The earth-shattering Kaikōura quake five years ago today may have ripped the heart out of Ward, but not its soul. The Marlborough settlement on the South Island’s wind-battered right shoulder copped the brunt of the earthquake’s energy as it boomed north.
Today we look back, and forward, to how Ward is using what happened to save itself from oblivion. Tracy Neal reports.
Scars remain on Ward’s creased hills, and on the hearts of those who live among them.
Boundaries shifted in a flash the night of the quake, which struck just after midnight on November 14, 2016. Buildings broke and mountains fell as the Magnitude 7.8 earthquake flashed north from its epicentre in Waiau, near Kaikōura; gaining strength as fault lines collapsed like dominoes.
Most of the energy erupted beneath Ward, seconds before the quake gave Wellington a good wallop.
Tears well up and spill freely as Ward local, Ally Avery, recalls that night and the year it took to recover from her injuries.
“That time broke us all. Mentally for us – for our family it was huge, including that we lost our home.
“We’ve achieved a lot in five years, but there’s a lot still broken.”
Two people died in Kaikōura, and Ward locals still can’t fathom how no one there died, if not from the objects and glass flying around like missiles inside their homes, but from sheer fright, much of it from the noise. Kevin Loe, a descendant of one of Ward’s early farming families who now lives in nearby Blenheim, says it sounded like “a helicopter trying to land on his house as a train smashed into it”.
The ground shaking was the most violent ever recorded in New Zealand. The South Island’s north-eastern corner was shunted six metres closer to the North Island; paua and crayfish which had lurked happily on rocks below the sea, were instantly thrust metres above it, still clinging to rocks which formed an instant barrier against the tsunami that followed.
About one third of Ward’s 90 households were destroyed or severely damaged, and more than half needed repairs.
John Hickman, a fourth generation Ward farmer, heard the quake’s monstrous approach. He pushed his wife Andrea out of bed to safety, seconds before the shockwaves hit with enough force to throw a three-tonne water tank several metres sideways.
But it’s the memory of his young daughter screaming that makes him pause today.
“I’ll never forget the sheer intensity of the scream of our daughter Holly. It just haunts me, but it turned out she was more worried about her teddy bears than what was actually going on.
“I was just holding on to her as everything around us was smashing, and water was gushing from broken pipes.”
Hickman says surviving that night was only the beginning. The trauma took a long time to fade and then there were the daily needs of farming broken land and infrastructure, with additional challenges of leaping through insurance hoops.
“Family-wise it was hell for a year because it was non-stop earthquakes. Every time you felt a shudder the kids would panic.”
Looking back on the night, Sally Peter realised the scream she was hearing was coming from her.
“It was like … when you have a baby sometimes you can’t control the noise you make. I never scream, but there was a noise coming from deep down inside me because I could not see how to get out. I couldn’t find the doorway.”
Confused and injured by flying glass, she was dragged outside by her husband and began to throw up on the lawn.
The community huddled together as the country’s top quake scientists descended, using the damaged Ward Town Hall as a focal point. Peter says it was strangely comforting to be around people excited by what had happened.
“Everyone else was sad, terrified, sitting in the hall and in would walk the geologists and seismologists and suddenly it was so thrilling to have them describe what had happened and to know that we’d lived through it.”
Peter, Avery, Loe and Hickman are key members of the Flaxbourne Heritage Trust driving a plan to restore Ward’s heart; Flaxbourne being the name of the district at the time of Pākehā settlement in about 1847.
Ward township was created in 1905 from government land reform which carved up Flaxbourne Station. It takes its name from the country’s 17th Prime Minister, Joseph Ward.
Sally Peter says Ward is a name some have difficulty with, not least the postal service. It once delivered a parcel designated for their farm, named Isolation, to the isolation ward at Dunedin Hospital.
The trustees are like many in the district who are linked to multiple generations of farming families who’ve raised prime Merino and Corriedale sheep on Ward’s rolling slopes. More recently, grapes have taken over its alluvial fringes.
The Trust is well down the path to developing a new $2.5 million visitor and heritage centre to replace Ward’s little museum, which was lost in the quake. The aim also is to create a visible landmark. Without its welcome sign beside State Highway 1, few would know Ward existed.
Loe, who chairs the Trust, says the project represents a critical phase in Ward’s future. He says the quake was perhaps the impetus needed to preserve and expand on the district’s rich history. He hopes to see building begin by next April or May.
“If we don’t do it now, I don’t know who will have the capability.”
A Lotteries grant has helped the Trust past the concept stage, while other grants and public fund-raising efforts have got it near the $2 million mark and helped to secure the land use consent. The Trust hopes to have the building consent application lodged before Christmas.
Peter says the area has not told its story well, and it’s a long one. The area goes back to when the uplift began from the submerged continent and the mountains of Kaikōura were formed, to the once abundant moa, and the early Māori occupation around Ward’s coast.
Avery says fossilised seashells, high up in the hills of their farm, are solid clues to its past.
This South Island zone has also revealed artefacts dating back more than 800 years - the same as those found at the Wairau Bar, or Te Pokohiwi, where explorers from East Polynesia arrived in about 1280.
“The same people who lived there, walked through here,” Peter says.
From the dining room in the family’s cracked and warped homestead at Isolation Farm, she says the project has created a new focus that is also helping to heal wounds.
“People have leaned on each other and we’re really strong because of that, but for us to move forward … it’s taken this long for people to think about it because they’re still fixing their own lives.”
The new centre is to be built near the newly refurbished Ward Town Hall – also damaged in the quake, and beside the proposed Whale Trail – a 210km cycling and walking trail from Picton to Kaikōura.
Peter says a proposed cinema room within the centre will be a “pretty cool extra”.
Central to Ward’s coastal story is Cape Campbell and its lighthouse, which blinks its warning once every 15 seconds to ships and boats passing coastal Ward’s wind-battered coast.
Cape Campbell, or Te Karaka for its once-abundant forest, is a hub of New Zealand history from the days of earliest Māori occupation to the arrival of European settlers, sealers, whalers and farmers.
The heritage trust is working on the story with Rangitāne o Wairau - one of the oldest and most prominent iwi of Marlborough, with strong historical and cultural links to the area.
The Peter family also farms land at the Cape, where the lighthouse juts out into Te Moana-o-Raukawa/Cook Strait at the end of a long, dusty gravel road.
They could not believe the lighthouse was still standing when they finally made it there in the hours following the quake. They expected to find it plopped on the ground, like an ice cream cone melted on a summer pavement.
The lighthouse had simply jolted north with the land, although evidence around the base showed it had got the severe wobbles. Maritime New Zealand says remote monitoring systems revealed the back-up battery-powered system kicked in and continued to power the light when the mains power was knocked out by the quake.
This beacon of Ward’s pride, and the small wooden cottages beneath it, attracted international attention as a location in the 2016 Hollywood film The Light Between Oceans, released just weeks before the quake.
The lighthouse (the second to be built there) will be a focal point of the new centre, along with the stories of the families who once lived there.
“I’m intrigued by the families that were there, their struggles, and the things that went on in their daily lives,” Sally Peter says.
“In a diary entry from the 1800s it just says: ‘Mrs Smith gave birth to twins this morning. Neither survived’, and then it goes on talking about the weather.”
Peter says the babies are buried at the Cape; their souls entwined with Māori buried there, and the souls of those shipwrecked on the once submerged reefs, now clearly visible after they were thrust up by the quake.
The story circle has widened to include families from further south in Clarence and Kēkerengū who gravitated to Ward after the quake, when Kaikōura was blocked by landslides.
“We ended up with a whole new community coming to us. All those young families have formed a new community.”
The story also now crosses into land traditionally occupied by Ngāi Tahu – the principal iwi of Te Waipounamu/South Island. The Trust has invited input from Ngāi Tahu’s northernmost hapū, Ngāti Kuri because of the overlap.
“It’s really important to us that they tell their story in this new development,” Peter says.
Te Rūnanga a Rangitāne o Wairau Trust member, and Massey University senior lecturer in Māori history, Dr Peter Meihana, says there’s recognition of shared whakapapa with Ngāti Kuri, and each has much to offer.
“We think that our kōrero will add value to the kōrero of this area.”
Sally Peter also feels strongly about creating a place where young people can learn about their roots.
“Iwi have a very good way of doing this; Europeans not quite so well, but we’ve been in this area long enough that it’s now time to take pride in where we come from.”
