I’ve had an Airfix 1/72 scale B-17G in my unbuilt model stash for some time, having bought it from the Napier model shop Platform One just before it closed down. But when I came across a cheap kitset of the B-17F Memphis Belle I had to get it.
(As a result, there were likely Memphis Belle bits in the B-17G and vice-versa…)._
I started with the Memphis Belle:
Giving the interior and exterior a liberal first / final coat to make later construction stages easier I went with “Olive Drab” top and one of my many “Sea Gray” Tamiya can sprays underneath.
Despite several fiddly, tiny interior parts, I was able to complete the cockpit and navigator/bombardier nose sections without issue or any lost bits.
I even “kitbashed” some cockpit oxygen tanks by cutting sprue pieces into short lengths and painting them yellow (above, left, just behind the pilots’ seats.)
Most remarkably, when I fitted and glued the two halves of the fuselage together (with all the bits and pieces, turning turrets, and interior details, there were few to no issues!
All glued together, painted and decaled the ‘Belle looked stunning!
You could even see the oxy’ tanks in the interior!
Up next was the B-17G.
The difference between the older Memphis Belle’s B-17F, and the B-17G was the newer G had a “chin turret” – A pair of co-axial 50 caliber machine guns remotely controlled by the plane’s Bombardier mounted under their big, conical aiming window at the front of the aircraft, under its “chin”.
I didn’t want to make these two big planes looking the same and, like the P51 Mustang the B17 really was blank canvas for paint schemes, variances and “nose art”.
Different groups, squadrons and units had different color combinations to help identify their own aircraft in the gigantic formations of bombers that flew over occupied Europe during the war.
The combination I picked actually came from a screenshot of the flight simulator “DCS”, with Gloss Aluminum fuselage, Matt Yellow tail and wingtips, Matt Red engine cowlings, and Olive Drab anti-glare nose top and in-board engine (so as to not blind the pilots from looking at bright, shiny aluminum.)
Once all the bits were put together, painted and decaled the B-17G looked absolutely stunning in its glossy metal finish
With the recent experience of building the Belle, (and already having painted/constructed most of the parts) this build went together even faster and easier.
These kits were a childhood dream, and a pleasure to build.
The only problem was finding somewhere big enough to display them…
(The smell from the dozens of full-gloss printed pages was guaranteed to keep your sinuses clear for months, or get you addicted to the smell of model glue and/or paint…)
One of the earliest, coolest dioramas I can remember was a WW2 German Volkswagen Schwimmwagen amphibious jeep fording a river.
I never had the skill to recreate the scene myself as a young one. But the more modeling I did and the different methods I had started trying recently gave me the confidence to try it out.
I bought a 1:35 Tamiya Schwimmwagen and Italeri Willy’s Jeep from my regular Napier model store, Cool Toys, and got to work
This was going to be a bit of a higgledy-piggledy process, because there were going to be a few changes that I wanted to make, so I painted and glued together what I could initially without causing too much hassle down the line.
To make the Schwimmwagen look like it was…erm.. “schwimming” I either needed a lot of resin (which I didn’t have) to make a deep river or cheat a little by making the wheels a bit shallower.
Fortunately the Jeep kit also came with a trailer I had no intent on building, but the spare two wheels (olive green, on top of the original sandy-colored Tamiya wheels, above) would certainly come in useful.
Rivet-counting model prototype purists may cringe, but I was working on the theory that very little of the wheels would be visible above “water-level”, so it didn’t matter so much.
To make the Schwimmwagen sit flush with the base I was doing to pour the river into I had to do a bit of “kit-bashing”. This involved a hacksaw.
With the kitset put together, painted and decaled it looked pretty great!
I painted most of the parts on their sprues and started with the chassis and suspension. With very few issues, aside from a couple of fit issues the kit came together quickly and easily.
As part of the diorama, I intended the Jeep to have its hood up, possibly with a figure working on the engine, so I made a point of painting the engine, and detailing the engine bay a bit too.
With the kits completed I moved onto the base.
For my diorama I intended a purloined German Schwimmwagen to be cruising past a Jeep on a wharf with engine issues.
I sealed and painted the “water” area, and prepared the “piled” wharf base.
I got to use the remaining half of the resin I bought to make the sea for my “Spit in the Sea” diorama two years ago which had, very thankfully not gone off or hardened in the meantime, mixing the resin together and pouring it into the “lake” section.
The amount of resin I had filled the “lake” perfectly, right up to the level I wanted (this had required a bit of mathematics to figure out).
I left it for a couple days to harden properly.
To give the Schwimmwagen a “wake” to give the impression it is motoring along I used gel medium (also from the “Spit in the Sea” diorama) to make some waves.
To make the wharf I cut dowel down into sections to make the front of the wharf and added some lichen “weeds” (neither of which are particularly visible, like the Schwimmwagen’s trailer wheels, but I know they are there…)
I layered popsicle sticks as bearers, then cut and placed more popsicle sticks at right angles to make the wharf’s planks.
It was fortunately far less fiddly than I feared.
I did a (VERY) basic paint job on the figures (the next skill I need to work), on and added a few bits of greenery just to break up the otherwise rather sparse wharf.
It was really cool to recreate a dream diorama from my childhood, and the more models I make and more experienced and confident I get, the cooler the models become!
“Regional journalists employed by New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), owner of the NZ Herald, Newstalk ZB, as well as a raft of regional and community mastheads, have released a statement seeking support from their local communities as they face potential job losses.”
As part of these cuts ALL HB Today’s Visual Journalist (“photographer” to us old-schoolers) positions are to be axed.
While many in media say that a journalist with a smartphone can’t compete with the quality of industry-grade digital picture and video cameras, that’s looks EXACTLY like what NZME expect their Hawke’s Bay Today journalists to do from now on.
Oh, and cover a region that ranges from Dannevirke in the south, to Mahia in the north, and has a population of around 180,000.
Six full time-equivalent journalists are enough to cover that entire region.
RIGHT?!
“The changes will ensure those newsrooms have the appropriate resourcing to produce the right mix of high-quality content that better connects with our print subscribers and local communities, while continuing to serve our digital audiences,” NZME editor in chief Murray Kirkness.
Cutting an award-winning newsroom’s staff BY HALF “will ensure those newsrooms have the appropriate resourcing“?
What utter bullshit.
New Shub
Failing to Read the (News)Room
“A key feature of (NZME’s) restructure is the creation of a “hub”, from which news directors and editors will oversee multiple regions at once” Stuff reports.
Sadly this is nothing new for New Zealand’s regional news outlets.
Hawke’s Bay Today itself was formed when Hawke’s Bay’s two newspapers (Napier’s “Daily Telegraph” and Hastings’ “Herald Tribune”) were merged into one in 1999 by NZME’s corporate predecessor APN. It added a section of Tararua District news when the Dannevirke News was also osmosed into the masthead in 2005.
Advertising income dropping? Cut newsrooms! Readership dropping? Cut newsrooms! Shareholders not making enough profits? Cut newsrooms! Online presence failing against entrenched main centre competition? Halve award-winning regional newsroom!
As regional newsrooms were cut to the bone the amount of news they could produce obviously dropped as a result.
As the amount of local news regional newsrooms produced dropped, less and less locals read and advertised in their once thriving, informative regional papers, as due to their corporate masters’ machinations and poor business decisions they lost relevance to the locals.
One of the most startling examples of this in Hawke’s Bay Today was a few years ago, under a previous editor, where there was almost as much in-house NZME advertising padding out space in the daily newspaper’s pages as there was local news content!
There were also “Editorials” and opinion columns galore from NZME’s regionally irrelevant Auckland radio talkback hosts taking up valuable column inches where local news, issues and opinions used to take forefront, too.
NZME can’t even be bothered getting humans to write relevant, topical opinion pieces that get reproduced online and across the country on their regional mastheads!?
NZME then wails that “Facebook has taken our audience (read “profits”) away!”, and cuts regional newsroom staff numbers EVEN FURTHER to try and make up for money lost because of their own big city executive idiocy!
At the same time Newshub had devastated the employment opportunities of New Zealand journalists, competitor and media mainstay for generations, Television New Zealand (TVNZ) did what you would expect absolutely no logical competitor to do and ALSO cut staff numbers as well as long-running, popular AND PROFITABLE shows Fair Go and Sunday.
With all this devastation across the media landscape it might have made it a bit hard to hear the additional regional media losses NZME proposed because, as we’re aware, “regional New Zealand doesn’t matter”, apparently..
And that’s something that none of the coverage of the “twee little café incident” mentioned: An international award-winning paper, that overcame a major natural disaster to get the news out to the people who needed it was having their newsroom staff numbers cut in half.
This isn’t a failure of regional journalism.
It’s the failure of NZME.
This was never an issue of “no one reads newspapers / watches the 6pm news anymore”.
The news in newspapers, websites, apps, radio, and television ALL comes from newsrooms like Hawke’s Bay Today’s.
One evening RTR Countdown plays the new music video of a song that will quickly gain regular radio airtime. It’s by an African American woman named Tracy Chapman who has short, spiky dreadlocks and it’s called “Fast Car”.
“You got a fast car I want a ticket to anywhere Maybe we make a deal Maybe together we can get somewhere Any place is better Starting from zero got nothing to lose Maybe we’ll make something Me, myself, I got nothing to prove“
While Napier is my entire existence in 1988, I realize it is merely a small part of a much bigger planet, but It’s a good starting point. At ten years old my life and the world lie ahead of me.
That’s 10-11 year old me in yellow, middle row, second from the left.
“Fast Car” will continue to develop and deepen each time I hear it over the coming years. Every time I hear it there will be different meaning in it for me.
1993-95
“You got a fast car I got a plan to get us outta here I been working at the convenience store Managed to save just a little bit of money Won’t have to drive too far Just ‘cross the border and into the city You and I can both get jobs And finally see what it means to be living”
Some time in 1994 I bought my first “Fast Car” – A ’69 (nice!) Ford Anglia, which my Dad helped me paint and get in good running order. The Anglia enabled me to “cross the border” between Napier and Hastings – the Tutaekuri and Ngaruroro river bridges. Owning a car is also a really big step on the way to “adulthood”.
My first car, Circa 1994
Chorus
“So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car Speed so fast it felt like I was drunk City lights lay out before us And your arm felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulder And I-I had a feeling that I belonged I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone”
OK, my first car was nowhere near “fast”, I didn’t go very far, and I sure as hell never drove drunk, but owning a car did provide mobility – A highly intoxicating drug for any teenager.
Driving back to Napier from Hastings at night the city’s lights are gorgeous – all the house and street lights on Napier Hill (Mataruahou) look like a sparkling, multi-jeweled crown.
While I wouldn’t so much as hold hands with a girl until 1998 (not for lack of trying!), so snuggling-and-driving was out of the question, I DID feel like I belonged at home with my family.
We were a small unit, but we were tight, and we loved each other.
I was a panelist on RNZ’s “The Panel” six times between 2018 & 2019. The briefest of National Radio exposure
1996-1998
“See, my old man’s got a problem He live with the bottle, that’s the way it is He says his body’s too old for working His body’s too young to look like his My mama went off and left him She wanted more from life than he could give I said somebody’s got to take care of him So I quit school and that’s what I did“
While my Dad wasn’t a drinker and Mum never left us, Dad did have a heart attack around 1997. As I’ve written about before, my parents had me quite late in life and Dad was nearing retirement age not long after I finished school. Not long after the heart attack he ended up taking early retirement. His work and hobbies had always been quite physical and taxing, so it wasn’t too surprising.
We still managed to live happily, never struggling financially despite Dad’s solo income or pension being far less than I would end up earning later in life.
Rather than going to university like so many of my schoolmates, I ended up working back in the same supermarket I had my first job in. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn’t want to spend three years of my life and $30-50,000 on a student loan to STILL not know, so working on the checkout and stacking shelves provided a regular, albeit reasonably small, income and kept me closer to my parents who I was now starting to worry about.
(The line about quitting school to look after a sick relative also reminds me of Toby Morris’ exquisite cartoon “On a Plate” that (very rightly) never fails to anger me.)
I worked at the supermarket during the day, went home, had dinner and travelled out to the station around 11pm to be on air from midnight until 6am. It was physically and mentally draining. Management decisions hardly helped.
At first we were allowed to talk between every few songs, like normal radio announcers. But a few months in we were told we were only allowed to play music. It defeated the purpose of being a “radio announcer“.
Aside from manually queuing up and playing the preset lists of songs on stacks of the station’s compact discs (things were far from digital in 1995/6) we also had menial tasks like doing the dishes and vacuuming the station offices. You got pretty good at being able to do certain tasks in the three and a half minutes it took for most songs to play, then get back into the studio in time to seamlessly start the next song. I didn’t mind doing the cleaning, as it was the sort of things the youngest/newest staff members just did when they started jobs, and it helped pass the long dark hours.
But after being silenced on air us midnight-till-dawners just became some sort of “manual automation”. Taking off secondary tax it soon didn’t even pay enough to get to Hastings and back every weekend, either.
Not long after I left midway through 1996 the graveyard shift was digitally automated/simulcast and what had been the entry point for regional broadcasters for years ceased to exist.
My dream radio career had lasted six months.
“You got a fast car Is it fast enough so we can fly away? We gotta make a decision Leave tonight or live and die this way”
2001-2004
“You got a fast car We go cruising, entertain ourselves You still ain’t got a job And I work in the market as a checkout girl I know things will get better You’ll find work and I’ll get promoted We’ll move out of the shelter Buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs”
I got a job at Dymocks Booksellers in Napier in 2000. I met my future wife while working there in 2001. She ended up working there part time, too, and would go on to work in the book trade much longer than I did.
Our boss, Jeff, was very good and managed to organize it so we had our “weekends” (usually Wednesday and Thursday from memory) together. We had a fair bit of disposable income and planned to get a flat together at some stage in the near future.
In 2023 the store was bought by new owners, who interviewed us all and asked what our plans / goals were. I said after three years I’d like to move up and become some sort of manager eventually.
The new owners fired all the incumbent staff and took on new employees when they took over.
My wife got immediately head-hunted by a bookshop down the road. She would go back to working at Dymocks until its closure under even newer owners who took over after the owners who fired us failed.
I got a job as an Assistant Manager (the shop had only two staff including myself) at a video game store in the CBD a month after the bookshop let us go. This was “Big Money” in 2023: $10 per hour!
While still living at our respective homes the double income allowed us to regularly go out to the movies, have coffee and dessert on long Hawke’s Bay evenings and go for aimless drives.
We even found a flat with very good landlords who charged below market rates that allowed us to move in together in my childhood suburb of Tamatea!
There’s just something special about sunsets over Tamatea, as the big, golden orb dips below the Poraiti hills..
2004-2023
“You got a fast car I got a job that pays all our bills You stay out drinking late at the bar See more of your friends than you do of your kids I’d always hoped for better Thought maybe together you and me’d find it I got no plans, I ain’t going nowhere Take your fast car and keep on driving”
In 2004 I was finally able to leave low-paying retail after a decade when I got a job in the same company (and office) as my (now fiancée’s) father and our income more than doubled.
I was only supposed to be for a year to cover maternity leave, but the lady who held my position previously decided not to return and I would remain in the job for the next 20 years – a massive change from what had been a natural three-year cycle in different retail jobs.
It meant job security and stability during some very unstable times in my life.
Between 2004 and 2023 my life was a rollercoaster of:
Got married. We honeymooned in Melbourne – our last trip overseas to date.
Not to mention all the interior and exterior crises of regular life, coming to grips with parenthood, and still trying to figure out how to be an adult.
I’ll certainly never be a “deadbeat dad” and have tried to be as involved as I can in our daughter’s life – Going on school trips, coaching her cricket team, doing all I can to ensure she knows she matters, is loved and can do her best.
I’ve sacrificed time, money, and opportunities for my family’s security, but that’s just what you do as a Dad. Right?
Sadly, security is no panacea for the feeling of stagnation when your own life and career goals fail to materialize after years and years of trying to effect change for yourself.
Despite two decades of loyal service and dedication to my job, doing odd hours and going above and beyond, often working solo and still meeting work targets, I still haven’t risen from the position I inherited 20 years ago.
Being unsuccessful in both internal promotions and finding a new career closer to what I actually want to do started to ulcerate some time ago.
Seeing people like Ke Huy Quan and Brendan Fraser win Academy Awards in 2023 showed that good guys with dreams can still get there in middle age, despite decades of feeling redundant or inadequate.
In 2023 Tracy Chapman became the first Black woman to have written a country music number one. She also becomes the first Black woman to win a Country Music Association award for “Fast Car”, 35 years after the song was first released, when Luke Combs’ cover of her song won “Song of the Year”.
2024
“You got a fast car Is it fast enough so you can fly away? You gotta make a decision Leave tonight or live and die this way”
Throughout “Fast Car” there is a beat that ticks away like an old analogue clock, and a plinky-plonky acoustic guitar riff that repeats over and over and sounds like water dripping constantly, endlessly.
I can’t and won’t leave my family, as my daughter is the best thing I have. But I can’t keep going without catching a break.
There is a stage where the line “live and die this way” stops being a way of life and becomes an imminent threat.
The snare and high-hat tick away like a clock. The plinky-plonky acoustic guitar riff repeats over and over, like water dripping constantly, endlessly.
The year started out all innocent and full of hope like so many others (not looking at you, 2020…), but there were early portents of unusual and unstable times ahead.
The fact that so much ruined infrastructure like many of the bridges that were taken out in the flooding Gabrielle caused have been repaired and trains and vehicles are using them again within 10 months of their destruction is remarkable.
Groups of people got together in the aftermath of the disaster and helped clear out properties, remove cubic kilometers of silt and help get others back on their feet as soon as possible speaks volumes of the care and compassion Hawke’s Bay people have for their neighbors and communities.
While things were getting back on their feet, I wrote a rather extensive piece covering the days of darkness that Napier endured and, at the suggestion of Twitter friend Jolisa Gracewood, I sent it to The Spinoff. Editor Mad Chapman graciously published it as their “Sunday Essay” the following weekend and it was very well received. In my last email to Chapman, I optimistically (deludedly?) wrote “see you at the 2024 Voyager Awards!” (We’ll come to that bit later.)
I think having gone through the Covid lockdowns so recently was a major factor in this – Everyone knew they were in the same boat, so help where you can and don’t be a dick.
Sadly, not everyone learned from that experience.
During the blackout perhaps one of the biggest ulcerations and indications of bad things to come that year was the breadth and scale of rumor and conspiracy bullshit that spread around the region and seeped into social media and news feeds.
All utter horseshit. The same “cooker” mis- and disinformation crap perpetuated since Covid that would slowly suck empathy and intelligence from so many in the lead up to the election later in the year..
As our region recovered, I faced more conflicting communication.
Once things were running (comparatively) smoothly I had an interview for a job I had applied for before the cyclone.
I felt the interview went well and, after doing literally the exact same tasks every day, week and month for the past almost 20 years, I’m more than ready for a change.
But I didn’t get this new job because they felt “I was too negative about my current job”?! If I was perfectly happy doing what I do I wouldn’t be applying for other positions, would I? They said there was no question I had the skills and talent, and if anything else came up they would call me.
Similar positions have come up there and they haven’t called me.
When asked why I was applying for their job I had expressed frustration at a lack of development and progression in my current role, while others with less experienced had shot up the ladder. No vitriol, not knocking my employers just facts. The interviewers even said that was not how things were done there and I took that as a good sign.
But not good enough.
How would you feel being trapped in an occupational Groundhog Day for 20 years? Like so many people I’m not doing what I WANT to do, but it supports my family, so I do it for them.
I’m clearly not failing at my job, otherwise I wouldn’t have lasted this long, but there’s no incentive to excel, because doing that has gotten me nowhere either.
Yet, when an opportunity arose for me to be able to leave that situation, those with the power to help me escape and utilize my recognized skills and talents choose to keep me trapped in my current situation?!
Desecrating the sacred place that was my Dad’s shed resulted in me manually loading one and a quarter tonnes of scrap metal that I took to the recyclers.
It did wonders for my bulking up my arm muscles, if only I’d had feeling in them afterwards…
Between selling the scrap metal, tools and other trinkets we made over $2100, which would have been a great little financial bonus, but taking off the cost of the general and green waste disposal and our wonderful tenants having found a new place and moving out only a couple of weeks into their 90 days’ notice, we were losing around $1000 a month for around half of 2023 before final settlement happened in October.
That just added onto general pressures and worries.
While I do enjoy writing and especially getting paid to write, this year has been a hard one for wordcraft.
I had little free time to write. The commissioned pieces I completed were slotted into busy schedules that all somehow worked out in time for their deadlines. But the pressure to complete amidst the congestion of everything else took the fun out of it for me – I didn’t learn as much as I usually do researching the topics, which is something I really enjoy.
When I had the free time to write for myself, I seldom had the drive or confidence to set words down in type. With everything else going on – Disaster recovery, AI technology taking over print, lies and conspiracy running rampant and the media that I aspired to be a part of continuing to circle the drain the drive just wasn’t there.
My optimistic / deluded dream to be nominated for a 2024 Voyager Media Award for my “Napier in the Dark” essay also came crashing down in December when I learned the News Publishers Association, who run the Voyager Awards, have absolutely eviscerated the number of categories for the 2024 Awards. 2024’s awards will have 10 “Print/Text” and 16 “All Media” categories, whereas 2023 had 19 “Print/Text” and 28 “All Media” categories.
“Best First Person Essay or Feature”, the one I had my hopes set on, was one of far too many being scrapped.
In a time when media, news, reporting and even just the truth is under incredible pressure to prove its credibility, worth and quality slashing the ways the best of the industry can be displayed and celebrated is completely counterintuitive!
In 2023 I was giving up on a dream I had only started to get a foothold in over the last decade. As my creative output ascended, the goal I wanted to reach was sliding off towards a nadir on the other side of the peak I had yet to reach.
When we saw a general election like the one we had this year with one party that had essentially no policies, other than tax cuts for their already rich mates, for the majority of the campaign still come to power, supported by minor parties whose sole tricks are racial division and bug-eyed conspiracy peddling things do not look hopeful for our country!
I took me a bit to believe in myself and trust my own skills, but I like to think enough of my father’s innate craft and woodworking expertise eventually osmosed down to me like some sort of neural slow-release fertilizer and I was really proud of the job I did, especially when it came to cutting the plywood for the case.
We managed to travel in late October and early November as, over Hawke’s Bay Anniversary / Labour Weekend we took our daughter on her first flight(s) to Wellington and went to the zoo.
Even that wasn’t without some drama, as our original flight was canceled with engineering issues a couple of hours before it was due to depart. Fortunately, we were able to re-book almost instantaneously and went to Wellington via Auckland – Two first flights (on a prop plane to Auckland, and then a jet to Wellington) for the price of one!
The view of the cyclone damaged Esk Valley as we climbed heading north out of Napier was very sobering, though.
We stayed in Newtown and walked to and from the zoo. The weather and food was lovely and I happened to meet a few online friends in real life by chance on the trip.
A little over a week later I got to go away on camp with my daughter and her class in early November, which was terrific.
The camp was for three days at Tutira, between Napier and Wairoa, and evidence of the damage caused by Gabrielle was still very visible, with loads of roadworks repairing the numerous dropouts, landslides and road undermining despite months of monumental work to get the vital arterial link open again.
The camp was great, the weather was lovely, and the kids were cool, and we all had a great time away from sub/urban life.
My daughter says she “only cried five times because she missed her Mum” (she counted?!) despite her loving, caring Dad being RIGHT THERE…
Our daughter was the star of my year. While hopes for myself dwindled, my hopes for her continue to soar.
She was awarded a “School Values Medal” for Excellence during the year and got an end of year award, too, which was a fantastic surprise to finish on.
She had been in a mixed class of her and about six other Year 5 students with around 25 older Year 6 students and ended up making friends with so many of the Year Sixes that she was really sad to see them go off to Intermediate at the end of the year.
Her and another Year 5 classmate took out two of the three end of year awards for their class, with her best Year 6 friend taking out the remaining one.
She is such a loving, compassionate girl.
It’s this hope for her future that also worries me so much about her future in a world already beset by blatant political corruption and interference in democratic process, the imminent threat of irreparable climate change disaster, the invasion of sovereign nations, and genocide/ethnic cleansing in an age where everyone on Earth is supposed to be happily working together to reach for the stars and travel the galaxies like on Star Trek!
“Concentrate on what is within your power to do. Disregard the hysteria and wrongness around you. Preoccupy yourself with doing what is in your power to be done.”
For me external depressants were hard to suppress in 2023 when for almost every good thing there were just as many, if not more, bad things – A cloud for every silver lining, death of positivity from a thousand newspaper cuts (and don’t even get me started on how Elon Must utterly fucked up Twitter…)
Above the arches that lead from Napier’s Marine Parade to the Soundshell and Veronica Sunbay is an inscription that reads:
“Courage is the Thing. All Goes if Courage Goes.” [The Rectoral Address Delivered by James M. Barrie at St. Andrew’s University May 3, 1922
I would tweak that slightly to read “HOPE is the Thing. All Goes if HOPE Goes”. [Andrew Frame, just now]
This year I hoped I could possibly be nominated for a Voyager Award, I hoped to meet Kane Williamson and Kyle Jamieson, I hoped I was worthy of a new job…
But none of those hopes were, or will, be realized.
But I can’t give up on Hope.
Hope was my Grandfather’s first and Dad’s middle name. I was born the same year as Star Wars: A New Hope.
Hope is what drives me forward and the most powerful force (other than love) that I can offer and support my daughter with.
Hope just needs to be realized, otherwise there is nothing to look forward to in 2024.
This year it was the turn of the traditional “Partridge” version.
Wherever possible she tries to tie in part of the carol lyrics to the dish – i.e. “Partridge in a Pear Tree” will usually contain pears or some kind of bird reference to some degree.
Due to the rather prolific recurrence of birds in the traditional carol (Partridges, Turtle Doves, French Hens, Swans, Geese..), there may also be some sort of alliteration or similar tie-in, otherwise we might as well have the “Twelve Days of KFC”….
When all else fails, a fair chunk of artistic license is brought in. It really takes a fair bit of dedication and imagination to pull off!
I’ll do my best to explain the theory behind each dish as we go.
So sit back and have some fun as I reveal what my true love made for me over the Twelve Days of Christmas Deliciousness for 2023:
Day 1 – A Partridge in a Pear Tree – Yule Tide Log Cake!
Somewhere out there is a chocolate partridge missing their chocolate pear tree, as we’ve harvested it to make this delicious Chocolate Yule Tide Log!
Day 2 – Two Turtle Doves – Chicken Sausage Baguettes with Macadamia and Apricot Stuffing!
The Macadamias (and baguettes) have a hard outer shell, similar to turtles. I’m guessing doves taste like chicken, but apparently everything does…
(Fun fact: For our honeymoon 18 years ago Mrs. Frame and I went to Monreale Estate in the Dandenong Ranges just outside Melbourne, Australia. On one night the estate made dinner for us, which was chicken with this very same macadamia and apricot stuffing!)
Day 3 – Three French Hens: Corn Fritters
A pretty straight forward one here – Chickens eat corn, ergo corn fritters!
Day 4 – Four Calling Birds: Delivered Takeaways (Hell Pizza)
It’s not just birds that come calling, takeaway delivery drivers do too! Two years ago I did a 12 days of HB Takeaways and, let’s be honest, 12 individual, themed meals in 12 days are a real mission, Mrs Frame deserved the break!
Day 5 – Five Gold Rings – French Onion Soup with Golden Grilled Gruyère Baguette Slices
French onion soup has become a regular recipe in the “12 Days” line up, being adaptable from French Hens to many others, including Five Gold Rings – Gruyère cheese grilled until golden on round baguette rings!
Day 6 – Six Geese a Laying – Vegetarian Scotch Eggs!
Ignoring for a moment that Scotch Eggs may not actually originate in Scotland, Mrs Frame, a vegetarian, replaced the usual sausage meat or mince casing for blitzed chickpeas. The result was surprisingly moreish and doesn’t fill you up anywhere as much as the meat does – I can highly recommend! The “a-laying” aspect can either be seen as the whole egg being laid in the chickpea mixture or the egg, still ensconced in the chick(peas) awaiting laying. (I may be overthinking this one…)
Day 7 – Seven Swams a Swimming – Sausage (and Vegetarian) Rolls!
Before being cut up into individual bite-sized pieces these sausage rolls look like a swan’s long neck. Once cut up the rolls look like cervical vertebrae.
Day 8 – Eight maids a milking: Vegetarian Haggis
Okay, here comes some artistic license: Haggis is traditionally made from sheep (“Vegetarian haggis was first available commercially in 1984, and now can account for between 25% and 40% of haggis sales” according to Wikipedia).
HOWEVER: Mrs Frame’s favorite breed of cow (for milking or just observing – SO FLUFFY!) is Highland Cattle. In the Scottish Highlands they eat Haggis, so Vegetarian Haggis!
Day 9 – Nine Ladies Dancing: Pulled BBQ Jackfruit Burgers!
A bit of artistic license here again: Barbeques are often part of a party, and at parties people dance (the burgers and chips are typical party food, too!) Mrs. Frame discovered this Jackfruit recipe just recently and once again it shows how diverse vegetarian dishes can be!
Day 10 – Ten Lords a-Leaping: Baked Eggs with Truffle Oil!
“Lords” are posh, so are truffles. Discovering truffles might be exciting enough to cause the lords to leap! The truffle cream also makes the baked eggs very rich, like lords.
Day 11 – Eleven Pipers Piping: Enchiladas
Enchiladas are pipes of delicious sauce beans, chilies, and cheese. It’s dishes like this, and so many others on this year’s list where you don’t actually miss meat, with all the vegetables and pulses doing the heavy lifting.
Day 12 – Twelve Drummers Drumming: Ratatouille
We did ratatouille as “French Hens” in 2021. This year it’s Drummers Drumming, as we slow-cooked it in our Crock Pot, which looks like a big round drum (does that make it a slow drum roll?). I added leftover ratatouille to some of the meat leftovers from Christmas day as a refreshing mix in the days following (and to avoid cooking in >30-degree heat)
So there you go – the Twelve Days of Christmas Deliciousness completed for another year. Interestingly, only three dishes involved meat!
All the very best to you and your families in 2024 – May it be more fun and fortuitous than this year!
After much planning, sketching, measuring and staring into the void I settled on a design I was happy with and headed to Mitre 10 to get the plywood that would make up the majority of the case.
I took it over to my father-in-law’s workshop and cut it to length, put grooves in the sides for the Perspex top I intended to slide in and, not having a router, I used the saw bench to make the ends plug in, while seamlessly continuing the lid groove.
I was pretty damn chuffed with the result:
We glued three out of four sides to the base and left it to dry.
The next weekend I cut and drilled out some spare pieces of ply that would hold the bat in place.
A few months passed and I was finally able to get out to Spotlight in Hastings to buy some adhesive-backed green felt to go into the case to resemble the green grass of a cricket pitch and protect the bat from knocks and scrapes.
It was like Durasealing the inside of the exercise book from hell, but I managed to get it done, with the worst of only a few ripples hidden by the bat when it was set in place.
Last was the Perspex lid. This would keep the case sealed and the bat dust free.
Once again I went to Classique Plastics in Napier who had the clear tube for my Top Gun diorama, and they cut a piece of thin, clear plastic to fit perfectly!
The result looks pretty professional if I do say so myself!
Now I just need an office, or regal study / leather armchair furnished library to mount it in…
While we avoided any damage or loss from Cyclone Gabrielle at home I did lose my Rocket Lab drink bottle, along with some other personal mementos when my office flooded with silt, mud and water.
I sent a message on social media to the comms person who sent me the original package asking if they had any more bottles to replace my lost one. I would be happy to pay for it.
They said they would send me one free of charge and the next week a box much larger than just a drink bottle arrived containing a coffee mug, tote bag, mission patch T-shirt, stickers, medallion… and new steel drink bottle!
It was a very cool, unexpected lift after a few wibbly-wobbly working-from-home weeks.
I wasn’t immediately flooded with offers of employment or writing commissions, but I did coincidently get asked to write my first piece in a while for Baybuzz on Wairoa’s post Cyclone Gabrielle recovery for their May print edition.
There were some difficulties getting the article written, as finding the wide range of people we initially wanted to cover proved harder than expected. Some didn’t want to take part, others proved hard to contact (for many in Hawke’s Bay affected by the cyclone “Business as Usual” is still far, far away) and receiving responses on deadline day resulted in an article re-write while I was in the middle of a week’s leave from my day job in the first week of school holidays.
I got there in the end and my editor liked it, but for me it wasn’t accompanied with the usual sense of completion or satisfaction.
Naturally plans and hopes of the new job went out the window.
My workplace was flooded and wrecked.
Fortunately, we had been told to prepare to work from home on the Tuesday the storm hit, so I had all the gear I needed to work from home with me. In the flooding’s aftermath our company’s owners said they were dedicated to continuing and rebuilding, so my job and income was safe.
I was back working remotely before some of my colleagues even had power restored. A little over six weeks after the cyclone we had new, temporary, offices to work out of. Some semblances of work normality, but a different location, different surroundings, different processes and habits to form. Familiar and unfamiliar. All just slightly unbalancing.
A fortnight or so after Gabrielle my phone rang.
I got an interview for the new job I had applied for weeks earlier.
I felt the interview went well.
When they asked why I was looking at leaving my current job I answered honestly – Despite 18+ years of my dedication and service there was a lack of opportunity. I had been overlooked for a promotion recently and outright ignored for internal positions I had applied for previously.
They thanked me for my honesty and providing context and said treating established staff that way was not their company policy.
I though “Great – I’ll get a chance here!”
I left feeling positive about the opportunity that was potentially before me.
But I also felt guilty to be potentially leaving my colleagues in these uncertain and unstable times.
I needn’t have worried.
A couple weeks later I received a call to say my application was unsuccessful.
When I asked why, or how I could improve my chances last time they said I had the skills and talent, but it was because I was “too negative” about my current job.
“Too negative”?
If I was completely positive and happy about my current position why would I be applying for a job elsewhere?
During the interview they had said they understood why I would tell them my reasons for wanting to move on and that how I had been treated didn’t seem fair.
But now that was “too negative”?
I was being honest!
I was sick of being undermined, ignored or micromanaged by people who benefitted from my work more than I did – That’s why people change jobs!
This wasn’t just stopping me finally getting the sort of job I had been after for years, where talents I don’t currently get a chance to use enough could be recognised, developed and rewarded, It was basically saying I wasn’t allowed to feel aggrieved or call it out unfair treatment.
I somehow DESERVE to be denied career development or progress and spend almost 20 years doing the same thing every day, every week, every month, every year.
But I’m not allowed to be or feel “negative” about it?!
I give up!
House Keeping
For the past year we have been negotiating to sell my childhood home to my in-laws, who want to subdivide the section and build themselves a new, smaller retirement house down the back of what must be one of the last (almost) quarter-acre sections on its street.
Selling my old home will pay off our mortgage (and every other debt, loan, credit card etc. we have) several times over (we bought our house almost ten years ago before real estate succumbed to surreal prices) and free us up financially – Something not many people can do these days.
My in-laws plan to live in my old home while construction goes on down the back, and then sell it off to recoup some costs upon completion. With Cyclone Gabrielle reconstruction already pushing builders and building supplies to local limits, it might be quite a task!
Nevertheless, they decided to go ahead with the plan a few weeks after the cyclone hit.
As part of the deal, we had to give our long-term tenants notice of end of tenancy.
I felt guilty as hell.
They had been our tenants since we’d had to move mum into care years ago and looked after the place wonderfully. They tidied the house and section up after mum had been incapable of doing so, even improving bits and pieces like replacing old kitchen benches and bedroom carpets.
It was our house, but it was their home.
Renting out the house was never about money for us and because they looked after it so well, we charged them about half what market rents apparently were.
But I still felt horrible giving them their 90 days’ notice – Especially having even just a general idea of Napier’s rental market and how much more rents were likely to be.
As it happened, they found a place in Havelock North (Napier was just too expensive) only about a fortnight later, so my overdramatized fears of them being out on the street were, thankfully, unfounded.
It did mean, however, that I had to get back in and totally clear out the last of Mum and Dad’s things that I had left stored in the garage and shed on the property, as they would all be coming down as part of the subdivision.
I started making slow in-roads over recent afternoons and weekends, initially muttering “Sorry, Dad! Sorry, Dad!” guiltily as I went.
I can already see the piles going to the tip, metal recyclers and auction house / charity will be immense. Never mind all the ancient paints, cleaners, varnishes and weedkillers that will need to be taken away by hazardous waste removal.
Always the tallest kid in class, I was also always at the back, in the middle for school photos.
First Star to the Left and on till Mourning
It’s not just the waste that’s hazardous – As I go through all the stuff I’m flooded with memories.
Memories of Dad and Mum, memories directly related to certain items and just memories of my first home.
Some memories clear and present, others foggy and indistinct.
Also, a fear of losing memories.
The former house of one of my Dad’s closest friends down the road from their place went up for sale recently. The people who bought it off him are moving on. I went to say “Goldfinch’s’ house is for sale!” out loud but stopped. Realising I’m the only living member of my family who would know what I was talking about.
Now, at the age of 45 I realize it no longer just seems so far away now. It is far, far away.
Between plagues, floods and whatever the hell else we get thrown at us next that reassuring feeling of loving security our parents provided when we were young may as well be as far away as the stars.
Reliving History
Recently I went to Onekawa New World, the supermarket I had my first job at. I go there reasonably often – it’s not far from (either) home. It has markedly changed since I worked there off and on between 1993 and 1998.
I had stopped outside the shop’s stockroom doors to check my list and was just idly looking through the door at the space beyond when a staff member inquired if I needed assistance. I explained that I used to work there (before they were born, it turned out) and asked if it was possible to have a look out the back to see what had changed.
They kindly obliged and for the next 15 minutes or so I gave them a run-down of what the space was like a quarter of a century ago (yes, I had to do the maths on that, too). Removed walls, doors, offices and toilets, but new shelving, walk-in chillers and freezers.
I walked both past and present tense simultaneously, occasionally going back and forth to ensure my memory was in the right spot. The two staff who ended up accompanying me on my modern historic tour seemed quite fascinated.
I felt both incredibly present and temporally displaced.
Many of the dreams and goals I had when I worked there and lived with my folks have changed so much. So many never eventuated at all (never mind recent career goals…).
So much has happened in all those years. So much life, love, marriage, (doing the same bloody job over and over..), fatherhood, activities and events all packed into them.
But there also feels like so much wasted opportunity and time that I’ll never get back.
I don’t feel (or look, apparently) as old as I am, but when I do it’s enough to instantaneously add even more grey hairs to my head.
Selling my childhood home makes me feel just that bit older and more distant still.
The fact it’s going to the in-laws will keep it in my extended family, but it will no longer be “mine”. Knowing they intend to sell the existing house upon completion of the subdivision and new house build adds a drawn-out sense of inevitability.
Other inevitable things have been distracting me this year, too.
While no one initially knew what was wrong with me, Eddie, who was 15-20 years older than me was waiting in Hawke’s Bay Hospital Coronary Care Unit to be sent down to Wellington for a stent to help clear a narrowed artery. It turned out he needed more than that and ended up down in Wellington briefly with me to receive a multiple bypass – a significantly more severe procedure than the mere tests, scans, pokes, prods and eventual biopsy that I was exposed to.
Being in coronary care has been compared to being in battle. You’re isolated from the outside world and are neither alive nor dead, but can be very close to being either during the time you are there. You can never know what it’s like unless you’ve gone through it, so you connect with others who have been through it with you.
I saw Eddie a few times over the years since our time in “Six South”. We would catch up and chat occasionally. I discovered he lived just around the corner from Mum and Dad’s house.
After doing some clearing out one weekend after our tenants had moved out, I drove home past Eddie’s place and noticed a lot of cars and people at his house. I had texted our tenant about something that day and he had replied he was at a funeral. He happened to work for the same organisation as Eddie and when I saw the congregation of people, I put one and one together and texted out tenant back.
Eddie had died suddenly earlier that week.
I was shocked.
“Suddenly” to me usually denotes a coronary incident, although the recent pandemic has also claimed many lives in similar sudden circumstances and symptoms.
If I wasn’t already feeling old, tired and useless enough, Eddie’s sudden passing just ramped up the downward spiral being so close to (figurative and literal) home.
Eddie was older and, back then, obviously far worse off heart-wise than I was. Losing Dad taught me that heart attacks seldom happen as unique, single occurrences and the first one is seldom the worst.
What happened to Eddie was unlikely to happen to me, as we were two completely different cases, but losing a comrade I had been through an experience like that with was shocking and unsettling in already unsettled times.
It didn’t ease my stress levels that around this period my cardiac fibroma happened to be front of mind, because Eddie’s passing happened just when I’d been scheduled for my annual echocardiogram to make sure the lump hasn’t changed or grown drastically – A fear that has been ever-present since its discovery years ago.
The scan came back unchanged in size, and my cardiologist decided we could move to two-yearly scans due to the continued lack of change, which eased heightened tensions.
But the quiet concern leading up to the appointment had just added fatigue upon fatigue, upon fatigue.
Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey,,, Stuff!
So there you go. Yet again we have somehow managed to fit about a year’s worth of issues, stresses, worries and natural disasters into a mere four months.
All perfectly normal and healthy, right?
So often in recent years there has been so much going on all at once and it all needs doing “Now!”
Somehow, I always get it all done “now” (but have stopped bothering to hope for a reward, promotion, or new job out of my consistent, reliable performances) mainly by compartmentalising tasks – I’ll do this before lunch, and this in the afternoon. Or spend three days targeting three tasks – one task per day.
But the repetition, fatigue and detachment required to keep on keeping this up is taking its toll.
I’m losing big bits of my past, presently stuck in an endlessly repetitious work cycle and having to be the one clearing out parts of my own history in the present, while unsympathetic job rejections and front row seats to drastic climate change don’t exactly put a silver lining on the cloudy future!
The following is the 6,100-word (very long) original draft of my piece that The Spinoff very professionally trimmed down to a more readable 4,000 words and printed as their Sunday Essay on 5 March 2023 as “Napier in the Dark”.
Thanks to Jolisa Gracewood and Toby Morris for the encouragement and advice to send it in and The Spinoff’s Editor, Madeleine Chapman, for agreeing to commission the piece.
Monday
The rain chases me into my car.
I left for work at 4am on the morning of what could later be called “Cyclone Eve”. It was dark and the weather was fine. I could hear the sea roaring off in the distance – not unusual, considering Cyclone Gabrielle was approaching the north-east coast of New Zealand.
But as I closed the gate with the car idling at the curb, I heard another sound.
This was closer than the sea. And getting closer still.
Then I see it – The glow of the bulb three streetlights away is suddenly blurred by a fog of heavy rain, then two lights away, then right next door.
I jump into the car, slam the door shut and buzz the windows up just as the squall hits my car broadside. Sheets of wind-driven rain lash the car as I drive to work through Marewa and Pandora, making vision difficult.
Rain is intermittent as I spend the next few hours at work. Gabrielle’s arrival was forecast weeks ago and management have engaged a cyclone action plan whereby staff at our site, just north of the Esk River, are to leave work by 4pm Monday and those who can are expected to work from home on Tuesday.
As the weather in Napier hasn’t improved and the bulk of my work is done by 8am, I leave earlier still to take my nine-year-old daughter to school in the rain.
Oddly, while all the city’s high schools have already announced over the weekend that they would be closed on Monday and Tuesday, many primary schools still run as normal on Monday.
School run done, and home to work from my couch as reasonably persistent rain falls outside. We keep a cautious eye on the creek across the road, which almost spilled over in the disastrous floods of November 2020. It’s up, but not by much.
So far, so good.
School pick-up is unremarkable in reasonably steady rain, but the wind has started picking up. It escalates even further in as Gabrielle nears.
The trees in our front yard twist and bend but remain upright and intact. Across the road on the creek reserve several branches have fallen from the willows and other trees.
We hunker down and go to bed, the falling rain barely audible over the sound of the wind.
Tuesday
I wake early and do some paperwork remotely as the rain and wind’s severity just keeps elevating outside, peaking around dawn.
I am keeping an eye on social media to see what is happening weather-wise around the region. Lots of trees are down, lots of rivers are up.
Not long after 7am I lose working from home connectivity. Not unusual, as losing power at work would naturally cut off remote access.
I see pictures of Esk Valley on Facebook/Twitter. It’s no longer a valley, it’s ALL Esk River.
I learn later that by the time I lost connectivity my entire work site is under about two meters of water.
Shit.
Other reports start coming in.
The Puketapu Bridge over the Tutaekuri River is damaged (we learn later that it has gone completely).
Shit!
This bridge is (WAS) about ten meters above the regular height of the river. At intermediate school, we conducted nature studies underneath it, measuring river water for clarity and speed. We measured how fast it was flowing by timing how long it took to float tennis balls downstream a given distance in a controlled situation.
But this situation is anything but controlled.
A Facebook friend posts that the Tutaekuri river has overflowed its banks near Waiohiki Bridge, by the Pettigrew Green Arena. It flows into the EIT Te Pukenga campus, the area surrounding Waiohiki Marae across the river and into the streets of Taradale.
Taradale is flooding!
SHIT!!
My In-laws, who live in Howard Road – the last cross-street between Murphy Road and Taradale’s main arterial route of Gloucester St – had become increasingly concerned about the river’s height throughout the morning watching social media updates, so they come to our place “for a visit” around 9am, just as the evacuation notice is given. They see the river water coming down Gloucester Street towards them as they head east to our house with police and buses going the opposite direction to evacuate people.
We lose power before they arrive.
Redclyffe Substation, which provides Napier’s power from Wairaki in Taupo is underwater.
The Substation is on the banks of the Tutaekuri River, on Springfield Road out past Taradale and the EIT campus towards Napier’s Transfer Station (the city’s old rubbish tip) and Puketapu, in the foothills beyond.
When I was in primary school my dad worked for the NZED (New Zealand Electricity Department) before Rogernomics filleted, gutted and asset-stripped it to sell to private interests. He took us to Redclyffe on the way to or from the dump one day. We sat in the control room – it had a very 60s-70s civil servant aesthetic, even in the late 80s – and looked out through big windows at the mass of transformers and power lines corralled in meters-high chain-link and barbed wire beyond.
The defensive fences are there for a reason – millions of volts buzz just outside the window. Dad’s friend, who was the operator on duty, warned that anyone who went outside into the caged area risked being “instantly fried”.
But millions of litres of water flooding down the Tutaekuri river don’t care about fences of electric volts.
Power goes out and a city goes dark.
It’s not just power that leaves Napier in the dark.
About four hours after losing mains power, the city’s cell towers, running on back-up batteries, start dropping out – and a society so inseparable from its cell phones and internet access loses connection with itself and the rest of the world.
With the networks down and cellular devices straining to get a signal, phone batteries start running dry and dying across the city by the end of the day.
Napier started life on and around what was at the time an island: Mataruahou, later known as Napier Hill, where the settlement grew into a town and then a city.
In February 2023, it reverts to being an island again. The flooding Esk River to the north and Tutaekuri and Ngaruroro Rivers to the south cut off all state highway access to the city, and almost all communication links are broken.
Along with Coromandel, Tairāwhiti and a number of other regions where Gabrielle’s force is being felt the worst, Hawke’s Bay declares a State of Emergency midmorning on Tuesday, and soon afterwards, a National State of Emergency is also declared, but many of those under the state of emergency only learn of this on transistor radios and car stereos, listening to RNZ National Radio and some, but not all, of the region’s many commercial radio stations.
Media watch:
RNZ: The National Broadcaster does its national duty. The Morning Report presenters and Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon are across the flooding coverage speaking with reporters and officials where and when they can contact them.
The Hits HB: Based in Napier, local breakfast pair “Adam and Megan” are on air thanks to generator power for an extended period, not just the usual few hours of their breakfast show.
The Breeze HB: The Breeze’s breakfast pair of “Martin and Jacquie” and on-air boss Justin Rae (apparently, they have no other on-air staff either?) are also on extended hours providing updates, information and interviews when and how they can.
A very “civil” Civil Emergency
With my in-laws temporary evacuees at our house, we hear from neighbours that Pak n Save Napier is open with generator power, so my mother-in-law, her sister (who happens to be visiting form Australia) and I gingerly make our way there – no power equals no traffic lights and Hawke’s Bay drivers are far from the best in optimal conditions, let alone emergencies – to acquire some supplies,
It appears around a quarter of Napier are doing the same.
It’s organised chaos.
The bare minimum is understandably operating – Lights, checkouts and, thankfully in a cashless society, Eftpos.
Freezers and chillers are no longer freezing or chilling and have largely been emptied or shuttered.
Everyone is stressed, but this is also a very “civil” Civil Emergency.
Queues are very long, but orderly. People say please and thank you and are helping each other.
Tension and stress are evident, but everyone seems to realise we are all in this together.
Along with the queue for the checkouts there is also a queue for Lotto, just not as extensive.
We make it home safely in time for lunch with a hint of blue sky between occasional showers the in-laws go back to see if they can access to residential Taradale.
They set off and due to the communications black-out we don’t hear from them immediately. We assume they made it home safely. They confirm the next day they did, though Civil Defence’s text notification for the all-clear doesn’t reach them until hours after the actual all clear is given.
We go over to our neighbours’ house to utilise their gas bottle and hob to boil up some two-minute noodles and broccoli for dinner.
They are fostering two puppies, whom my daughter absolutely adores and spends the time playing and running around with them.
There is some light in dark times.
From early evening news reports on the radio, it appears most of urban Napier has gotten off relatively lightly. While still without power or communications, our drinking water is safe and secure, and remains so for the duration of the emergency. To our north, Wairoa and Gisborne aren’t so lucky. Due to damage to their water system Gisborne’s supply will almost completely run out just as the Navy arrives with filtration equipment and suppliers a few days later.
We move our mattress into the living room, so all three of us can sleep close together in the powerless dark.
Our day of disaster ends with the setting of the sun.
Wednesday:
I am up just before the sun and into the car to listen to our one guaranteed source of information – the radio. I periodically turn the car on and leave it running in the driveway to refresh the battery and occasionally get some charge in my phone.
Media watch:
Newstalk ZB: has taken over Radio Hauraki’s Hawke’s Bay FM frequency. A smart, informative move. But when I tune in, Mike Hosking is moaning from his Auckland studio about unemployed people in Bay of Plenty. Seriously?
There will be more Hawke’s Bay coverage later in the day when the actual talkback part of the network opens to callers and texters, but for now, Napier’s lack of power and coverage still make for a giant black hole of information.
The Hits HB: Is off the air. According to ZB the station’s generator has run out of diesel and finding supply/fuel pumping capabilities is obviously very difficult.
The Breeze HB: The breakfast pair and “J-Rae” are still on air. Martin and Justin will be on air for 13 hours today – a mammoth effort in such conditions! Not that they have anywhere else to go – Both live in Napier and, with all bridges currently closed, they are trapped in Hastings, unable to return home.
RNZ: The forces of nature that are Kim Hill and Kathryn Ryan are raging like Tuesday’s winds. When a spokesperson from Transpower, New Zealand’s national electricity infrastructure company, says that Redclyffe is still underwater and restoring power to Napier could take two weeks, Ryan’s shocked response is like the crack of a lightning bolt. Kim Hill’s pen clicks with the speed of an anemometer in a tornado as she grills officials.
The Rock: Simulcast Auckland jocks are jockulating obliviously.
With such limited communications and no power, the repeated phrase “check out our Facebook page / this website for more information” on radio becomes torturous.
WE CAN’T!
The effects of Gabrielle’s flooding have yet to cease causing damage a day later. The rain has stopped but the sheer volume of water still coming down the regions rivers hasn’t, causing residents of the low-lying Napier suburb of Te Awa to be ordered to evacuate when there is another breach of the Tutaekuri river, closer to the sea this time, inundating the Awatoto industrial area, Napier’s sewage treatment plant, and golf course before heading towards the neighbouring suburb where our daughter’s best friend lives. Her family safely evacuate to a centre at Napier’s McLean Park.
I see pictures of Te Awa streets later that look almost identical in almost identical parts of Napier South to the scenes after the 2020 floods.
We go to check on my in-laws in Taradale mid-morning and we just miss them as they have gone to check on my sister-in-law.
No comms means all cars.
The sheer volume of urban traffic is quite amazing, but also concerning. With no power there are few to no petrol stations open, meaning fuel tanks will start running as dry as cell phone batteries if people don’t limit travel.
Despite Hawke’s Bay drivers not being the most diligent at the best of times, and lots of traffic combined with no traffic lights, we see the aftermath of only one intersection crash. Most of Napier’s main arterial route intersections normally governed by traffic lights are quickly transformed into roundabouts once road crews have been out with cones. There is more giving way and indicator use in these days of blackout than entire previous years.
Taradale’s western suburban side looks like footage of Christchurch’s post-quake liquefaction in 2011.
The Tutaekuri’s overflow is everywhere and unmissable, with several centimeters of silt and mud across the streets, clogging gutters and evidently in some homes.
The smell of wet carpet is unmistakable.
We venture to Greenmeadows New World for supplies on the way home. There appear to be long queues outside, but they are all people just trying to connect to the store’s free Wi-Fi.
Access to the supermarket is easy, but the queue for the checkouts goes around the entire shop and then some. While those outside @ others on social media, those inside form the same symbol in a giant, orderly human-and-trolley conga line.
Everyone is still so calm and civil. No panic buying. Politely giving access to others and moral support to the staff, who must wonder just what the hell is happening. They too smile, but there is a look of tiredness and shock in many eyes.
Despite some essential products already being sold out (eggs, toilet paper, tinned baked beans and spaghetti) and the freezer/chiller sections blocked off and being emptied a day after their power was lost, we manage to get everything we need.
While we treat ourselves to a block of Whittakers chocolate, many trolleys appear to contain dozens of cans or bottles of beer. Can’t really blame them, to be honest.
Later in the day, we reconnect with the in-laws for dinner. They need yet more supplies, so I go to Pak n Save in my old neighborhood of Tamatea.
Again, there are rows of people seeking Wi-Fi access outside.
Inside the shop it’s like Christmas Eve – not celebratory, of course, but that same level of urgency. The supermarket’s generators provide light, electricity, and working chillers.
For a moment you could have forgotten it was the modern Dark Ages outside.
The first deaths are confirmed on the radio during dinner, including a child in Eskdale, which my daughter overhears. You naturally want to shelter your children from death, doom and destruction, but I also think she needs at least a little exposure to it to acclimatize to life’s perils.
Inspired by those alcohol-laden New World trolleys, I liberate a few short-dated beers from my father-in-law’s now room temperature beer fridge with his permission.
Others won’t be so polite. On the way home we pass a local liquor store, using its delivery vans to barricade the big glass windows at the front of the shop. It won’t work: that night they are broken into and burgled.
It won’t be the last occasion of burglary or looting, with security systems down due to the power outage. Police presence will ramp up in the city and we will have the “Eagle” helicopter circling over our city regularly for the next few evenings and nights.
The shine is coming off the Civil Emergency’s civility.
THURSDAY
We empty the contents of our fridge into the bin.
The coastal route between Napier and Hastings via Clive along State Highway 51 reopened late yesterday to emergency traffic and essential travel, but with speed restrictions and stop-go points along the way. It closes for a time again amidst safety checks to the bridges.
Many Napier people have self-evacuated to Hastings to be with friends, family, or just to get fuel and power for charging devices. Some are trapped there overnight when the road temporarily closes again.
The queue of vehicles attempting to head out of Napier stretches along Marine Parade and George’s Drive, but they’re not getting very far.
We’re staying put despite some anxiety starting to creep in about fuel and food supply levels.
Morning Media watch:
If every media network had to donate $5 for every time I hear the grammatical ulceration of “the Hawke’s Bay” (it’s “Hawke’s Bay”, no “the”) during this emergency, recovery efforts would be flooded with cash, not water and silt.
Newstalk ZB: Hosking is celebrating the resignation of Scottish PM Nicola Sturgeon and playing political soundbites of some US Republican presidential hopeful decrying the evils of socialism.
Not for the first time I wonder how could any media network allow itself to be cuckolded by a handful of opinionated announcers radicalised by conservative capitalistic cant?
The Hits HB: Is back on the air. Content is much the same as The Breeze. Spark supplies their communications, so they have better phone / text coverage and access to the internet than the majority of Napier it appears. They don’t seem to get that, no, we still can’t check your Facebook post, or link to that website.
The Breeze HB: Martin, Jacquie and Justin are still doing the mahi. Martin and Justin managed to get back to Napier and see their families last night. The emotional toll is understandably starting to show. We hear that full power connectivity for Napier could still be up to two weeks away. The news hits hard.
RNZ: Corrin Dann and Kim Hill are still doing what Morning Report does best – asking hard questions and getting answers. While Transpower still says full power could be weeks away for Napier the spokesman for Hawke’s Bay power provider Unison’s back-pedalling of the statement could just about generate enough power to light a small suburb. Unison is already working on a way to essentially hotwire Napier’s power grid to Hastings’ which is more secure and fed from the south.
The Rock: The Auckland jocks are still jockulating obliviously <Click!> There’s some power saved!
I crack one of my father-in-law’s beers while listening to updates not long after lunch.
We don’t need the radio to know there’s a lot going on today – sirens are constant throughout the day.
We live one of the main access roads to the Civil Defence centre based at the Napier Fire Station and see some, but not all the emergency vehicles going past. Fire engines mainly, but other rescue vehicles as well. A convoy of four-wheel-drives pass our house towing trailers stacked with Surf Rescue IRBs (Inflatable Rescue Boats) heading AWAY from the beaches. It’s all we need to know that things haven’t improved much.
Helicopters have been droning back and forth overhead for the last few days, too. The big RNZAF NH90s make a notably deeper “thud-thud-thud” as they fly overhead.
I give an excited “whoop!” when an Air Force C-130 Hercules passes over Napier, as I’ve been hoping airlifted supplies would start streaming in soon. It’s just doing reconnaissance and the bulk of defence force emergency supplies will, in fact, come via sea on board Royal New Zealand Navy vessels that start arriving on Saturday later news bulletins tell us.
There is even a privately-owned Sikorsky Blackhawk – a rare sight in New Zealand. We later learn it’s here to help re-establish power with its heavy-lift capabilities.
We spend most of our day at home, go for the occasional walk around the block, and visit the puppies next door.
I establish some degree of communication by borrowing a Spark cell phone from our neighbour. I text a friend in Christchurch to get updates and let people know we’re OK.
Vodafone is going to lose a region of customers after this.
We help our neighbours clear out their freezer by going over for a BBQ that evening. Our typically finicky nine-year-old daughter discovers a new favourite food in honey soy chicken kebabs.
Small bits of normality in abnormal times.
We listen to damage reports and updates on the radio during dinner.
We still have no real idea of the extent of this disaster three days after it began – and we’re at the centre of it!
With the speed the media world cycles through news, there will be events and images from the worst of the initial flooding that some Napier people will likely never see or know about.
We read in the twilight and go to bed with the sun again, but I wake up at 1am and lie there wide awake for some time. This will be something that continues over the next few days.
Friday
Is it Friday? Who can tell?!
Up before dawn. Still no power.
But after going social media cold-turkey for three days, I finally have limited data connectivity on my phone again!
I scroll and scroll in the early morning darkness as my daughter and wife sleep and the load on local cell towers isn’t high enough to lose signal or drain my chronically low battery.
Looks like I inadvertently caused a bit of panic yesterday: The last tweet I sent, about Taradale flooding on Tuesday morning, was stuck in the ether when the networks went down and wasn’t posted… until data coverage was restored on Thursday afternoon. Luckily several people quickly picked up on the glitch, assuring everyone it was old news.
I also have an email from a TVNZ Breakfast producer (from Tuesday) and a Twitter direct message from an Australian New York Times reporter (from yesterday), both requesting insight into the situation in Napier. But the cyclone’s news cycle is spinning so fast that when I finally have sufficient phone coverage to see their messages and send a reply, I never hear back from them.
Lots of messages of support flow in, but we don’t need it – those in the areas surrounding Napier do.
I finally get to see some of the pictures of devastation.
Quite possibly the only thing that saved the Esk River bridge, was the Esk River went everywhere AROUND it.
Geez.
It looks like the entire Esk Valley is buried under one to two metres of silt and mud. From aerial photos, my workplace appears to be a big, wet, muddy mess. We won’t be going back there any time soon.
Bridges are out everywhere – Puketapu, Waiohiki, Brookfields Bridge, linking Meeanee with Pakowhai in between the Tutaekuri and Ngaruroro rivers. All gone.
The Waiohiki Bridge
Aside from the wholesale destruction in Esk Valley, State Highway 5 – the Napier-Taupo Road that runs through the valley – looks to be wiped off the map and hillsides in several places further up towards Te Pohue and Taupo
The rail bridge at Awatoto – the main East Coast line – is gone.
This is going to require engineering and construction on a national scale. Reinstating the Ministry of Works really looks to be a valid concept. Formally reconnecting Hawke’s Bay to the rest of New Zealand is just too much for one region, or one contracting company, to achieve.
Media watch:
I don’t listen to the radio as much today. We play family games and go for walks, getting weary of news while we’re still in the dark.
Newspaper: A special, free edition of local paper Hawke’s Bay Today is delivered to dairies and other sites around the region. We walk down to our nearest dairy to get a copy and see the queue of cars for our nearest service station, now open on generator power for the first time since Tuesday, is nearing a kilometer long down Taradale Road.
Newstalk ZB: Reverts to Radio Hauraki sometime during the day. When I flick through the channels trying to find new information in the afternoon, their regular “matey-mate-mate-mates” on the afternoon show are blathering away as arrogantly and irrelevantly as ever.
The Hits HB: Are doing good mahi, but with phone coverage still so bleak it is hard going. Their interview with visiting Prime Minister Chris Hipkins cuts in and out and eventually drops out altogether. Local coverage gives way in the afternoon to the Auckland-simulcast drive time show, so I don’t bother listening to that.
Both The Hits and The Breeze are playing various versions of “Your official /number one Civil Defence radio station” self-promotional ads. Their networks’ execs in Auckland HQ, never attentive to the regions at the best of times, apparently think disasters are another great opportunity for some sort of ratings war.
The Breeze HB: These guys have set the standard, but boss Justin Rae is the star.
He has been venturing out to get information in the mornings and hosting most of the afternoons. Authorities have finally twigged that everyone is getting their information through radio (it has been the most reliable, least interrupted source all week), so they start funnelling more information out through it.
Rae is finally joined by an additional on-air voice – Max, a younger member of staff is providing updates and information.
Justin breaks down a bit on air, saying he “feels guilty” he can go home and be with his family when they finally get out to visit him at the station in Hastings from Napier.
The Breeze opens their land line phones up for information in and out – This is taking me back to the awesome days of 90s regional radio where stations had local staff on-air 24/7 and were a real community hub!
I do hope these events trigger some sort of longer format, live and local, relevant regional radio renascence in Hawke’s Bay at the very least.
We hear on an afternoon news report that power has started being restored to Napier via Hastings. The CBD and Napier Hill have electricity again. Hopefully the rest of us can’t be far off.
After half an hour of darkened doom-scrolling I go back to bed and get a few more hours’ sleep, but not without lying awake again for some time.
As the Saturday sun rises, I go out to the car to pass an hour listening to the radio.
Newstalk ZB / Hauraki: I simply don’t bother.
RNZ: Corin Dann is hosting a special Saturday edition Morning Report, but there isn’t anything new or crucial to report. The rescue aspect of the emergency has been largely completed and now it’s into recovery mode. The confirmed death toll is slowly rising.
The Hits and The Breeze HB: The local hosts appear to be having the weekend off (I only listen around 7am, so they could have been on later), which is reasonable given their recent workload.
But with most of the hour being largely uninterrupted music and ads, this feels like the commercial media’s news cycle has turned and passed us by after their ever-present updates during the week.
To make things worse The Hits are playing the oxymoronic “Best of Jono and Ben”. <Click!>
We finish cleaning and clearing out the refrigerator, leave the door open to dry it out, and go visit the puppies next door.
We need petrol and some more food so, with power now on in town, I head to Countdown.
It’s been almost a whole week in our state of powerless lock-down and I need space and sea air. I wrote some time ago that Napier’s CBD revitalises me. Even when it’s almost completely deserted and most of the shops are closed like today, just being in town lifts my mood.
I park on Marine Parade and take a short walk along the seaside Rotary Pathway, from Tom Parker Fountain to the Veronica Sun Bay and Soundshell.
There is storm-washed driftwood on the high tide mark and most of the way down to the waterline. Nowhere near the volume seen in Tairāwhiti, but it still goes on for as far as the eye can see.
This is also different to the wood clogging Tolaga Bay and other East Coast beaches. Rather than cut radiata logs and forestry slash, these appear to be whole and shattered willow and poplar trees and other riparian plantings. Knotty branches and root balls torn from riverbanks and hillsides by Gabrielle’s deluge and raging rivers.
As I walk towards the Soundshell a completely different sight catches my eye: two women fully dressed in 1930s “flapper” dresses are sitting on a blanket having a picnic.
With everything else going on (and off) I’d completely forgotten it was supposed to be Art Deco Weekend!
The event was understandably canceled on Wednesday when the practicality of receiving and hosting tens of thousands of tourists in the city looked as likely as instantaneous power restoration and bridge repairs.
The weekend usually includes the New Zealand Defense Force in a ceremonial capacity because when the 1931 earthquake struck the navy’s HMS Veronica was in port. Sailors from the ship were key participants in immediate rescue and recovery and humanitarian efforts. Neither Napier, nor the Navy have forgotten this partnership. The Royal New Zealand Air Force Display Team is also usually present doing aerobatics and fly pasts, along with privately owned vintage aircraft.
This weekend all three branches of the New Zealand Defense Force are back, just in a more practical format, providing aid, assistance, and supplies to a region recovering from disaster, just like the crew of the Veronica 92 years ago.
My intended short supply trip stretches into over two hours. Not because of supermarket and service station queues – there is next to no waiting for either – but because I keep meeting people I know, and every time we spend about ten minutes each filling each other in on the week’s events that we haven’t been able to share the (up until Tuesday) “regular way”.
I am in trouble with my wife for my unnotified tardiness when I get home, but the criticism is cut short when there is a beep and a buzz.
Power has come back on!
We use it sparingly, lest its return only be temporary – and it is on Sunday, with power dropping out a few times, most likely as other areas had their supplies safely switched back on.
Power won’t be fully restored to all of Napier until Tuesday afternoon – over seven days since it was lost!
My In-laws’ house is one of the last areas to get power back, by which time some people have already returned to work, while many others continue to work to help friends, loved ones and strangers recover from the floods.
For some of us at least, life will quickly return to a relative “normal”. For others it will take a longer time, and for others it will never be the same.
Aftermath
Thousands of cubic meters of mud, silt and debris will be removed over the coming weeks around the region. As Hawke’s Bay’s weather returns to its more traditional summer settings after Gabrielle departs, all the silt, mud and entombed particulates will start to dry, harden and blow away as dust when moved.
By the following Tuesday you can already smell, taste and even see it in the air around Napier. The immediate health threats of flooding may have passed, but others will remain for some time.
Hawke’s Bay schools start reopening on Tuesday and Wednesday.
I go back to work remotely and sparingly on Sunday, catching up to where I should have been mid-morning last Tuesday a week later.
I see aerial photos of my work. It’s a mess. I am told our office is flooded and likely little will be recoverable. But they are fully insured, and our company’s Japanese owners have pledged full support for rebuild and recovery. The site suffered a similar fate during Cyclone Bola in 1998, and the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami wrought even greater levels of destruction to facilities over there, so the owners have experience with this. Their support also gives job security and income stability to those working for one of Hawke’s Bay’s biggest employers.
It won’t be the same for everyone.
I feel guilty having gotten off so lightly. We were only powerless, but I have friends whose houses are a mess, uninhabitable, or gone completely. Others whose businesses are wrecked, or jobs and income no longer secure.
We go to an appliance store on the Tuesday to get something our daughter needs for her return to school on Wednesday, and see an old acquaintance leaving. They are there to replace their fridge, washing machines, and more after being flooded out. Unsurprisingly, even while we are still in a National State of Emergency, there already aren’t any left in stock in Hawke’s Bay.
Restocking and relacing all these key household appliances for all those households will take some time, with basic household tasks potentially remaining as if the power was still off for months.
Building products like plaster board, already having run out in New Zealand last year due to staffing and logistical issues brought on by Covid-19, will be in high demand and short supply.
New Zealand doesn’t have enough builders and tradespeople for new builds and repairs as it is. What will this do to that situation?
I hear from friends who usually commute between Napier and Hastings that the usually 15-20 minute trip along the SH2 Expressway now takes a minimum of 40 minutes with speed restrictions, detours and congestion, and a maximum of over two hours!
Travelling north by road from Napier to Taupo and Auckland will have to be done via a major southern detour through Palmerston North and the Central Plateau.
We aren’t going anywhere in a hurry.
With numerous stretches of rail and bridges out, no Kiwirail freight will be going to or from Napier or its port for some time.
Freight logistics will be a nightmare.
While many of us weren’t overly affected by Cyclone Gabrielle, the after-effects could well have many long-term detriments for the region and its inhabitants.
Hawke’s Bay will be tested.
Leaving Narnia
Like C.S. Lewis’ Pevensie children most Napier people find ourselves emerging unscathed from the wardrobe seemingly just an instant after we entered. We have power, internet, work to do, school runs to make, just like any other day.
Yet we are older, wearier, and more jaded having gone through so much, and not quite sure what to make of ourselves. A week of our lives has both vanished and been burned into our memories.
We feel guilty for not being as badly affected as so many surrounding us, but also feel thankful for the exact same reason.
I would like to think we are more tolerant, kind, and considerate having looked after each other for that week – Smiles and elevated levels of politeness are still evident some days after. But tensions, trauma and nerves are starting to crack cheery facades.
We look forward hopefully to the future, but also realize that this severe weather is likely only one of the first such events we will witness or be impacted by as our climate changes.
But it may take a while to fully process and understand what a week in the dark meant to our region and ourselves.
This is not at all unusual, as afternoon thunderstorms are quite common in recent years as Hawke’s Bay’s summer climate appears to have become more and more tropical. I often take photos of different or threatening-looking cloud formations:
A storm approaching Napier, October 2021
But these ones looked different.
I stopped my car in the sea-side layby opposite Napier’s old shipping beacons, just north of Hawke’s Bay Airport’s runway and got out for a clearer look with my phone in hand.
Along with the squally, showery cloud down to hill-level there was another odd-looking cloud.
It was long, and cylindrical – It was a tornado!
As is the way these days I immediately started taking photos and shooting “citizen journalism” videos with my phone:
The funnel cloud didn’t last long, but I had managed to time things perfectly, as I was able to get several photos and a couple short videos recorded which came out fantastically clear, despite being at full zoom.
As it dissipated I got back in the car and continued home where wifi coverage sped up connection speeds and uploaded the footage I had taken to my social media channels.
There was, understandably, a fair bit of interest including from media networks who requested copies for broadcast/print.
Apparently I’m not good enough to be head-hunted by New Zealand broadcasters to provide Hawke’s Bay content as a full time career, but they’ll happily harvest my social media content I guess?
Despite growing up in calm, sedate Napier, New Zealand and not America’s “Tornado Alley” around Oklahoma, Kansas, or the “Texas Panhandle”, this isn’t the first “twister” I’ve seen in Hawke’s Bay (not counting the fantastic 1996 Jan de Bont blockbuster – I still have the soundtrack on CD and it’s still a banger!).
In April 2021 I stepped outside of my daughter’s swimming lesson at the Onekawa Pools for a breath of non-chlorinated, less humid air to see a waterspout touring over Napier as it made its way across Hawke Bay, briefly making land fall at the Port of Napier!
With our climate undeniably changing (where did summer 2022/23 go?) and weather events like cyclones and rainfall events becoming more and more common I thought it was only a matter of time before Napier and Hawke’s Bay had more and more freakish acts of nature like tornadoes!
I just never expected it to happen this soon.
The best we can do is prepare ourselves to deal with the changes we already face and try and mitigate any further future change.
