Wednesday, 25 June 2014

Earthquake City

Last weekend, we went to Christchurch. The last time I was there, was almost 6 years ago, and the city has been rocked with earthquakes since. I also had my own car and a GPS this time, so I was able to hone in on places I visited 30+ years ago. The one thing I loved about Christchurch is it's ability to stand tall. Even though the streets looked like a war zone of witch's hats and crumbling bitumen, somehow a community is still working, still going to school, still shopping and still enjoying their town… and it is still a very pretty town in places.

Our first stop for the morning was the Christchurch CBD. We parked in a metered parking area with no meter, just outside a make-shift retail sector created completely out of shipping containers. It… looked… awesome!


We stopped for brunch in one of the cafes in this little commune - the boys had pancakes and I had portacello mushrooms on toast - yum!




We then went to check out the Quake Experience, which really wasn't s good as they made it out to be. However, it did have a lot of artefacts of iconic buildings that crumbled to the ground.

We walked along the boulevard and found the Cathedral, a symbol of how heartbreaking the earthquakes of September 2011 and February 2012 actually were.



But don't you love how they have dressed up their city with so much colour to take away the tragic appearances of the devastation?

We then got back into the car and went to find the house my dad grew up in… when we got there, the street was filled with paddocks and only one or two houses left in the street. Can you imagine, a street and even a suburb literally 2-3 kilometres from the centre of town completely dissolved by a natural disaster? Apparently, the ground sunk about a metre...


After that, we went to my cousins house so our boys could play together for the last time. For some reason a cardboard box was entertaining enough for them, until the big guns came out… literally! My cousin showed my boys how to do target shooting with bb guns, and then pulled out his mini quad bike for them to take spins out on the neighbouring school oval.
They had so much fun together! I'm sure it won't be long till we can bring them together again.

Christchurch is still such a lovely town, with friendly people and loads of fun-filled, action packed things to do. I'm sure we will make another trip over there soon.







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