Ode to Christchurch

It's been two years since I was last home in Christchurch. It's been five and a half since I moved to London. Today I'm taking Jess around the ruined central city and then to Taylor's Mistake, the beach I used to live on with my Dad many, many years ago. Today is not going to be an easy day.

Many things have changed. I moved to Auckland for three years to study acting. I moved back for a year then went to London. During the time since then huge earthquakes have ravaged the city and most of it is unrecognisable to me, or indeed to those still living here. Some of those still living here are unrecognisable because of it, a far away look in their eyes. Now I'm back again and taking a day out to remember a time before all that. I'm taking Jess around the city to try to show her what used to be my home and help her understand what has gone on here. It's also a way for me to understand it better myself.

Truth be told, I struggle to understand it, having been so far away when it all happened. I came home from work in London at three in the morning and saw online that there had been an earthquake of over seven on the Richter scale. Having worked for charity on the Haiti relief fund I spent the next hour bawling my eyes out and thinking I'd lost my entire family until, finally, I got through to someone and found out they were all alive. That was without a doubt the worst hour of my life.

The second one took one hundred and eighty lives six months later and there have been thousands of smaller ones since. No one in this city has had peace of mind in over two years. For me, I didn't know what to say or who to talk to. It's hard to explain how it felt to friends in London; how it felt...being so far away and wanting to help yet not being able to. The guilt at not being there. The sadness at what was lost. More guilt that I had no right to be upset as I still had a house, power, a job, food and running water. I guess I just felt helpless and redundant and seriously considered going home for good. It really made me reevaluate a lot of things in my life.

On a more positive note, though, it's looking to be a good day back in the present. The weather looks nice. We walk from my Grandmas on Stanmore Road up along Worcester Street. When we reach Latimer Square. It's pretty gut wrenching as last time I was here there were fences cordoning off the central city and a destroyed church on the corner. Opposite was the CTV building where most of the casualties happened.

The Cardborad Cathedral

Today that isn't the case. Today there is a new cathedral built here. It's a temporary one made out of huge pieces of cardboard. I hadn't expected it as I thought it would be in Cathedral Square, where the broken cathedral, a symbol of our city, stands in pieces unable to be used. So I wasn't expecting this...here. It's weird. The whole thing is weird and surreal and I wonder whether we should just turn back. I don't know if I can do this.

We cross the road and go in. I don't really want to, seeing no real need, but feel it necessary to come to grips with the new as well as the old. It's huge inside and certainly an impressive piece of construction considering the materials used to make it. A woman comes to ask if we want any help and I politely decline, saying we're just here to have a quick look. 

We leave again. I feel uneasy. This temporary structure cost five million dollars. There are still people struggling to survive after the fallout from the earthquakes. Some people were homeless for many months, their children forced to live in tents so I just can't bring myself to like this structure when I know that money should have been spent on regeneration rather than this. It doesn't even come across as fitting in. It doesn't feel like this is for Christchurch. It feels like this was built for politicians to say they care and to bring in tourists to ogle a damage stricken city. Disaster tourism, so to speak. I doubt many Cantabrians come here for prayer. Or anything else for that matter. So we leave.

We head past my first flat on the corner of Cashel Street and Manchester Street and it has been torn down. A hole in the city fills it's place. We continue on to the Hack circle, where I spent teenage summers wasting afternoons and making friends with the people who to this day mean the world to me despite my having moved so far away. The Hack, also, is gone. I stand in the centre of where I wasted a youth and struggle to even recognise where the buildings used to be. There are massive holes in the ground where buildings have been dug out and new foundations are being lain. I can't help myself as I well up. I haven't stood here for nearly six years and it's just too much.

The Hack Circle

But through the tears I see amidst the rubble there are flowers growing through. I guess the future here is bright if only you look for it. It's hard to see now but one day I see that this city will rise again. The beginnings are here. I look on in hope.

We continue on to The Crossing, where Cashel Street meets Colombo Street. My friend Roger told me of coming to find his girlfriend Rosie here and seeing gas mains exploding and the solid glass walkway crossing the road waving in the air like a tree branch. It's now unsafe and closed but does still stand.

The Crossing

The next block is a more positive area. Cashel Mall was where images were sent around the world showing horror and devastation. It was closed for two years but has recently reopened, with a makeshift mall made out of shipping containers. Today it's a bustling area and somehow doesn't have the unwelcome feel the 'Cardboard Cathedral' does. This feels like a positive thing. This feels like a city starting to get back on its feet and defiantly rise again. This feels like a new version of home. Still, I doubt many residents yet feel comfortable coming this close into town and tall buildings, but that will change once the earthquakes stop. 

Cashel Mall

We reach the Bridge of Remembrance next and again it's a hard moment as two years ago I stood on the other side of a fence on the far side, looking down at a desolate and...and just...missing...Cashel Mall and broke down in tears. Today is of course more positive, but the tears are still there, albeit somewhat happier at seeing some positive things happening.

The Bridge of Remembrance

We move onto the square and the cathedral itself is actually surrounded by fence, the once proud spire sitting below it. Jess wanders around, looking at the chalice and reading some of the information signs that have been put up. I sit down, exhausted, and when she is done we go up through the hospital and sit in the botanical gardens for a while to let it all sink in. It's pretty hard for me to explain and hard for Jess to understand what it feels like. So strange.

Messages of hope at Christchurch Cathedral

We then go to pick up our rental car and drive over to Sumner. We park by the finish line of the Coast to Coast, where I spent many a February evening as a child waiting for Dad to complete that epic race. We find the KB's bakery and get Jess her first New Zealand pie. An institution in this country. KB's wouldn't be my first choice of cuisine but that's what is around so we settle for it. We both go for chicken satay, sit on the promenade and try not to get attacked by seagulls.

The Promenade at Sumner

We drive up to the top of Scarborough Hill and spend a few minutes in Nicholson Park walking a short way down Flowers Track to see the view of Sumner. It's a more positive feeling as I used to come here, when I lived a week at a time at each parents house and I'd stop on this park bench on the days I was carrying my stuff from the bus stop in Sumner over to the house in Taylor's Mistake. I used to sit here at fourteen and just let time go by, dreaming of things to come in life. How differently things panned out since then. But that is another story of course.

Sumner from Scarborough Hill

We get back in the car and head down to Taylor's. There is only the one road in and out. It ends at the car park so Jess parks somewhere with a modicum of shade and we go down to the beach. We take a walk up the Hobson's Bay side of the beach and I show her the first little two bedroom house the four of us lived in, so small, and we enjoy the view from here. I tell her about the day the bay was in the paper as a humpback whale had decided to hang out here. Sadly I was at school so didn't see it.

Bach at Hobson's Bay

We continue down through Hobson's Bay and back onto the black sand beach and over to the Port Hills side. I point out the iconic beach baches. I explain of the neverending battle the residents have had to keep them from being knocked down but they still stand so they must not have lost the David and Goliath battle just yet.

Hobson's Bay

We reach the other side and go up through the few trees to the start of the Boulder Bay track and again the sun beats down on us. As we're getting a bit higher up, though, there is a nice breeze. We reach the fence that had a warning sign last time I was here and continue past it; the path now reopened. 

Port Hills behind Taylor's Mistake beach

Almost straight away I'm struck by the fact that the path is not as it used to be. Bucking the trend of the city it is now in a much better condition than it was previously. Money has clearly been spent on the upkeep of this track and giving people of the city somewhere to go and relax. Where last time I was here there were fences pointing out the hazards of falling rocks, today there are very easily navigable paths designed for even unfit people to come and enjoy the countryside. Where as a child a gnarled tree root jutted out ready to trip you, today there is a wooden step and walkway. 

I comment to Jess a number of times on how odd this all seems. It's not in a rueful manner. More is it in a surprised manner. I don't know what to make of it. This change in such a deep seated part of my memory...but I am glad to see something made better and an improvement for the city. It all starts with a small path rebuilt. It ends when the city stands once more and it's residents can smile in confidence again. That eventuality is far from the reality of now. Hope is but one thing we can have for this place. Hope and determination. 

We pass the now forgotten path down to a cave in the cliff. Jess sees it as dangerous and chooses not to join me but I go down to see if it is accessible. It's not. Where once there was a very narrow path around the cliff face there is now just debris. I stop and look around.

Path to the cave

I remember coming here to camp for a night as a boy with my brother, Nik, and being woken up in the night by strange noises. I remember telling Nik it was okay and that I would investigate. I remember scrambling down to the shore and I remember finding a baby blue penguin lost in the moonlight. I picked him up that evening and put him back into the ocean where he disappears, nary to be seen again. 

I remember these times and many more and it is a bittersweet memory as the cave is now inaccessible for future children to camp in. I make my way back up to the path and we continue on.

The hills here are rolling around the bays. To the left is always the sea leading into Taylor's and to the right is the top of the Port Hills above us over the tussock and fields. We pass sheep and other animals. 

Eventually we find the path to Boulder Bay and head down. We are briefly shaded from the sun as we pass under the boughs of the trees going down the middle of the valley between the two hills either side of the bay. We go through a gate and down onto the boulders. Far off in the distance you can see Taylor's Mistake and the houses on Scarborough Hill. Directly around us are the baches of the bay here. There are many random and sporadic road signs picked up from various places over the decades decorating the small pathway in front of the baches. Each home has it's own character. Some have curious names. One is painted pink. Others are designed into odd shapes and some are bigger than others. All undoubtedly would have varied stories to tell if only they could speak.

We sit down on the rocks of the bay for a few minutes and just stare out back at the sea and the crashing waves and it's peaceful. We don't want to leave but must unfortunately. We meander our way back up the hill but decide to take the longer route instead to see the other side of the hills. Rather than right to Taylor's we turn left to watch the hills drop down to the ocean. 

Boulder Bay

We walk along for a while before the path takes a turn up to the top of the hills. We start to pass old gun emplacements still left here from World War II. The soldiers hauled massive guns up here to protect the city back then and there are now signs detailing what was here and why they were here.

WWII gun emplacement

We crest the top of the hill and out of the horizon rises Diamond Harbour on the opposite range of hills, Governors Bay at the head of the vast inlet and far to the right on our side is Lyttleton, the port of Christchurch. We continue over and down the other side and the sun beats down even harder. There are paths zigzagging all around so we take the most well used one and eventually end up back at further war relics which are also rooms now unused and we climb on top of one to dangle our feet over the edge of the cliff at the bright green sea below. We take in the panorama of this side of the bay and head back up the hill. This time we climb a little further inland and at the top we reach the carpark at the end of the Summit Road. We find a tap to fill our water then head back down toward Taylor's. There is a relatively new mountain bike track called the Anaconda which we are able to follow most of the way along until a sharp turn takes us down the valley. 

Governor's Bay very far in the distance

At one point I stop to point out a spot on the hillside that I used to come to many moons ago to contemplate life. When I lived here as a thirteen and fourteen year old I would walk over the beach, as we did earlier today, and I would climb up to this dip in the hill and just sit here. It was the days before cell phones, before I could afford a discman and before I had anything other than my thoughts to occupy or distract me up here. This spot has always held a nostalgic place inside me that is neither explainable nor understandable and it just makes me smile. It makes me happy.

View from my spot

We barrel on down the rest of the hill to the gate that was fenced off last time and go the final part under the trees back onto the beach. We stop a moment, take one look back out across the bay that houses penguins, the occasional humpback whale and once upon a time myself. Wet back in the car to head over toward the gondola. 

I try to take us a scenic route through Lyttleton however once we get up to Summit Road and start down the other side again we're stopped by a large fence pointing out that the road is still closed from earthquake damage. Bugger. We can see Lyttleton. 

Christchurch gondola

It's not really worth trying to get around anyway so we take the Summit Road over to the back of Mount Pleasant and up to the gondola that way. We're the last ones to be allowed on and I've got to say it's pretty wobbly. We start our way up and I'm struggling a little with the heights. The further we climb the scarier it gets. The higher we go the windier it gets and there are points where our little cable car is waving considerably.

Christchurch from the goldola

Looking below us now we can see boulders littering the hillside, fallen from above over the past couple of years. We climb a bit further and suddenly are overlooking the old Summit Road, still covered in debris, and then it is gone again as we reach the building at the top. 

We look around at the Kiwiana for sale up here, not to mention the view over the city and five minutes later head back down again. This time I take a closer look at the Summit Road. This time instead of seeing damage and boulders I see the bushes at the roadside and looking a little closer again...I can see the spring time flowers creeping their way through the cracked road to blossom in the sun. For the second time today, I see flowers growing through rubble. For the second time today I see hope.

Summit Road

We reach the ground again and drive back into town. My friend Sarah , who is like a sister to me, has organised two of our other really close friends, Roger and Rosie, to come over for tea and has got some good old Kiwi tucker in. She's got pies. 

Last time I was here Sarah was working on insurance claims for people whose lives had been destroyed by the earthquakes. Trying to help the families living in tents. Today she is still there but helping people rebuild their homes instead. Two years ago I hugged Roger as he tried to put into words, to help me understand, some of the pain of what he saw in town the day of the earthquake. Things that you wouldn't wish anyone to see. But today he is laughing. 

Where before we were worried, upset and destroyed with a city in pieces, today we have learned to smile again. 

For a third time in one day I see flowers growing through rubble.