My flight arrives in Christchurch, New Zealand / Aotearoa / Land of the Long White Cloud so early it's dark outside. I can't see any clouds, let alone long white ones. The wait for the Vodafone desk to open is a long one and I spend the time reading up on a little NZ history. Do look away now if you've heard it all before but it's new to me so it may be new to some of you, too.
So, Aotearoa is what the Polynesian explorer Kupe called New Zealand when he first clapped eyes on the place, but he didn't settle in. The Great Migration happened centuries later, around 1350AD when 10 great canoes followed Kupe's navigational instructions, setting sail from Hawaiki, which could have been somewhere in what is now French Polynesia. Each canoe group established itself in its own territory. All tickety boo apart from heaps of wars between the various canoe people's descendants. Abel Tasman, a Dutch explorer skirted the islands in 1642 but when several of his crew were killed and eaten, he high-tailed it north and discovered Tasmania. He did give it its name, after the Dutch province of Zeeland. Then came Cook in the Endeavour in 1769 and the rest is recent history.
So, Aotearoa is what the Polynesian explorer Kupe called New Zealand when he first clapped eyes on the place, but he didn't settle in. The Great Migration happened centuries later, around 1350AD when 10 great canoes followed Kupe's navigational instructions, setting sail from Hawaiki, which could have been somewhere in what is now French Polynesia. Each canoe group established itself in its own territory. All tickety boo apart from heaps of wars between the various canoe people's descendants. Abel Tasman, a Dutch explorer skirted the islands in 1642 but when several of his crew were killed and eaten, he high-tailed it north and discovered Tasmania. He did give it its name, after the Dutch province of Zeeland. Then came Cook in the Endeavour in 1769 and the rest is recent history.
My historical research is conducted to a background of airport announcements and as I'm only half listening, I'm sure she's talking about 'chicken discs'. What the...? Then I hear it properly and realise she's talking about 'check-in desks'. My first introduction to the NZ accent on home soil.
I take a taxi to my friends' Jon and Janine's bungalow, on a leafy road in Merivale, just north of what is left of the CBD. Jon King is a friend from my early years in London when we lived, with four others, in a big house in Clapham South. He married New Zealander Janine Puentener, a midwife, and they have two children Grace, 15, Tarn, 12, and Jimmy Jimmy the cat. Here's Jon in the Port Hills with Christchurch in the background, and the Christchurch coastline below.
Grace has given up her room for me. So the first thing I do is crawl into her soft bed and drift off to sleep wrapped up in cosy flannelette sheets. Yes folks, it's colder. Out come the fleeces for the first time but I derive a certain amount of pleasure in this as I always like to use or wear everything I bring on a trip.
That afternoon I stroll around Jon and Janine's block and stop by a local cafe for a piece of pie and a coffee. I can't see much damage yet, except for a crumbled looking local church. Later on Jon cooks a lovely spinach and feta pie. I'm back with the veggies. We spend the evening sharing music and reminiscing. We also watch When A City Falls, a moving documentary about the earthquakes, in preparation for my disaster tour the following day.
The next morning Jon takes me around the gap sites, the closed-off streets, the bumpy roads of central Christchurch. It's the crumbled historic buildings that seem the most forlorn – the basilica, which was once declared 'the most beautiful building in the Southern Hemisphere' by George Bernard Shaw. The city's favourite clock stopped at 12.51, the time of the second, most devastating quake, and hasn't moved since.
The iconic cathedral is no more and a temporary cardboard construction is in the process of going up, until the people decide what they want and the Anglican church decides what it can afford. Debate rages in the local press as architects' drawings are released.
There's a cinema (I think) where all that's left is the grand circle of seating, and Christchurch's famous theatre, the facade of which the city can't bear to pull down so it is literally all that is left, fastened to a stack of containers to keep it upright.
We drive around the red zones by the river Avon where liquefaction has made most of the houses unstable so whole swathes of residential areas have been cleared for demolition. A massive central park along the river is planned.
Some buildings cling to life, against all the odds, but look lonely without their former neighbours. The two safest buildings in town are the Women's Hospital, built on an isolation plate, a sort of shifting base that takes all the impact of the tremors and protects the structure above, and Grace's school that was solidly built in the Eighties, to LAST.
There's a colourful container shopping mall in the centre of town, called Re:start, with cafes and the streets around it landscaped with seating areas, bike racks and the odd splash of graffiti. There's a showcase of black and white photos from before the earthquakes displayed on the exterior of many of the container units. Jon says this one is of the child of friends of theirs, larking about on the street as part of some summer festival.
It's in the container mall that we find the 'disaster experience', an audio-visual exhibition that pulls it all together, from the science to the sadness. Little broken-off bits of the cathedral are stored here... the spire and some shards from the stained glass windows. Then there's the humour... the exhibition features a slide show of cartoons printed in the local paper in the weeks following the earthquake. I particularly like this one.
The iconic cathedral is no more and a temporary cardboard construction is in the process of going up, until the people decide what they want and the Anglican church decides what it can afford. Debate rages in the local press as architects' drawings are released.
There's a cinema (I think) where all that's left is the grand circle of seating, and Christchurch's famous theatre, the facade of which the city can't bear to pull down so it is literally all that is left, fastened to a stack of containers to keep it upright.
We drive around the red zones by the river Avon where liquefaction has made most of the houses unstable so whole swathes of residential areas have been cleared for demolition. A massive central park along the river is planned.
We take a detour out to Sumner where whole cliffs fell in and rocks tumbled into the houses below. The main road is now lined with containers to stop any more rock-fall damage. Christchurch seems to have more containers than a shipping port. The new urban landscape is container shaped.
Up in the Port Hills south of the city a whole road has crumbled away and will probably never be rebuilt.
Up in the Port Hills south of the city a whole road has crumbled away and will probably never be rebuilt.Some buildings cling to life, against all the odds, but look lonely without their former neighbours. The two safest buildings in town are the Women's Hospital, built on an isolation plate, a sort of shifting base that takes all the impact of the tremors and protects the structure above, and Grace's school that was solidly built in the Eighties, to LAST.There's a colourful container shopping mall in the centre of town, called Re:start, with cafes and the streets around it landscaped with seating areas, bike racks and the odd splash of graffiti. There's a showcase of black and white photos from before the earthquakes displayed on the exterior of many of the container units. Jon says this one is of the child of friends of theirs, larking about on the street as part of some summer festival.
It's in the container mall that we find the 'disaster experience', an audio-visual exhibition that pulls it all together, from the science to the sadness. Little broken-off bits of the cathedral are stored here... the spire and some shards from the stained glass windows. Then there's the humour... the exhibition features a slide show of cartoons printed in the local paper in the weeks following the earthquake. I particularly like this one.
The exhibition touches on the future, too, with rebuild plans and models, the gap-filler brigade which goes around finding interesting things to do in gap sites, like this fabric-wrapped tree we spot and just have to go and hug. 
On Sunday I spend the day in Sumner with my old colleague Dan Park, his wife Emily and their three children. The eldest, Imogen, points out the giant boulders that dropped off the cliffs behind their road, some rolling into the park opposite.
Dan and Emily's house is a modernist gem, designed by New Zealand architect Paul Pascoe in the Fifties. It's all glass and wood with key pieces of fitted furniture and boasts the standard quarter of an acre of land. Being overlooked is not much of an issue here.
It's nice being with young families again and I'm enjoying being dropped into a world of French homework, rugby trials, Duke of Edinburgh tasks and Tim Tams. I've missed that, I must say. Not so sure about the temperatures, however, and as I go to bed after my first weekend in South Island, I need two duvets and a hot water bottle.
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