Day 25: Where Were You? (22/02/2011)



Reefton; Where Someone Switched The Lights On.



















Brunner; Ghosts Still Haunt The Place.

















Today we crossed the Alps.

After a steady climb we made the Lewis Pass in fog at 987m. The road was characteristically winding with great views and even greater drops into the ravines below. The only thing harder than the journey itself, was keeping up with the pace of a selection of Kiwi truck drivers who clearly knew the road but not the speed limit.

We stopped for lunch outside Reefton, a largely inactive gold and coal town, famed for being the first to be electrified in New Zealand and still sporting a high street decked with the original street lamps. Described by the guide books as a western film set in winter, it has no tumbleweed but a healthy tourist industry supported by a disproportionately large I-Site tourist information office.

Further down the river, the now abandoned town of Brunner hosts an industrial heritage centre commemorating the death in 1907, of 65 men and boys in what, despite recent events, still remains New Zealand’s worst mining disaster. The information boards give an interesting history accompanied by an eerie black and white photograph of the site taken at the time. It is dominated by the late 19^th century box-girder bridge and chimneys which remain, long after the site was mothballed. 

It tells the story of the town’s birth and rise to prominence on the banks of the eponymous river, producing 12% of the growing nation’s coal output in the years before the disaster which lead to its total demise.

Upstream is the thriving logging and timber town of Stillwater where the river slows to a glassy eddy as a result of a deep river bed that has been carved from the surrounding rock. Heavily laden lumber trucks rumble past the memorial, continuing the industrial tradition while the ghosts undoubtedly look on.

Entering the Grey district, it could have been named after the weather or the memory of some long dead founder. The Grey River, the Grey Valley and the regional capital of Greymouth bear the name.

Whilst in Noel Leeming Electricals in Greymouth, attempting to retrieve the lost dolphin footage, we learned of what was already being reported as a devastating earthquake in Christchurch, regional capital of the Canterbury district, 100 miles to the south east. The shop manager had a brother and son unaccounted for, whose office block had been demolished by the quake.

His computer terminal showed a picture of the collapsed spire of the city cathedral.

Whilst only 6.3 on the Richter scale, the epicentre of the quake was 5km from the city centre, unlike the 7.1 in September 2010 that did damage but took no lives. Aftershocks continued to reverberate as we watched the unfolding story in the shop, felling many already critically damaged buildings. We wished him well and were on our way.

If there is any insight to be gained into the Kiwi culture from the tragedy, it is this. Even in matters as important as a national disaster, some people can be surprisingly parochial. The nation sometimes feels like a series of connected but introspective localities. Local radio news opened with sport and local, not international, national or even regional affairs. Events a mere 100 miles away seemed too distant to be regarded as local. The newscaster lead with Greymouth stories including kittens for sale and the performance of the local sports teams. The events in Christchurch warranted 20 seconds at the tail of the broadcast even though 68 were currently reported dead.

You can speculate about the effect of pioneer spirit or a history of self-reliance and it may only be a perception based on reactions to the breaking story but it is not like home.

Our parents had the assasination of JFK and the Moon landings.

I will always remember where I was at 12.51pm on 22nd February 2011.