Day 29: Christchurch Airport (26/02/2011)

Canterbury Plain;
Can You Spot The Camoflauged Sheep?



Airport Evacuation; There's Always One.


















Jeff; The Pancake Sachet of Indeterminate Sex



Minutes From Take Off

We entered the northern reaches of the Canterbury Plain, famous for lamb exports, and the hills receded, to be replaced by fertile flatlands. Army trucks once again became a common sight, ferrying supplies to the disaster area ahead and fuel rationing became the norm.

By the time we entered the Christchurch city limits, fuel was advertised as restricted to emergency vehicles only, at all petrol stations, by hastily scrawled signs posted at the roadside.

We returned the Hippy Camper to Apollo Hire with the tank 90% full, to assurances from Faye, our cheerful Executive Driver and vehicle check-in operative, that the balance would be charged at the prescribed rate of $2NZD per litre and that we would thankfully not be charged for the tool-kit that had never been there. We needed it to release the engine cover for the contractually required 500km interval oil checks and aside from the obvious perils of a blow out on any of the fearful mountain roads we crossed, the practicalities of changing a tyre without a jack or tyre iron thankfully turned out to be a hypothetical worry.

The airport was closed for 24 hours after the quake but re-opened apparently unscathed. An extra 12,000 people left the city in the days following the disaster, stretching the airport’s capacity, but by the time of our arrival, normal service had been resumed. With a 14 hour wait from arrival to take off at 06.35am, we staked our territory on the free seats and hunkered down with books, pre-made sandwiches and the remaining battery life of the net-book, to wait out the night.

A small display in the terminal recorded the nation’s aviation history. Today Air New Zealand is a large regional player, shuttling the diaspora to and from the four corners of the globe. Surprisingly, a New Zealander, known enigmatically but fraudulently, by the title Professor Baldwin, holds the record for the first manned aerial flight in the spring of 1903, some 6 months before the Wright brothers took to the air for the first time in the Kitty Hawke and claimed the undeserved credit that they have never been entitled to.

The indifference of the government to the potential of flight held back the development of an indigenous aircraft industry for a decade until gentlemen flyers began to prove its worth. By 1923 New Zealand played a part in the record breaking flight from London to Auckland in 23 hours and 11 minutes, which while slow by today’s standards remains astonishing for the time. The government again held back development by resisting the introduction of long haul jet flight in the 1950’s by which time competitors had stolen the march and the nation spent decades recapturing lost trade that should have been it’s by right, based on its earlier achievements.

Australia does not allow arrivals to bring food into the country and so we ate as much as we could before disposing of the residue. It was a sad parting when the pancake mix and maple syrup sachets went to landfill and it was an entirely unnecessary loss which could so easily have been prevented had I succeeded in forcing the overnight lock at the Starbucks concession and robbing milk, eggs and a hot frying pan.

Jeff, as the sachet had been christened part way through our momentous journey together, glowered reproachfully from the trash can as we left him, although he may in fact have been a she as I have, regrettably, yet to acquire the skills necessary in determining the sex of a pancake.

Not far from our thoughts was the ever present risk of aftershocks, still continuing daily at an intensity of up to 4 on the Richter scale and bringing down already damaged buildings in the Central Business District. It was a long wait for the flight but made longer by the niggling worry of nature’s complete unpredictability. A sad story emerged of a foreign student trapped in the rubble of the CTV building, sending a dwindling stream of texts to her family overseas before presumably succumbing to the effects of her injuries before rescuers could find her.

Unease turned to concern when the fire alarm was triggered and the airport was evacuated of bleary eyed travellers in the early hours of the morning for what transpired to be a routine incident and not aftershock related. But no one complained despite an hour standing outside the terminal in the chilly New Zealand night and therein lays a significant difference between this country and many others.

In the aftermath of the earthquake there were no recriminations, no finger pointing and no discord. Even the local radio DJ’s heaped praise on all concerned and even went as far as commending the Prime Minister’s speech to the nation. There is a pride in being a Kiwi that other older and more established nations have lost.

Diminutive, the country may be in terms of population, but it does so much better than simple numbers would suggest.