Back to the future...?

Christchurch, unlike New Zealand's  other main centres has a charm that depends largely on features built or planned by man. The calm and dignity of the city owes much to its early buildings. and Christchurch's history can still be traced in the many examples that remain. 

In the days after the quakes, citizens of the world saw more of what was happening in Christchurch than did most its residents who were without electricity and access to media images. Even when the lights and images returned, we saw what had happened to our central city at a distance, on a screen, mediated by photographers, journalists, city councillors, civil defence personnel... We were living our own quake stories in our various communities, but, given the cordon around the central city, we were excluded from participation in that evolving story.


Seven weeks after the 22 February quake, we are creepingly gaining access to the heart of Christchurch. I have increasingly felt the need to see the city in its damaged state before too much is demolished. I fear an erasure that will have me wondering 'what was there - and there - and there...?'  Because I suspect that where we live and work, we don't often see. I remember taking part in an anti-Vietnam demonstration through the heart of Christchurch while a student and, because sightlines were forced up on account of the thousands of people, engaging with the often overlooked second stories of the lovely old retail and commercial buildings.


So this morning I drove into town, parked in Gloucester Street, just short of the Civil Defence headquarters at the Art Gallery, and walked in a once very familiar part of the city. I went down Montreal Street and past the old Christchurch Girl's High building in Cranmer Square where I was a student. It is being demolished.

I walked across Cranmer Square to the old Normal School, now Cranmer Courts.

Then past the Provincial Council Chambers where I used to guide when a university student. The glorious Stone Chamber in ruins.

The old university complex, now the Arts Centre, where I began my university study.

The streets were empty and silent. I expected to feel sad, bereft. But I didn't. I didn't really feel anything (except cold in the autumn cloud) and I'm not sure why. I belong to the Historic Places Trust, I have taught history, I have loved and lived with these buildings most of my life. Perhaps it is the enormity of the event, or the inevitability of demolition following the second quake, or the fact that some of these 'iconic' buildings are likely to be restored/rebuilt. Perhaps too I am willing to acknowledge the fact that nature has the upper hand - that this sweeping away is an act of nature and a part of the cycle of history.

Finally, for the moment, there were some images that caught my fancy....

...and one sad bunch of now dead flowers, on the barrier in front of the Bridge of Remembrance, that moved me.

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

Quake-therapy...

Despite the quake, the autumn harvest continues. In a time of sadness and uncertainty, when routines are disrupted and the familiar changes shape, it is reassuring to do something concrete and creative. Here is tomato sauce (I swear you could smell it bubbling away all over Governors Bay!), quince jelly (the first quinces to fall from my tree), a garden gathering (tomatoes, courgettes, corn, eggs, peppers, gourds...) and muesli. Not posed - this is just as they ended up on the bench. The sunflowers in the background are also from my garden. The white rooster belonged to my special Governors Bay friend Gloria. He too is a sign of hope.


While I grow tomatoes I don't produce sufficient to splurge on sauce. The sauce tomatoes came from the relocated Lyttelton Farmers Market. With Lyttelton on its knees following the quake, the market moved to the Mt Pleasant Community Centre. I thought it important to support the stall holders who were willing to turn out in difficult circumstances and so Claire and I bumped our way down Ferry Road and tried to buy at least one item from each stall. A usually reserved German (?) lady who sells lovely vegetables and from whom I always buy the most beautiful capsicums, was almost in tears as she recounted her drive into the city - obviously her first experience of the damage.


Down the road, 16-year old Libby is making batches of cupcakes. Often there will be a knock on my door and there will be beautiful Libby with a delicious cupcake. That is part of her therapy I'm guessing. To end with a smile, here is a cupcake Libby gave me some time back...

The shaky isles...

It is nine days after the earthquake that has changed the face of Christchurch forever and taken so many lives. The days since the quake have been given over to coping on a hourly basis - three days without power or sewerage, eight without water. The rhythm of these days has focused on the basics. Clearing a safe path through the mess in the house; removing the worst of the glass and ensuring I wore sandals inside until power returned and I could vacuum the almost invisible glass shards; finding containers for water; collecting water from the tanker at the fire station; boiling water for safe consumption on the little gas camping stove; emptying water into the cistern to flush the toilet; morning sponge baths... 


I thought of the Cambodian primary school where we volunteered. Six hundred children. No electricity, no running water. The children were clean, the school buildings also. I never did find out what the toileting arrangements were. Here 'poos' and 'wees' - or the adult equivalent - have become conversational staples over the past week. I have been unable to take photos of buildings this time. It feels too intrusive. But the image at the end of this post is one with which Christchurch residents have become very familiar.


These days have also been given over to sharing with, and caring for, others. In Governors Bay the community has pulled together to check on neighbours, share scarce resources and information, swap quake stories. Up at the water tank a stranger offered me two 4-litre bottles of clean water. People all over Christchurch are opening their homes to quake 'refugees'. Simi, Chris, Jai and Priya stayed with me for a couple of nights when it seemed their house might be unsafe to live in. Elaine took in elderly neighbour Doreen and made a 'home' for her in the living room. Students are shovelling silt all over the city. 


Once again there was a sense of unreality. Without power, we were unable to access images of the destruction. All we knew were our own homes, our immediate neighbourhoods.   Ironically others around New Zealand and overseas were better able to comprehend the citywide damage. And once the images became accessible, it still seemed unreal - as though happening in another country. However a car trip to check on those I was most concerned about revealed the following. Big boulders on the road over the hill. Undulating roads awash with silt from liquefaction in St Martins. The St Martins New World supermarket (my supermarket for 25 years) closed for good. In Heathcote my friend Anna's house (only one of many) minus most of its bricks and several windows. Ferry Road and the Causeway to Redcliffs pot-holed, sink-holed, cracked, bombed. The Lyttelton tunnel, closed. Evans Pass, closed. The road to Sumner (at least a couple of days ago), closed. The historic port town of Lyttelton, including the iconic Timeball Station, smashed, beyond repair and smelling of rotting garbage. And this is just around the base of the hills. The central city is cordoned, off limits. 


After the September quake we wanted every damaged heritage building repaired, restored. Post 22/2 many of those buildings have gone and now it is only the most 'iconic' that stand any chance of restoration. Christchurch's brick and stone public buildings which bespeak its colonial heritage are now too dangerous.  It will be a new CBD that rises from the dust. And today, as I listened to citizens advocating the rebuilding of the Cathedral, I found myself thinking that we would be better to start again - a new, adventurous and edgy building, a phoenix but not a recreation.


A week on from the quake, residents gathered (as they did all over New Zealand) at the Governors Bay School, to acknowledge the quake deaths in two minutes of silence. The waiata following the silence, and the newly unfurling monarch butterfly that Mel’s little daughter Sasha held gently, undid me and I cried for the first time. While my relationship with Christchurch City has always been somewhat ambivalent, it is the city in which I was born, grew up and where I have spent most of my life. 


My house is standing. The kitchen floor was awash with red plum preserve syrup, mixed with red currant jelly, marmalade and heaps of broken glass.  The contents of other rooms were smashed, splintered, spilt - the floors strewn with books, paintings, broken ornaments, broken glass… The large water cylinder has shifted significantly and leaked. But I am fine. My whanau are fine. The furs and feathers are fine. We live on shaky ground and we may never feel entirely safe again. That is the nature of the planet we inhabit.