Shake, shake, rumble, roar...

Where to start? It's the (early) morning after yesterday afternoon's 5.5 and 6.0 (now upgraded to 5.6 and 6.3) 'aftershocks'. The word aftershock just doesn't cut the mustard. 'Aftershock' implies something less significant than the major event. But yesterday's shakes were big and scary major events in their own right, to say nothing of the constant lesser movement throughout the afternoon, evening and night. I gave up trying to sleep at 3.00am.

When the 6.3 hit yesterday I was down the section. I dropped to my hands and knees and held on. The first time I have been in direct contact with the ground in any of the big quakes and it was more frightening I think than being inside the house. Worse still was the prolonged roar that travelled up the harbour as the tremors subsided. I knew instinctively it was massive rockfall - and I think that unnerved me more than anything else.

Rockfalls at Whitewash Head, 13 June 2011 (not my photo)

Ornaments and paintings fell in the house again - though not on the September or February scale. My carefully stacked woodpile (in the garage) has again collapsed onto my mother's once much treasured mahogany dining table. The cats fled. I checked on neighbours, they checked on me. We shared our experiences. Without power, neighbour Clare's car was stuck in her garage and she borrowed mine to pick up Libby and Joe over the hill. The power finally came back on about 10.30pm. For the first time I felt scared and well and truly 'over it'.


Ironically, on Sunday cousin Claire and I had taken the ferry across the harbour to say farewell to Godley House, badly damaged in the September and February quakes and due to be demolished. It was a beautiful, calm morning in Lyttelton.

Tug Purau at Lyttelton, opposite the Diamond Harbour ferry terminal

Claire and Stormy on the ferry 

According to its website, Godley house was built in 1880 by Harvey Hawkins, a ship chandler, ironmonger and speculator and one of Lyttelton’s leading citizens. The Hawkins home was a grand house for entertaining and a jetty was built at the bottom of the hill to bring the people over from Lyttelton. The home was painted by Margaret Stoddard whose father had sold the land to Hawkins.

Godley House, Diamond Harbour c. 1913. 

In my parents' time, Godley House provided fashionable accommodation. I think Mum and Dad spent part of their honeymoon there.

Godley House, 12th June 2011

The chair, in a garden usually busy with picnicking families and couples having afternoon tea or a wine/beer, was somehow symbolic of the absence that pervades so many locations around the city.

A lone chair in the Godley House grounds

Contrasts...

In times of trauma and distress we fall back on cliches. To my horror I have heard myself using them post-quakes, aware of their hollowness but at a loss for other, more meaningful words. 'Life goes on'. Indeed it does - and rather than use words I thought I would share some recent photos which contrast quake trauma (of which my photos are few and very localised) and life going triumphantly on...

Norwich Quay in Lyttelton after 22 February 2011 quake

Godley House in Diamond Harbour

Sunny day, sunny sign...

The Governor's Bay fete, just under three weeks after the quake

Bay residents relaxing at the fete

A sign on the railings in Lyttelton. I spotted this after the 22 February quake and don't know if it was there before  or if it was prompted by the quake

Four weeks on - spotted outside the old library building in Lyttelton

The earth moved...

In the silence of the night you can hear the aftershocks coming - a distant rumble, followed by a sharp jolt/rattle. I am beginning to feel movement all the time and I don't know whether it is just me or whether there is constant subterranean movement, barely perceptible.


In the dark following the big quake, my overwhelming thought was that, when daylight comes, the world will look different. The mountainous harbour skyline will have changed irrevocably. And come the sunny morning, everything looked the same, familiar - and yet unfamiliar in light of what had happened. I continue to struggle with this disjunct. How can such force leave the Lyttelton Harbour profile apparently untouched?


But it is only apparent. One thing I am learning is that the ravages of such an upheaval are not necessarily immediately apparent. There is the obvious damage, so sadly apparent in many central Christchurch buildings, and then there are the less visible cracks and fissures threading their way across buildings, snaking through the landscape.


The fissures extend to we humans. We are on edge, sleep-deprived, apprehensive, out of control, frightened. In the hours after the big quake I cleaned up the shattered glass, the emptied bookcases, the pictures and ornaments that littered the floor - and then found it so difficult to settle to anything. I have spent a lot of time wandering and standing, looking outside at that 'unchanged' world... The cats are terrified. They head out of the house at each shock. Following the main quake the chooks staged a mass breakout, forcing their collective way through a weak place in the netting enclosure. Normally stoic Rosie goat is up for all the cuddles and comfort she can get.


With no phone/internet contact I was so grateful  for the local neighbours and friends who called in at various times - Steve, Nigel, Denis, Claire, Elaine and Mike... we supported one another and we talked, the talking a way of re-viewing the experience from a safer place, of sharing the fear and the strength. On Saturday afternoon I walked around the foreshore track. Everyone I passed stopped to talk, acknowledging the exceptional experience, sharing information, putting a human face on an inhuman event. On Sunday, still without phone contact and with no idea of how friends and whanau over the hill had fared, I was finally able to get my car out of the garage and do a sweep of the southern city, calling in on Elaine in Cashmere, Claire and Genevieve in Opawa, Anna in Heathcote, Simi, Chris, Jai and Priya in Redcliffs. Just touching base. A surreal weekend ended sitting in the sun on the deck of Denis's Charteris Bay home with coffee and chocolate cake!


The big local sadnesses are the damage to tiny, historic St Cuthberts Church and to Miles Warren's Ohinetahi, both Bay landmarks. Further around the harbour, Godley House is reportedly in a bad way. Many of the historic Lyttelton buildings, including the Harbourlight Theatre and the Mitre Hotel, are under threat. 


As I write this in the middle of the night, the aftershocks are coming thick and fast. I find them more disturbing than the big shake itself because now we know just how bad it can be - and could be again. Yet in the midst of the thousands of sad dramas playing out all over the city and rural areas, is it also possible to suggest that perhaps it is good to be reminded of our comparative insignificance and powerlessness? To be reminded that try as we might, we cannot yet control all the forces of nature. To be put firmly in our place.

Included in this mix, a precious Royal Doulton jar that belonged to my Nana and a lot of gooey, freshly made marmalade

Dining room...

...and again

On the foreshore track

Flag at half-mast on the off-limits Governors Bay Hotel

St Cuthberts Church