Day 54 – Christchurch.

I was sharing a room with 2 other people and the first one had to get up and leave for the airport by 5am, then the next had to catch the Kiwi bus at 7am so when my alarm went off at 9am it didn’t feel like I had been asleep that long. I needed to check out and find out whether they had a room for me for tonight, the woman said the Kiwi list had just come through and there was so she added me to it but I was told I needed to come back later to check back in.

I left my luggage with them but took my carry on with me, as I didn’t really want to carry my laptop around all day I thought the best idea would be to head over to the Re:Start mall, grab some breakfast, update my blog and use the free Wi-Fi in the area, so that is what I did.

Around midday I walked over the road to a museum called Quake City. As you may have guessed it is all about earthquakes but mostly the one that happened in 2011, it was $10 to enter but it was worth every penny… or cent I suppose.

My facts yesterday about the earthquake were slightly wrong. The earthquakes began in September 2010 but only caused damage to Darfield, which is 40km west of Christchurch. After earthquakes aftershocks can happen, a lot of the time you can’t even feel them or they happen in the middle of the night and you don’t realise. The February quake did start at 4am but it wasn’t really that big, the M6.3 happened at 12:51pm, so lunchtime on the 22^nd February 2011, which is when most people were affected. It caused exceptionally violent shaking and the ground motions recorded within the city are among the strongest ever to be recorded in the world.

The museum has pieces from buildings and other things that were damaged in the quake, it talks about the history of quakes in New Zealand and there was a feature length film being shown containing interviews from local people. The film was really interesting and quite emotional to watch at times. A number of people either had loved ones or were trapped in the CTV building themselves. It really made me think about how I’d react in a situation like that and it’s easy to say you’d stay calm but unless anything like that happens, you don’t know. I have seen enough safety information since being here to know what to do now though. One interviewee was a policeman who was trapped in the police station with just one other officer but 6 people in prison. 1 woman was waiting to be transferred to prison, 1 was a 16 year old boy who they were teaching a lesson by locking up for a few hours and the other 4 were waiting to go to court to be sentenced or something. He wasn’t quite sure what to do but knew they needed to get out. He found some handcuffs and put them all together and walked out. Everyone from the court nearby were waiting in the evacuation point outside, so he found a judge and asked him to make some decisions there and then. He had a scrap bit of paper and made bail conditions on it for one guy, let the young boy go and took the others to the state prison using some random car.

I didn’t get out of the museum until about 2pm, I thought the Kiwi bus would have arrived by now so I text Charli to find out where they were. I needed to check in to my new room so I made my way back to the YMCA.

On arrival the woman said they were full and I wasn’t on the list, obviously I made this clear to her that I had been told I had a room etc and within 5 minutes they had sorted me out a bed. I wasn’t exactly asking for much was I!

I met the girls outside the museum and we wondered into town. As they had only just arrived I became tour guide for the afternoon and showed them the places they wanted to see.

We went out that evening and checked out the Pallet Pavilion. This is another ‘Gap Filler’ project where they have taken an empty bit of land and made something out of it. This structure is mostly just wooden shelving crates built up to create a community space. It had a caravan as the shop/bar and we played Snakes and Ladders, somehow I managed to win…clearly have skill as this game is not to do with luck! After here they wanted to check out Smash Palace which is the bus bar I went to last night, this time we actually sat in the bus and it was pretty cool!

Day 53 – Lake Tekapo to Christchurch.

We were told to go on the same buses as yesterday just to make life a bit easier for the drivers. Our bus left just gone 9.30am and stopped just outside the Church I went to see yesterday for a photo opportunity. It wasn’t really much of one as the sun was in the wrong place and was now covered by 60 or so people from the bus so you couldn’t really get a good photo of it, which made me quite happy I made the effort to go and see it yesterday.

Our next and only stop before arriving in Christchurch was in Geraldine. This place holds the Guinness world record for the largest knitted jumper, or something like that. I wasn’t really impressed, I think I’ve been more impressed by all the ‘big’ things in Australia. If you don’t know what I’m talking about just google it and you’ll find out.

On arrival we checked into the YMCA, you could already see that cracks had been filled in on the outside of the building because of the earthquake that happened here 3 years ago. Christchurch was somewhere I really wanted to visit but I knew it was going to be a bit of an odd place especially after what’s happened. For those that don’t know on the 22^nd February 2011 at around 4am an earthquake with a 6.3 magnitude struck Christchurch. In a small way it was lucky it was so early as it meant most areas were quiet, resulting in only 185 deaths, whereas if it was during the day or at a peak time more lives could have been lost.

The best way to see this place is by using your feet, so I went on a walk and my first place which was only about 10minutes down the road was to see the Re:Start shopping area. This is on Cashel Street and used to be the shopping precinct but was heavily destroyed in the earthquake and so they’ve created a new shopping area using shipping containers. It looked pretty cool and it such an inventive way to quickly start businesses back up again and create somewhere that people will want to visit. I stopped in a café and purchased some carrot cake (something I never would have done before this trip, I know, such a changed person!) it was massive and so delicious! It was mostly just so I had an excuse to chill in their garden and use the free Re:Start wifi.

I left here and walked down the road to see the Christchurch Cathedral, this is mostly blocked off but they have created viewing areas. This building was once such an iconic area and now it’s just crazy to see how much damage one earthquake can cause. I know it’s a big thing and I remember seeing photos at the time but still, being here and 3 years on, you really see how much it affected this place. On buildings all over the place you see they have spray painted a date and CLR to say they’ve checked the building on this date and it’s clear, no one has been left inside.

The ground the cathedral is situated on is still unsafe so they’ve made a Cardboard Cathedral just down the road. Yes, this building is mostly made of cardboard but also local wood, steel and a polycarbonate roof. It’s designed to last about 50 years and is has been named the Transitional Cathedral as one day they will be allowed to rebuild on the old site. The structure is rather impressive and can seat up to 700 people!

The next block along from here is a memorial called ‘185 empty chairs’, as you may have guessed this is 185 chairs that have been painted white to represent each person who lost their life in the earthquake. Looking down the list of names there were a lot of Chinese people who were similar ages, which I thought, was quite odd and discovered why after we walked over the road. On the opposite corner was the CTV (Canterbury TV) building but it also housed the Kings Educational Language School, meaning 115 of the deaths were in this building. They’re created the space into a small park until one day they will build a new place on here. I’ve found throughout the city they’ve tried to create green spaces where buildings were until they can rebuild on the land where buildings once were.

That evening I went out to a bar called Smash Palace that they have created out of old buses and other random items on an old parking lot. It was a really quirky thing but an easy way to get the old business back up and running again. I really like Christchurch and they’ve made the best of a terrible situation.