unsealed roads, crooked buildings, heart-breakingly familiar Christchurch icons like the Cathedral all in pieces, surrounded by piles of rubble and propped up with girders - and every so often something apparently completely unscathed, like the tall glass BNZ building, or the Millennium Chalice that looks so delicate. And not one person anywhere.

The only good news from that first quake was that no-one died. I've read that hundreds of times - but in fact someone did that day, of a heart attack undoubtedly caused by the stress. Now that the aftershock count - including the biggies on 22 February and 13 June - is up to 8529, including a 5.1 on Friday and a 3.3 today, it wouldn't be in the least surprising to learn that Christchurch's collective heart is failing. But it's not, it can't, and it won't. Kia kaha, Christchurch.

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.

Three years on from 6.3

Wow, it's three years today since the earthquake that wrecked Christchurch, when Scott the house-painter put down his brush and came inside to watch the astonishing, incredible, horrifying news on TV with me on a hot, sunny afternoon. The quake killed 185 people, not just Kiwis but visitors and students from the Philippines, Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Israel, Turkey, the USA, Canada and Ireland; the oldest was a woman of 88, the youngest babies of 5 weeks and 8 months. It also wrecked the lives of everyone who lived in the city, some temporarily, most long-term, others forever; and no-one in the country remains untouched. Either they know someone who died or, this being the land of 2 Degrees, someone who knows someone who died. Then there are those of us still mourning the loss of the city we knew and loved; and those whose sense of physical security in this faultline-riddled country is now as fractured as all those heritage buildings.

Canterbury's had more than 12,000 after-shocks, most of them piddling but enough magnitude 4+ to keep nerves frayed. The city is full of empty blocks blowing with dust, the roads are still lumpy and littered with orange cones, whole suburbs are vacant, too many people are still waiting for insurance claims to be settled, and the arguments continue over the fate of Christ Church Cathedral, and where to place the blame for the CTV building's collapse.

But life there continues too, and there is plenty of optimism and enthusiasm for the new Christchurch that is - so slowly - starting to take shape. It will be very different from what was there before, and it will be unashamedly new, but also greener, more spacious, more people-friendly. That's the plan, anyway. Right now it's neither one thing nor the other: impossible when you're there to picture it as it was, hard to imagine how it will be. The connections with the old Christchurch, my home town, are for me now mostly memories with little concrete left to anchor them to (actually, lots and lots of concrete, altogether too dominant). I do so wish the earthquake hadn't happened.

In a week's time, though, the news will be all about Japan and Fukushima, also marking their third anniversary of disaster, on so much greater a scale, and the focus will shift away. Meanwhile, in Christchurch, the weeds will keep growing through the cracked foundations of ordinary people's lives.

Hi ho, silver lining

Today the country fell silent at 12.51pm, one week since the earthquake split Christchurch history into Before and After. Except it didn't, really - fall silent, that is. Watching it on TV I could hear, outside and in the places shown on screen, camera shutters clicking, mobile phones going off, cars driving past, the guy next door continuing to clear out his garage. Tch. It would have been nice if someone had thought to ring our church bell to join in with the others around the country. At least the school over the road was quiet.

So it could have been more solemn. I'm sure it was in Christchurch, aftershocks permitting. There was a surprise there today, a pleasant one: the discovery, in the broken-off plinth of Godley's statue, of a broken glass bottle containing a rolled parchment, and a sealed copper cylinder. Time capsules! Always fun, and especially welcome at the moment. The great hope is that it will be a kind of message from John Robert himself, an inspiration from the original founder to those now faced with starting Christchurch over again. Hopefully not a laundry list.

The Museum people must be feeling the buzz. Not only did their building come through relatively unscathed, but they now have their hands on, literally, a piece of history that promises to be of enormous symbolic value to the city.

That top photo wasn't taken in the Botanical Gardens, by the way, or at a private house: it was outside a factory. Christchurch is The Garden City, and Christchurch people like things to be neat and pretty. Sigh.

Four years

It's been a hot, dry summer and Thursday morning was another in a long series of blue-sky days. It was the kind of weather that makes water-blasting the house seem like a treat, compared with, for example, mowing the lawns or weeding. So that was how it happened that I was up close with the window frames and noticed that here and there the paintwork is starting to show sun damage. And although I struggle to remember where I've left my phone or what I had for dinner last night, I know exactly how long it is since the painter was here: four years.

Because four years ago today, he and I were standing in my living room at lunchtime, watching in disbelief and horror the pictures coming from Christchurch, my home town. Christchurch, reduced by a 6.3 earthquake at 12.51pm to a cracked and broken disaster zone where 185 people died, instantly or slowly, in nightmarish scenarios that seconds earlier had been boringly mundane: office, shop, bus. Christchurch, the Garden City, more English than England, a place of wide tree-lined avenues and willows dipping into the placid Avon River, stately mock-Gothic public buildings, neat parks and gardens, and an iconic Cathedral smaller than many English parish churches but truly the heart of the city. In just a couple of terrifying minutes, it became - and has remained - unrecognisable, buildings collapsed, towers leaning, roads cracked and manhole covers risen up, stinking grey liquefaction seeping everywhere like ectoplasm, and everybody's lives changed forever.

In the four years since, progress has been made in resurrecting the city, although shamefully slowly. Whole areas, like where I grew up and first went to school, have been abandoned to nature while new suburbs have sprung up on the western, safer side of the city. The CBD, though still characterised by too many bare blocks of dusty gravel, is taking new shape, coming to life, drawing back the people. John Robert Godley's statue has just been put up again in the Square, though it's a bit damaged and faces a cathedral still in ruins with a future under threat. In some areas, you wouldn't know anything had ever happened - except when you speak to the people living there. Even those who escaped major damage to their homes still see their lives as split into Before and After, and that will never change.

The old Christchurch has gone. The new Christchurch will be a different place: newer, flatter, lower, more spacious. Eventually the ruined suburbs will be attractive parkland. The remaining heritage buildings will be stronger and more valued. Will the Cathedral be one of them? I do hope so. Abandoned by the Church, it's up to the people to save it, which is how it should be.

And then there are the 185 lives lost: all ages, all sorts of nationalities, residents and visitors, some suddenly, some agonisingly slowly in unimaginable terror. They will always be remembered, and not only at the memorial that will be built in time for the next anniversary, beside the Avon as it glides slowly to the sea.

#blog4NZ - Kaikoura

The New Zealand Prime Minister also holds the portfolio for tourism: that's how important it is here; so all the death and disaster news that's hit the world's headlines about the Christchurch earthquake has serious implications for our economy. For three days, #blog4NZ is hoping to reverse that bad image by reminding everyone who's ever thought about coming here - and those who haven't - that NZ will deliver an unforgettable holiday, wherever you go. And that's not in the trapped-under-a-cafe-table-while-the-roof-falls-in sense of unforgettable, either.Try this:

I’m skimming north from Christchurch across the Canterbury Plains towards Kaikoura. The Southern Alps are dazzling against a clear blue sky; the Waimakariri runs deep and wide between its shingly banks; low sun caresses the green curves of hills neatly nibbled by fluffy white, back-lit sheep; vineyards make a geometric tracery of orange and brown. Ahead lie the snow-capped dog’s teeth of the Seaward Kaikouras. Spray-swept breakers roll onto black beaches and thick bush fringes massive headlands bored through by tunnels. It’s an exhilarating drive that ends at with a surprise at Hapuku Lodge, north of Kaikoura.

Perched above a stand of manuka trees, five tree houses command spectacular views. Stylishly simple boxes of wood, glass and copper, inside they’re furnished to a seductive level of luxury. Quantities of goose down and fine linen promise deep sleep; a roomy spa bath overlooks the ocean, the floor is toasty warm and, best of all, there’s a log-burner in the window by a leather armchair inviting long study of the mountains where the wind is blowing snow off the peaks.

Down in the main lodge are more fires and inviting chairs but further up the road there's a secret to discover. Passing hardy surfers encased in neoprene catching waves off the point, I follow a path through the bush to where a pretty waterfall plunges into a pool. Also plunging are dozens of fur seal pups, fat shiny babies with liquid brown eyes. Somehow, three years ago, one found his way up the creek, discovered the fun of diving under the falls, and word got around. Now up to 100 pups can be found there pretending to be dolphins, making the water boil with their playful energy.

There’s much less action at the seal colony around the bay, where their parents yawn and scratch on the rocks. People can ride here from town on Segways, and I take one for a spin. Self-balancing on two wheels, it’s an unlikely-looking vehicle, but turns out to be a Zen machine: just think of a direction, and away it hums.

From the air, the road is a black ribbon threading along the scalloped edge of the land, between long waves breaking on the rocks and mountains hustling down to the sea. Our helicopter swoops over the sea where a resident sperm whale rests on the surface, re-oxygenating for another 1000-metre dive. We watch as he stirs and then tips downwards, the wide flukes of his tail streaming with water as it lifts into the air. He’s hunting fish attracted by the nutrient-rich waters of the deep trench just off-shore…

[Photo Dean Mackenzie]

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!

Step away from the water

Well, here we are, all around the world at the same time watching the same pictures, listening to the same NHK man providing the commentary for the dreadful earthquake in Japan and that terrifying tsunami - which we've just heard may reach this far. Being parochial for a moment, I do hope it doesn't wash ashore at North Beach and New Brighton, Taylor's Mistake and Sumner: it would simply finish off those eastern suburbs of Christchurch.

It's kind of laughable, seeing the film of cars washing down a river, people running across fields as the wave approaches, the fallen buildings, the huge fire at the oil refinery, and hearing reports of three, five, eight people dead. It's going to be thousands, surely. Whether the size of the quake is 8.4 or 8.9 - they haven't settled on a figure yet, less than 2 hours afterwards - is immaterial. Given the way the Richter scale works, either way it's an immense earthquake: an incredible 8000 times bigger than the Christchurch one. And in such a populous area!

It's awesome too, how far the effects are spreading: all around the Pacific. China, California, Peru, Chile, here, Australia, Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji, New Caledonia, the Cooks, Indonesia... even Russia. All places I've been, all people I've rubbed shoulders with, smiled at, eaten with. We're all in the same boat, watching and waiting.

NZ Roadtrip Akaroa: cat, dog and dolphin (not)

There was a 5.7 earthquake in Christchurch today, at lunchtime. It collapsed, fairly dramatically, part of the cliffs at Sumner, and no doubt opened up a lot of cracks around the city. Did we feel it? No, to the Poms' disappointment: we were in the car, and never noticed - though they did at Akaroa, where things fell off shelves. I was just quite glad we weren't in the gondola hanging off the Port Hills - or facing a tsunami along the Avon, in our punt.

Akaroa, on the other side of Banks Peninsula, was founded by Captain Jean Langlois, who missed out claiming the rest of the country for France by a matter of months. Ever since then, the settlement has clung to its Frenchness, which is now of course a wonderful tourism advantage, on top of its prime position alongside a sheltered harbour in a drowned volcanic crater. It's a pretty place, the streets all named Rue this and that, the buildings cute, the Tricouleur flying on the seafront, and an eager Town Crier in a tricorn hat called Steve Lelièvre - the man, not the hat - who genuinely is of French descent - and whose ancestor, François, was the man who planted the cutting that Christchurch's willows are descended from.

As you would expect, food is of great importance, and our lunchtime cheese platter on the pavement in the sun was beautifully presented (by a French waiter), with pork belly, potato salad and toasted sunflower bread. We couldn't linger too long though: we had dolphins to find. Akaroa is home to the world's smallest and rarest dolphin, Hector's dolphin, which is cute and easily identified by its Mickey Mouse-shaped dorsal fin. 

We set off in Akaroa Dolphin's little catamaran, with dolphin-spotting dog Hector on board, togged up in his life-jacket (with its spoilsport Do Not Feed label). Apparently he is the real deal, and we were looking forward to seeing him do his thing - but, sadly, the dolphins were a no-show today, possibly because of the earthquake, since they had been seen that morning. (So, don't tell the others, it was just as well I've been up close to them in the Catlins.) But it wasn't a disaster: it was a lovely day, we saw fur seals and fairy penguins instead, impressive cliffs and salmon farms, went outside the heads, heard history and geology, and had a glass of wine. And afterwards, I even persuaded the Poms to eat fish and chips by the sea as the sun began to set: so, win!

Such very, very bad news

There's just been another earthquake in Christchurch. This time 6.3, less powerful than September's 7.1, but closer to the city centre and shallower, so the damage is very much worse - also the buildings were weakened. This time it was the middle of the day, not the night, and people have been trapped in and under collapsing buildings, and there have been many deaths. They've run out of ambulances and the hospital has been evacuated.

The news and pictures are still coming through from pale reporters with wobbly voices: blood-soaked people are struggling to get out of the city, on grid-locked streets knee-deep in liquefaction and mains water, around avalanches of bricks and concrete, through clouds of dust and aftershocks. I'm horrified and shocked and fearful of the details that are going to emerge.

But already, to see the Cathedral, the heart of Christchurch, without its spire is utterly, utterly heart-breaking. This is my home town.

                                                *******

This lovely building, home to Christchurch's daily paper, has partially collapsed: the upper left-hand section is now missing, the roof has fallen inside and at this very moment there are people trapped under their desks, under the rubble, on the third floor. I do hope Ken isn't among them. He's a big man, he wouldn't have been able to move fast.

This is the Provincial Council Chambers building, clearly already badly damaged, and now the stone part is just rubble. It's just one of many, many heritage buildings, all old friends, that have reportedly suffered severe damage.

But what about the people? There are hundreds and hundreds still trapped in the rubble of so many buildings, old and new, locals and tourists and young foreign students. The news that's to come hardly bears thinking about.

Shake, Rattle and Roll

There was an earthquake last night, down near the bottom of the South Island, a 7.8 - proudly described on the news as 'the world's biggest this year' - but we felt nothing up here in Auckland. Though these are sometimes called The Shaky Isles, the last/first earthquake I've felt was the 7.1 Inangahua one in 1968. I was in bed at home in Christchurch, woken early on a dark winter morning by my Venetian blinds swinging and banging against the window frame, and by all the neighbourhood dogs barking as my bed rolled and shook. It was quite a thrill.

We used to have earthquake drills at school, when the teacher would suddenly yell "Drop!" and we would all have to scramble under our desks. Once we had it in history, and the sight of short, squat, roly-poly Miss Oliver compressing herself under the teacher's table was much more memorable than any of the dates she tried to teach us that year.

After last night's quake, a tsunami alert went out in places like Tasmania and Sydney, but they didn't notice anything much - thank goodness. Even five years after the Boxing Day tsunami, the images are still vivid.

I was in Thailand earlier this year, and spent some days on Phuket. It was hard to connect what I saw with what I remembered from all those wobbly phone camera videos.

>>> After a lovely day out in Phang Nga Bay, on the way back home our boatie stopped at a deserted beach on another island and we floated in the bath-warm water, trying to imagine how it must have been in 2004 when the tsunami swept through this area. It was an impossible exercise, partly because there's no visible evidence, and partly because Phang Nga is so beautiful that death and destruction simply won’t fit into the picture.

It was the same back at Patong Beach, on Phuket itself. We sat in Baan Rim Pa, a fine and famous Thai restaurant where we enjoyed a magnificent multi-course dinner at a table on the veranda, looking down on local families fishing from the rocks below. Out in the bay, lights looped through the dark where the squid boats were working, and a warm breeze made our candles gutter in their holders.

Where we sat savouring fresh seafood cooked to recipes once prepared for the royal family in Bangkok’s Grand Palace, where the polished teak glowed warmly in the lamplight and the brass fittings gleamed, a wall of water had swept through on that terrible morning. There was nothing to show for it. Glasses clinked, people chatted and laughed, there was live music from the bar and the air was scented with jasmine and spices. In Phuket today everything is civilised again.

[Pub. The Press 13/07/09]

Stuff Readers Rail Tour, Day 5 - Air and water

With thanks to Stuff Readers Rail Tour

Naturally, having been to the real thing, the activity offer this morning of the Antarctic Centre held no appeal, so instead I went to do something I'd never done before, despite growing up in Christchurch - kayaking along the Avon River. I went to Hagley Park to meet KT, who set up and runs ChCh Sea Kayaking. She's a real character, and the 3.5 hours I spent with her doing The Big Three tour were great fun. I should say Te Toru Nui, because she is proud of her Maori heritage and there was a Maori element running throughout, beginning with a karakia as we glided along the edge of the Botanic Gardens.

We'd clambered into the double kayak from a step she'd built herself opposite Christ's College, and which she protected from goose poo - "goose bombs" are a hazard on this activity. She'd done the safety briefing (try-hard Air NZ could learn a thing or two from her laid-back humour) and the guys in the other kayak and I felt perfectly at ease. It helps, of course, that the Avon is such a doddle, and we were going downstream on an outgoing tide - but there were distractions.

There were all the neat flowers, shrubs and trees of the Gardens, a bit of a hive of activity at the Boatshed, the tiny thrill of an even tinier set of rapids where the weir used to be, and then the sobering moment we drew alongside the Earthquake Memorial Wall. This marked our entry into the second sector of the Big Three - the city, and new territory for me since I had been punted through the Gardens before. It was really interesting to get a new angle on the city, to slide under the bridges (KT was big on testing echoes with loud cooees), look at the new and the old, the reconstructed and the still propped up, and to discover that there are eels right in the city centre.

We passed a Kate Shepherd memorial I'd never seen before ("That'll teach you guys to go to war and let us learn we can do stuff ourselves") and watched ducks with ducklings scooting across in front of us. We stopped when we got to the Margaret Mahy Playground, and got ourselves a good cup of coffee from the van there before heading off towards the third sector: the Red Zone. Here it got quieter, away from the traffic, and greener, as we passed through the suburbs that were so badly damaged in the earthquakes that the area has been completely cleared and won't be built on again. The gardens remain, though, so there are still trees and flowers, and bee hives, and walking/cycling tracks, and there are heartening plans for a recreational future.

It all looks so different that we passed the site of my school without my even noticing and before long at all were approaching the end of the tour at Kerr's Reach. There had been ducks, geese, swans, shags, eels, whitebaiters and whitebait; history, politics and opinion; some really great stories, and a lot of laughs. I thoroughly recommend a kayak with KT.

Returned by car to Hagley Park, I Ubered then out to the excellent Air Force Museum at Wigram, which was the official tour afternoon activity, and whisked around the professional displays inside the hangars. I especially enjoyed the Captured! section, which recreates the experience of a POW and includes lots of references to Stalag Luft III, with which regular readers 😀 will know I have a personal connection. And then that was it for today - good day. Thanks, Christchurch.

Little furry balls of spikes

"I think I'm over earthquakes now," said the man down the road. I know how he feels. It's all right for you overseas people: I hope you noticed Christchurch, but let's be honest, it wasn't a biggie for you, was it? But we've been living with earthquake news almost daily since September 4, and constantly since February 22. So the Japanese one, though of course it's terrible and frightening and on a phenomenal scale, does feel a bit to me like an earthquake too far. Is that a bad thing to say? I'm still sending money and thoughts and hopes - but I'd like to take a break from disasters.

Today I've been writing again about Tasmania and the missing monotremes: on a wildlife-spotting day out with Craig, he was disconsolate about not being able to rustle me up an echidna or a platypus. The mystery monotremes! There are only two monotremes in the world, you know, and these are they. Monotreme? Egg-laying mammal. Echidnas look like shaggy hedgehogs, and if you don't know what a platypus looks like, shame on you! Go and Google it, because I haven't got a photo.

I did see echidnas elsewhere: in fact, the previous night I'd had to swerve around one on the road mainly, of course, because I didn't want to run it over; but also because I had a jokey driver on Kangaroo Island further north once who said "Never run one of those things over unless you want a puncture". Yeah, probably pulling my leg, you can never trust an Aussie guide - but on the other hand, ? And I saw another, a furry baby, I think, in a carpark of all places, at the edge of the tarmac pushing its nose (ouch!) through the loose gravel to find ants and such. Their hind feet are on backwards, you know. And they can drop their body temperature very quickly and stay in suspended animation for ages - NASA finds that very interesting, evidently.

And the platypus? Spotted that at Cradle Mountain Lodge near the centre of Tasmania just on dusk, lying on its back in the middle of the pond near the main building, having a leisurely scratch. Such very weird animals in Australia (says she, whose national bird has its nostrils on the tip of its beak and lays the biggest egg in the world in relation to body size) (oh, and can't fly). (And actually? Looks a little bit like a baby echidna.)

Taking heart

Would I live in Christchurch again? It's a good question. Before Tuesday the answer would have been yes: it's where my roots are, my father's house is still there (I hope), it's a pretty, neat, historic place where people have good manners and take pride in their gardens, it has the Avon and its ducks, the Court Theatre and the Cathedral, Hagley Park and the Botanic Gardens, the Port Hills and the Southern Alps, the Waimakariri and the patchwork plains.

Now I'm not so sure. So many of the buildings I love have been destroyed or badly damaged, the tidy suburbs are devastated, awash in silt, the roads are wrecked, there are cracks in everything. The thought of all the work that has to be done on unglamorous but essential things like sewage pipes and water mains is just exhausting; then there's the arguing to come over how to rebuild. That's all going to be so wearing.

But mainly there's the loss of trust. I don't blame the people leaving the city, saying they'll never return. They've been taught, the hardest way, that they can't rely on being safe anywhere in Christchurch any more. Who knows when the next earthquake will happen, and wreck everything again? This afternoon? Next month? In 300 years' time?

It will be an act of faith to rebuild the city; and defiance too. It will be hard. It's good to know that it's been done before.

Non summa sequere

There's more bad news for Christchurch, and what's making it worse is that it's not a random seismic event, it's being caused deliberately by the Government. The Ministry of Education has decided that 13 schools in the city and surrounds are to close, with a further 18 merging. All my old schools are on the list: my primary school, Banks Avenue, where, aged 10, I gave a speech at the opening of our new hall, which now looks rather sad; and Shirley Intermediate, which seemed perfectly functional when I went past it recently; and my secondary school, Avonside Girls' High, which it's planned will be subsumed by ChCh Girls' High. Our brother school, Shirley Boys, will be swallowed up by ChCh Boys. To add insult to injury, both of those schools are arch rivals to ours.

When I was at AGHS last month, the Principal (in the job less than a year before the February earthquake, poor thing) told me that it would be two years before she expected a decision on the stability of the land and the future of the school, so she will be reeling, like everyone else connected with the schools. Which is pretty much everybody in those communities. It's a given that in Wellington, you're asked what you do; in Auckland, where you live; but in Christchurch, the first question people ask you is what school you went to. It's not snobbery: it just establishes where you fit in the city, what community you belong to, what your connections are. It's a shorthand.

Apart from the loss of all those years of tradition and identity for the schools themselves, it seems so unfair to me to snatch away what for many students, their teachers and support staff, and all their families too, is the one of the few stable things left in their lives. To expect them to leave all that's familiar and start again, on top of everything else, is harsh. It's taking the cheap route. It's certainly not aspiring to be the best.

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.