Quake museum, art gallery, cathedral square, buy possum yarn.
Stephen and Robyn have their personal trainer, Nathan, arrive at six a.m. for an hour of three “reps” of a dozen moves — squats, push-ups, standing jumps, stuff with 15-pound weights, etc. — that re-acquaint David, who for some reason decided to participate, with every sinew and ligament in his body. Then Stephen and Hugh take him to play tennis in the main public park, which has an Indian festival going on just behind the five courts. A stage, live rock and roll, cannons that blow steam and paint into the air simultaneously. A good time is had by all.
Stephen and Robyn lend their Camry station wagon to us and we’re at the open air Riccarton House market a little after noon: vegetables, fruits, artisan salamis and honeys and breads. Solo musicians who look like one of the Chicago Seven. David thinks all Saturday-morning-in-upscale-neighborhood markets have colluded on their mix of food, drink, comestibles and activities … maybe the same families even move from one to the other. That cute family with the two kids in the blue and yellow stroller …
We go to a Countdown supermarket to get the fixings for Chicken Marbella, which we’ve offered to fix Monday night, and David does the shopping while Cynthia peels off to a yarn store and gets some possum fur for knitting projects in Oz. Then we drive into the City Centre and spend about two hours in Quake City: a “museuleum” of Christchurch’s downfall and ongoing resurrection from the earthquakes of this century. Note: The Canterbury region of New Zealand has been shaken by 15 earthquakes of serious magnitude since 1901.
One exhibit, which lasts more than an hour, is a movie screen from which more than a dozen survivors, some of whose family members did not, tell their stories about 2/22, “the day of” in 2011. Almost everyone in the film talks about the literal and emotional and spiritual shock of it, their lives smothered almost instantly in dust and gas from ruptured pipes, the ground beneath them turned to thin mud from the liquification of the silt and sand soil upon which Christchurch is built.
Exhibits explain all the physical forces at work, other exhibits are of damaged artifacts from city centre buildings, of photographs before and after … it is truly heartbreaking and made all the more so because so many of the streets and open spaces around Quake City are barren, fenced, boarded, supported externally by thick skeletons of rusted iron girders. Fourteen story hotels and office buildings are boarded, empty, derelict. But there are small pockets of new life. We pass the gutted cathedral and pass a bar and discotheque called Smash Palace surrounded by gleaming motorcycles and the sounds of music and laughter and a Saturday night on the town. David gets a Negroni … sort of … and Cynthia has a gimlet at a bar named Dux.
We have dinner at a crowded, absolutely madhouse, happening, downtown place called Little High, a warehouse with eight different “take out” restaurants: burgers, Thai food, Mexican, Venezuelan, Pizza, etc. Each was a food truck catering to the construction workers and government employees and others who worked downtown after the quake, and the owners of the trucks are now together under this one roof under which tables turn over in the blink of an eye and young and old, tourists and the teeming town crowd together in a Saturday Night Fever maelstrom. It’s busy. It’s alive.
We walk back to our car, passing under the memorial arch for the city’s World War I dead, walk along the narrow, gently curving, beautiful Avon River, hurry in the cold wind along a newly paved avenue lined with chi-chi clothing stores and banks, and get in our borrowed car and navigate home. The Thomases are out at a Haggis and Scottish Dance party at their son, Hugh’s, school, St. Andrews, just down the street. Hugh is at a friend’s for a sleep-over. A few houses on our residential block were destroyed and have since been rebuilt. Two are now under reconstruction. Look around and you would never know this area was ever harmed.
Another fascinating day in Paradise.
Two Tramps 