Each morning I managed to get out well before sunrise.  The results were worth the effort:

The settlement at Shag Point consists of a row of houses and holiday homes stretched along the small road that heads out to the point.  Some are the typical “kiwi bach”:

All of the buildings share similar, outstanding views.  Here’s the sight from the front window of the house we were staying in:

The geology is interesting.  The rocks along the shoreline contain many spherical boulders which, unlike those up the coast at Moeraki (see the next post), erode more quickly than their surroundings and leave behind round holes:

But back to the early morning trips.  Shag Point is a very special place.  It is managed jointly by the Department of Conservation and Ngai Tahu (see here).  The deed of settlement between the NZ Government and Ngai Tahu in 1998 recognised the special traditional relationship Ngäi Tahu have with the natural environment.  It included the concept of Topuni.  This comes from the traditional Ngäi Tahu custom of rangatira (chiefs) extending their mana (power and authority) over areas or people by placing their cloak over them. The Töpuni cloak was nvariably made from the kurï or Mäori dog. This distinguished those who wore such cloaks from all others and represented the highest order of mana. Töpuni provides an enduring public symbol of the tribe’s commitment to conserving areas of high natural and historic values, as well as ensuring an active role for Ngäi Tahu in the management of these areas.  Töpuni has been laid over 14 areas of public conservation land of significance to Ngäi Tahu.

The name Matakaea recalls the tradition of the Arai Te Uru canoe, which capsized off Moeraki. The crew managed to swim ashore, leaving the cargo to be washed ashore. The crew  members fled inland, and were transformed into mountains. The navigator is said to have been transformed into a large rock just off Shag Point, shown here:

He looks as if he was quite a determined fellow:

 I learned how the area got its pakeha name, Shag Point.  On each morning, just a minute or so after the sun had popped up over the horizon, a flock of shags appeared flying fast and low in a vee formation.  They came up from the south, headed around the point and off towards fishing grounds further up the coast.  Another appeared, then another.  Perhaps 40 or more squadrons, many thousands of birds.  I tried to photograph them, but I had been using shutters speeds of several seconds because of the low light level and all I got were some blurred dark shadows.

They reminded me of a pelleton.  Although the sea was fairly calm, there was quite a large swell coming in.  Every so often a wave would rear up, the leader of the flight would suddenly lift to avoid a mightly splash, the bird behind would lift a little higher, and so on.  The poor birds at the rear were going up and down like yoyos.

Shag Point also has some intesresting industrial history.  It was the scene of the first coal mining in New Zealand and remains of the mines, which operated until the 1970s or so, can still be seen on the point.  Some of the seams extended offshore.  You can read about that here and here.  It even had it’s own railway.

Latest news: my friend Terry has just sent me a link to a video taken along the route of the bus tours, with a very good commentary by Warwick Isaacs, Demolition MAnager for CERA (Chch Earthquake Recovery Authority). Long, but well worth watching.

A closer look showed that the front steps and walls had dropped a bit.

The building next door, DorsetTowers, had not done so well. It was empty, on a slight lean and had been “red-stickered” so I guess it will be demolished.

Round the corner, Victoria Street had some very sad sights.  Beautiful  Knox Church, with a congregation still showing plenty of spirit.

The Victoria Street clock survived amazingly well, with the clock face still showing the time of the earthquake and its top piece at a jaunty angle:

A little further down Victoria Street opposite the casino was Ace Wasabi, our favourite Japanese restaurant. Alas, no more.

The Canterbury Provincial Chambers is being taken down with great care, block by block. It is to be rebuilt.

Across the street is a row of much more modern buildings which apparently are all scheduled for demolition.  There are so many empty sections around the city centre right now, it’s hard to believe that another 700 buildings are still to come down.

We drove round to Madras Street, where we could get reasonably close to the site of the former CTV building.  My wife worked in the top floor of this building during the four years we spent in Christchurch. There’s just bare land now, but the flowers, notes and other mementos speak of the love and grief for the many who were killed here.

There was a brighter side to the day, however . A few days earlier the new Cashel Mall had been opened, made from shipping containers. It was bright and cheerful.

I managed to catch a typical Christchurch scene: a Christ’s College boy who’d found something nice to look at.

We travelled over on the Haulashore Island Ferry, while it was still dark.

(Yes, that picture was taken on the return journey).  The morning was cold and clear, fresh snow on the hills to the south and west.

The lighthouse was one of New Zealand’s first, starting up in 1862.  There’s an excellent account of its history plus some early photographs here.  It was surrounded by some substantial buildings, one for the lighthouse keeper and family and another for the assistant keeper.  While these have since been removed, traces of their gardens still remain:

The lighthouse had been unlocked for us, so brave souls could climb up to the top.

The view from the top was worth the effort:

A memorable morning, visually:

and for another reason.  See my next post (in a few days)  for an example of truly excellent customer service by the owner of the Haulashore Island Ferry.

In 1971 I been working in Stockholm for almost a year when a friend, Dick Joyce, wrote to advise that he would be in Denmark and would I like to catch up with him there?  Dick was a rower, a very good one. He’d won a gold medal in the Fours at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico and in 1971 was a member of the New Zealand Eight. That crew was regrouping after a disappointing result in Mexico and the ’71 European Championships was an important buildup for the Munich Olympics.

It worked out very well. I was able to get the night train from Stockholm down to Copenhagen and met up with Dick at Roskilde.  I was able to stay with the team at a university hostel.  Conversations however were focused entirely on one thing: the big race the following day. He explained that the opposition was the formidable East German crew. Not only  had they been unbeaten in the previous three years, but they had led every race from start to finish.  It was fascinating watching him. He would quite frequently become silent,  apparently oblivious to everything around him. Occasionally I could see his fists clench or muscles tighten as the tension built up, then he would relax and be back with us again.

Dick explained that their strategy was to try to unsettle the East Germans. The general view was that the New Zealanders didn’t have a chance. They would try to capitalise on this,  behave before the race like nervous, scatty youngsters overawed by the occasion.  Then shock the East German crew by beating them out of the gates, which no one had managed to do.  I remember Dick saying that every time they glanced across to the East German rowers the New Zealanders had been told to smile. The feeling was that only by knocking them off their stride could the New Zealanders won against a crew which was probably faster.

Well, that’s how it went. Before the race, the New Zealanders were horsing around.  They even threw their cox in the water (usually only done by the winning crew after the race). Incidentally, I love the casual dress code. John Hunter on the left with his walk shorts and my friend Dick with his favourite brown shorts. At least they were wearing New Zealand T shirts.

I could see the East Germans looking at them with contempt. (I quite like this next photo, which I felt had rather a symbolic ring to it at the time.)

I been given a New Zealand tracksuit and pass which got me into the main grandstand. Great seat, just a few rows back from the King of Denmark, sitting next to a couple of Swedish rowers. I heard them saying in Swedish that it was a pity this guy was going to be disappointed. His crew had done well but were now going to be slaughtered by the East German crew.  (I didn’t let on that I could speak Swedish.)  It was a reasonable assumption. By the time the Eights came around, the last event on the program, East Germans had won every race except for the single sculls.

I had intended to photograph the race but got much too excited.  At the 500 m mark, the scoreboard showed the New Zealanders were ahead (much to the surprise of my Swedish neighbours). That’s the way it stayed, with New Zealand winning by a few metres only.  “Det var förbannat bra, vad?” (That was f**king good, eh?”) I said to the surprised Swedes on my right.  I at last remembered to take a photograph, just as they crossed the line.

I do love this next one, showing the utterly exhausted crew below the scoreboard. The crowd was of course delighted to see the underdogs win.

The medal ceremony followed almost immediately.  It looks as if the crew are still recovering.

Then it was back in the boat for a victory paddle.

So here’s the author, 40 years younger, with his victorious friend.

And once again, Dick Joyce, European champion 1971.

There was a sequel to this for me. After the race a local restaurant owner had turned on free beer. After almost a year of paying Swedish prices for alcohol, I made the most of it. One of the Danish officials was detailed to gather up me and my luggage and put me in a taxi for the night train back to Stockholm.  That was very necessary!  I remember telling the taxi driver all about the magnificent victory (in Swedish).  “You speak Danish a lot better than those f**king Swedes” he said at the end of the journey.  An important insight into the differences between the two languages.

There was of course a sequel for the New Zealand crew as well.    The following year they went on to take Gold at the 1972 Munich Olympics.  We managed to watch that race too, in a department store in Lichtenstein, but that’s another story.

My mind went back to a hearing of the Environment Court in May 2000 in Nelson, where the same, bitter battle was being fought. In particular, to the death of one of the witnesses. Here’s how it was reported  at the time:

“Nelson, NZPA
May 4 – The death of a key witness has caused the adjournment of an Environment Court hearing on how aquaculture should be allowed to develop in Golden and Tasman Bays.

Marine biologist Andrew Ritchie, 37, a witness for a group of marine farming companies, died suddenly on Tuesday.

He died on the evening after he had given evidence, which he was to be cross-examined on.

The court is hearing appeals against the Tasman District Council’s proposed resource management plan, with the key issue being the council’s decision to ban marine farming within three nautical miles of the shore.

Mr Ritchie worked for Blenheim-based Marlborough Seafoods, one of the companies in the group seeking space for marine farming, mostly outside the exclusion zone. He had carried out surveys of sites  dentified by the group, to see whether they were appropriate for marine farming activities.

The court reconvened this morning to decide how the case should now proceed. The session was closed  to the public. A decision on how the case will proceed was to be given on Monday.  ”

The court had been under a lot of time pressure and the judge had ruled that no new expert witnesses could be called. Counsel for one of the parties objecting to marine farming wanted to make some points about the scallop fishery, so Andy Ritchie was asked to comment on a detailed stock assessment report. When he  complained that this was not his work and was outside his field of expertise, the judge ruled that the cross-examination should continue. She presumably felt that his opinions may be helpful to the court.  After an intense grilling, the court was adjourned for the day. Andy was told to take the report home for  study (but was not to discuss it with anybody) and the cross-examination would continue the next day.

When court resumed the next day the witness failed to appear. One can only guess at the pressure that poor guy was under.  His death was felt by everybody.

The incident prompted me to discuss the issues with all Cawthron staff who served as expert witnesses.  I advised them to simply refuse to answer questions they considered were outside their area of expertise, that Cawthron would back them all the way.  It’s fair  to say that we were appalled at the judge’s performance.

When the court eventually resumed a couple of weeks later, one incident helped to provide some light relief. A Cawthron marine scientist was the next witness, giving evidence on behalf of a marine farming
group. He was to be cross-examined by the lawyer acting for their opponents, the very same lawyer who had given Andy Ritchie such a hard time. “Dr Grange, ..” began the lawyer and then followed a long, complicated, triple barrelled question.  Our man stood up.  “I’m Dr Gillespie, not Dr Grange” he said and sat down again.  Muffled laughter from those of the legal profession in the court as the embarrassed lawyer had to repeat the whole question once more. (Then followed a virtuoso performance by Dr Gillespie, during which he even had the cross-examining  QC holding up marine charts for him so a point could be explained to the judge.)

The Marine Farmers Association eventually took up a collection, to which Cawthron and its staff were contributors, which was used to establish the “Andy Ritchie Scholarship” at Victoria University, for marine biology students.

Now, more than 11 years later, the battle over water rights between fishermen and marine farmers continues. I guess it’s not unusual, there must be many precedents around the world. I seem to remember the early settlers in the American West took a lot more than 11 years to sort out similar problems, between ranchers and farmers.  Let’s hope this new legislation provides a way forward.

If you would like to see the complete picture from my front door, have a look here:

  The unusually wet winter we’d been experiencing up to now caused some problems, even locally. One appeared a few weeks ago, when we noticed a long crack had opened up at the edge of the road in front of our house.

The bank, owned by the local City Council, had started to move downhill, pushing on the retaining wall and cottage below.  That was of real concern, especially because that cottage is important, perhaps 150 years old and one of the first three houses on our hill.  Then, yesterday, things started to happen.  The bank had slipped even further and action was urgently required. A large digger appeared (a great excuse to dodge the chores I had for that morning).

It very quickly and neatly removed the offending bank:

So the immediate danger to the cottage has passed.  Everyone, apart from the local Council, is much happier as you can see from this collection of homeowners. (Is the collective noun a “pride” of homeowners, I wonder?)

Trouble is, our car park has gone, for some time I guess while a decision is made on how the road can be stabilised.  Our usually rather narrow road is now even narrower, down to a skinny one lane.

So watch this space for the next stage, which I suspect may be very expensive and with a bit of luck might even involve huge machines for drilling into cliffs!

PS Sorry about the highly misleading title, but I couldn’t resist it!

Time: 0635

Time: 0640

Time: 0645

Time: 0655

Time: 0702

Time: 0715

Time: 0730

That last one required an increase in exposure – the moon was getting noticeably darker by then.  For photographers that haven’t tried moon shots before:  the surface of the moon normally is getting much the same sunlight that we get here on earth.   Because of the surrounding blackness,  an ‘auto’ setting on the camera gets it horribly wrong, over-exposing the moon so all detail is lost.  A good approach is to set the camera on manual and use typical settings for a sunny day.  I used 1/100 at f8 for nearly all of these.

To get any detail when the eclipse was almost complete I had to open up by about 7 stops (2 secs at f5.6) for this next shot, taken just a couple of minutes later:

Dawn was approaching at this point, so just before the moon disappeared completely I took this next shot (from our front door):

At one point in my career, when I was Technical Manager at the NZFP Kinleith mill, I actually had two bosses.  One was Jack Henry, joint managing director of the whole company and the resident director running the Kinleith mill, while the other, Ron Hall, General Manager of the Technical Division, was up in head office in Auckland. It made life quite complicated at times.
To make matters worse, relations between Kinleith and head office were usually strained at best. Unfortunately, NZFP’s sales team were headquartered in head office too and vigourously defended their patch.  So for example the experts in the quality control group were never allowed to talk with customers. But that’s another story.

During Jack Henry’s time, the manager of the papermill was a large, bluff and tough Englishman called Eddie Taylor.  Eddie was a classic papermaker.  He had started in a Croxley mill and worked his way up through the ranks. Fine paper was his specialty.

He could be pretty direct. He told me about an incident way back involving a new, rather nasty boss at Kinleith (and there were a few of those)  who had bawled out one of his subordinates in front of everybody. Eddy asked if he could see him later.  ” If you ever speak to me like that” said Eddie quietly when at last in the mill manager’s office, “I’ll knock your head off”.  Apparently the boss never did.

So that’s the background. On the day of the story, I had a meeting at 1100.  It was the monthly “Technical Liaison Meeting”, attended by the technical department, papermill production staff and sales staff from head office and chaired by Eddie.  At noon I had a meeting with Jack Henry so I warned Eddie that I might have to leave if his meeting dragged on.  No problem.

The meeting did drag on so I started gathering up my papers. The topic was a technical problem with a customer who made envelopes.  “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the paper” said one of the head office guys. “All of the test results look great.”  “Well, if you can believe them” said Eddie. “Personally, I wouldn’t trust any of the rubbish that comes out of that department these days!”

Now that was a real surprise.  Eddie was tough, but he was fair.  I was certain he would never sandbag me like that, especially in front of Sales.  He’d not mentioned any concerns to me earlier. I thought I knew what was going on.

“I’m not going to sit here and take crap from you, Taylor!” I said, whereupon I picked up my stuff and walked out.  According to later reports, he glared at me all the way to the door.  “Wonder what they’ll make of that?” I thought to myself as I walked over to the next meeting.

When I got back to my office 40 minutes later, my secretary was looking very anxious. She explained that head office had called, wanting to know all about the fight between Technical and the Papermill.  ”Mr Taylor said you were to report to him the moment you got back” she said, wide-eyed. “He sounded very angry.”  I responded: “could you please call Mr Taylor, tell him that I’m back now and suggest that if he wants to see me, he knows where I am.”  She took a bit of persuading, but eventually did so.

Shortly afterwards everyone could hear a pair of steel-capped boots thundering down the corridor.  Eddie stormed into my (glass-fronted) office, put both hands on my desk and leaned forward with his back to the door.  “We fooled the bastards, didn’t we?” he said with a big grin.  We certainly had! (phew)

Eddie was a great guy to work with, someone for whom I had a lot of respect.

At the start of our Rotary club meeting two days after the earthquake, we had a reading and a prayer from Charles Tyrell, from the Nelson Cathedral. I’m sure he won’t mind if I reproduce it here:

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“As Rotarians we stand in solidarity with all those who have suffered loss in Christchurch because of the devastating earthquake.  We particularly grieve for those who have lost loved ones, whose loss is deeply personal and almost unimaginable.

Please forgive me if I share this thought with you before I say grace.  There is an account of Elijah the prophet running away from his enemies and hiding in a cave, in modern day Haifa.  I have stood in that cave and it has a real presence about it.  Let me just quote from the Old Testament:

‘Elijah – go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; ¹²and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.’

As powerful and as destructive as the Christchurch earthquake was, God was not in the earthquake nor did God cause it.  God is being found in the ‘sound of sheer silence’, the peace and wholeness being offered to that community and to all the people at the centre of the suffering.  As Rotarians our job is to work for that peace and assure people that they too one day will experience the ‘sound of sheer silence.’

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I’m still on the e-mail list of my old Christchurch club and it’s great to read what’s going on. One account was typical: Katrina had to get to a pharmacy to collect some medicine. She had to walk a fair distance, I imagine due to the condition of the road. On the way she passed hundreds of volunteers cleaning up: shovelling silt and removing debris. It was hot, hard physical work. So before her return journey she called in to the supermarket and bought as many bottles of water as she could.  50 litres!  She then walked back to her car handing out water bottles as she went.

The voluntary effort going in is quite amazing.  For example, see this news item on the “Student Volunteer Army”, now 18,000 strong!  (I think that report may be out by an order of magnitude, but nevertheless it is an outstanding effort.) My old Lincoln Rotary club has been picking up food donated by a supermarket chain and making sandwiches for the volunteers. 

My own club has turned over the front page of its website to a bulletin board, to help match some of the requests for assistance with the many offers of help. It is heartwarming to read those posts.

On a personal front, my wife is coping very well. All but one of the staff in the Christchurch office of  Relationship Services have survived.  One of them, still in hospital after suffering serious injuries, gave a lengthy interview on national TV.  It was inspiring stuff: quite special people, these councillors.  But now they have had to set up support and counselling services, at a time when their office is being “de-layered” (translation: removed piece by piece in the painstaking search for any survivors amongst the there are many fatalities).  They have done well, systems were all up and running by Friday.

All this positive stuff is important, because the impact of the earthquake is going to be massive. 

A selection of some recent news clips that I found compelling:

One third of  the buildings in the Christchurch CBD will have to be demolished, death toll reaches 145 - ONE News

A dramatic escape story from the tallest building in Christchurch, now condemned. ONE News

Recent views of the iconic Christchurch Cathedral ONE News

some snapshots of the aftermath Youtube

Someone with the right gear and skills to pull off an heroic rescue ONE News