All the pretty towns: Geraldine, where you can buy your best investment in the middle of the South Island, a hand-knitted woollen hat; Waimate, which gives its name to Oligosoma waimatense, the endangered scree skink; Twizel, which is illuminated at night by an electric light sculpture – 43 flashing sequences, imported from Japan – on top of a power pole. So much space, such abundance. The vital statistics of the middle of the South Island included 900 hectares of onions, 4,000 of potatoes, 7.7 million head of sheep and 505,000 of beef cattle.
But crime has run rampant. In Fairlie a sheep was shot in the leg; police suspect the sniper fired from Mt Gay Road. A mobile sheep yard was stolen in Albury. Thieves also made off with firewood, filched from the open sheds of two elderly women in Twizel, and went to a lot of trouble to nick the stainless steel circular map from the layby at Mount Michael.
Good people continue to do good things. John Campbell has been re-elected as pipe major of the Mackenzie Highland Pipe Band. Caroline Bay had just hosted the thirty-seventh national square dance convention, and the South Canterbury Cat Fanciers Club is about to hold its thirty-eighth championship show. And you could go to Kurow, where the butcher is famous for his smoked and pickled tongue, or shop in Ashburton, where Kitchen Kapers sells a frightening range of plates in the shapes and patterns of cabbages.
It rained in Ōmarama on Saturday night. That was a surprise: the night was clear as glass. Sunday morning was damp, cold, grey. The only warmth to be had was the bonfire lit by the new owner of the Aruhuri Motel. It was his first weekend in business and he was burning a lot of old cardboard boxes, and about to throw a harmonica into the flames.
All fires are mesmerising, especially so on a winter’s day in a small friendly town. A slide in the children’s playground was set in a mound of dirt. Outside the police station, a policeman’s cap was placed on top of a tree trunk with the sign DO NOT FEED THE POLICEMAN. Scraps of burnt cardboard floated above the motel.
‘Look,’ I said to my father, and we stood together watching the cardboard fly through the air like burned birds, on a morning in the middle of the South Island, in winter, before snowfall.
Greymouth
The Pike River Mine Disaster
The most unforgettable film in New Zealand history is the CCTV silent movie recorded at the Pike River coal mine on a Friday afternoon in early summer when the lives of Conrad Adams, Malcolm Campbell, Glen Cruse, Allan Dixon, Zen Drew, Christopher Duggan, Joseph Dunbar, John Hale, Daniel Herk, David Hoggart, Richard Holling, Andrew Hurren, Koos Jonker, William Joynson, Riki Keane, Terry Kitchin, Samuel Mackie, Francis Marden, Michael Monk, Stuart Mudge, Kane Nieper, Peter O’Neill, Milton Osborne, Brendon Palmer, Ben Rockhouse, Peter Rodger, Blair Sims, Joshua Ufer and Keith Valli came to an end in darkness, underground.
The following winter, on another Friday, with snow on top of the Paparoa Range, a bunch of flowers rotted in a wire-mesh gate that served as a roadblock in front of Pike – no one bothered to add the word River, it was only ever the flat and joyless monosyllabic Pike.
The route to Pike crossed Big River Bridge and followed Logburn Road towards the mountains. It was big, dark country. The fields were dug up like furrows in a drainage technique called humping and hollowing. A road sign carried an illustration of a weka and the command DOGS PROHIBITED. Signs festooned the roadblock gate: ENTRY BY APPOINTMENT ONLY; IN AN EMERGENCY DIAL 555; DO NOT LITTER. A bunch of red plastic flowers wrapped in cellophane had been placed on the side of the road. In smudged ink, a card read RIP BRENDON FLY TRUE LOV YOU ALL WAYS MINDY.
Families of the 29 men were given a private screening of the film. It was later shown at a press conference. The longest version, available on YouTube, is two minutes and 31 seconds.
The chief coroner ruled on what no one could know and said the men died on November 19 ‘either at the immediate time of the large explosion that occurred in the mine or a very short time thereafter’. He worked on ‘the available evidence’. But the bodies weren’t available. They remained in a tomb of granite and coal.
The mine exploded on November 19 at 3.44 in the afternoon. An emergency was declared at 5.51. Six days later, at 2.37 p.m. on Wednesday, a second explosion ripped through the mine and all hope was lost.
The CCTV camera was fixed to the left of what looks like the opening of a cave. The static image on November 19 shows an arch cut through grey and solid rock. The ground is wet and puddly, with tyre treadmarks heading into the cave, and there are scaffolding pipes and a metal roof. The sunlight is very bright. It burns on a stand of West Coast native bush – beech forest, ribbony, mossy, unlike native bush anywhere else in New Zealand. It has a sweeter smell, the light is darker. Pike was set deep in forest, beyond the White Knight Bridge.
‘Oh God, it’s so beautiful there, honestly,’ said Cath Monk. Her husband Bernie said, ‘The water’s so clear, and it’s running over granite stone, and there are ferns growing everywhere.’ It was Friday night at Greymouth’s handsome Paroa Hotel, purchased in 1955 by Ham and Corrie Monk. Their sons, Bernie and Winston, now manage it together. Bernie’s son Alan was behind the bar. There was a framed photograph of Alan’s
