4 years on - devastation and an old friend

  Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand Sunday, January 11, 2015

New Zealand....again! Well here we are and the main reason we came back is because Bryan is meeting up with a swimming contact in a few weeks' time in Auckland. Actually it's no ordinary swimming contact - It's Adam Walker who has swum the full 7 seas challenges and survived the sharks in the Cook Straits. Bryan is hoping to pick his brains about some of the other swims (Bryan having swam just one of the 7 at the moment - The English Channel). So why did we come to Christchurch? Well one reason, for those of us who remember our first trip, will also remember we flew out of Christchurch on 22nd February 2011. A very poignant day for the people of Christchurch as it was the day of their BIG quake. We had flown out just 1 hour before it happened and we were curious we suppose. Curious to see how the city had been affected and to see how the reconstruction was taking shape. And the second reason? Our old chum Karen. Karen was a life saver when we were in Brisbane in 2011 and put us up in her home whilst we waited for Bryan's bag to arrive from Fiji. For some reason they had been left behind and Fred and Duck had an adventure all of their own. She also kitted out our camper with all sorts of gadgets to help us out. She was a star! And she now lives in Christchurch where she also let her star-ness shine out again. Meeting us at the airport at midnight and taking us to our hostel booked in Point Break. Unfortunately as Jody had collected the wrong bag from the carousel and taken it all through customs, we had to hang about in the airport a bit longer whilst it got sorted out. Luckily the girl whose bag she had picked up was very understanding and recognised how similar our bags were so had realised what had happened. We all had a good giggle about it though. Bryan is not going to let her live that one down! Karen finally got to drop us off around 1:30am before heading home. Not for long though, she was meeting us again the next day in Christchurch town centre so we would get to spend the whole day with her. We took a bus into the centre and .......Oh......My......Goodness! We could not believe what we saw. It is now almost 4 years on and the city still looks like a war zone. Everywhere we looked were either spaces where buildings had been or a building still waiting to be demolished or repaired. We got off the bus and met Karen at the Re:Start centre. the business people of Christchurch had restarted their businesses in old shipping containers. The effect was of a quirky shopping centre but it looked fab and it was great to see how they were all starting out again and not giving up and disappearing elsewhere. We all walked around the town centre but the town as it was then was just unrecognisable. To the extent where we couldn't even work out where we were or where we were going. We spoke to a taxi driver who had lived there all his life. He said he still looks for old landmarks to navigate his way around the city and still gets lost because they have all gone! Karen told us that over 1000 buildings were lost in the city and over 4000 in the whole district. It is hard for any of us to imagine what it must have been like living there on the day. That's before you even add in the loss of life incurred. Over 100 in one building alone. Walking around we were silent. All the buildings still standing were boarded up and each doorway had a spray-painted message on it "cleared" followed by the date. 23rd, 24th February all the way up to 27th February. it was quite shocking. Some building frontages which we assume were quite special, are being held up by nothing but stacked shipping containers placed in front of it to stop it falling down. Very sad. But again parts of the city are recovering including the Cathedral. Despite the Cathedral still lying in pieces on the ground and the Anglican church claiming they cant afford to repair it, they have constructed a new one made of cardboard. And surprisingly it is very nice. Everything is made of cardboard tubes, the pulpit, the cross, the roof supports, almost everything except the organ which you would have expected to be made of tubes! The effect is really quite lovely. So it was time to leave the city centre and head over to Sumner Beach. This is also somewhere we had been just a day or two before the quake and it too had been hit hard although not as hard as the town centre. We spent a few hours walking on the beach, watching seagulls drop scallops from high up to open them and eat them before heading back to the hostel. Karen came with us and we all spent a good few hours drinking tea and catching up. Our time in Christchurch was done and maybe one day we will be back again. Hopefully to see a city well and truly back on it's feet. 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