Christchurch was always the "big smoke" for a boy growing up in Timaru.
Christchurch was the city 160 k’s up the road and on special occasions, we’d make the trek north to shop at Ballantynes, have afternoon tea at the DIC and dinner at Fail’s Fish Restaurant.
There were the memorable excursions with fathers and sons to rugby tests to watch the All Blacks at Lancaster Park. Then the inevitable slow trips home where the dads went for a beer in the country pub while the sons sat outside in the car with a raspberry and lemonade.
There were wonderful concerts at the Town Hall with the Bee Gees, The Hollies, The Four Tops and The Temptations.
It was always a serene city. The graceful Avon River with the punts languidly drifting and, of course, towering above it all, the focus of the city, Cathedral Square and its wonderful Cathedral. Well, it seemed to tower above us then before it was itself dwarfed by the buildings around it.
It is hard to believe that now most of that is gone. Memories that, for me, stretch back forty-odd years destroyed in 40 seconds.
All that history from the famous first four ships in 1850 to today, gone in virtually a few blinks of an eye.
The Cathedral was the city’s proud symbol. It survived the first quake but succumbed on February 22nd.
Perhaps even more symbolic, the Christchurch Wizard who has barked and harangued all and sundry for forty years, packed up his pointy hat and taken off with his mum. Who could blame him? There was still a definite irony in the man who had blustered on about the greatness of his chosen city choosing to retereat.
Still, where there is life, there is hope. You only have to look at other examples of cities that have been devastated that have since recovered and in some cases, are even better than before.
Look at Napier, now a beautiful art deco centre. Then there is London and Dresden demolished in the War, San Francisco in 1989 and Kobe, Japan in 1995.
Perhaps Kobe is good example of what to expect with Christchurch. Kobe is a much bigger city than Christchurch with 1.5 million people. Its 20 second quake killed 6,400 people and displaced 300,000. It registered 6.8 on the Richter Scale.
It took two years to clear up the rubble and mess and ten years to completely restore the city.
So Christchurch and New Zealand are in for the long haul. We are looking at years before Cantabrians can relax and truly recover. Of course, that assumes that the earthquakes abate.
