On his third attempt, previously thwarted by weather, prime minister Chris Hipkins visited our flood-ravaged town, Wairoa. He offered no specific assurances regarding long-term financial help but did credit iwi (tribes) and marae (meeting grounds) for the critical work they had undertaken over the past month. He acknowledged the likelihood of an event as Cyclone Gabrielle occurring again, adding that the cumulative effect of the damage wrought provided a reminder of the “volatility of New Zealand” and that more could be done. One lesson, he submitted, was “you can never have one plan and assume that plan will work”.
This observation is understood instinctively by people like local teacher José, who was out on the morning after the floods, riding on horseback through brown waters with his students to save a flooded Māori language learning centre. This knowledge is why he and others like him may view formal visits by those in suits with scepticism, trepidation. There is the sense that it is works that ought to precede words.
To conclude this series, then, is to turn to such people.
Justin is resting against the wall of a flood-damaged house on a dirt road in the low hot sun. Dusk is closing in but the heat bears down on him and a group of friends drinking beer after a day’s labour clearing out silt and fishing for salvaged belongings. Across the road is his house – his great-grandmother’s house, which he inherited. Justin traces his whakapapa (genealogy) many decades past his ancestor Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, a 19th-century polymath, founder of the Ringatū religion and guerrilla fighter. As the flood waters rose in his home, he stashed his whakapapa, recorded on a piece of paper, in a crevice in his attic.
Through thick swirls of dust we walk across the road to his front yard, an expanse of baked mud littered with debris. He motions to the Wairoa River behind his house. Situated near the bend of the river, where it broke, the water rushed through and rose with alarming haste. His neighbour, who lives beside an open field and left for work at the freezing works early that morning, lost everything. That house was mere inches off-ground, leaving no space for water to flow underneath. Justin’s place fared better, but as flood waters rose, and with no insurance, he weighed the cost of his ute parked out front against his belongings, reasoning he could replace the ute more easily. Leaving the vehicle subsumed by water he turned his attention to stacking his belongings on tables and shelves; his PC, sneakers, electronics, while intermittently bucketing water from a window, rolling the dice against his own safety. “I can’t afford to replace all this”, he says, gesturing to the heaped items in the lounge before us. “It took me too long to collect it all to lose it”.
From his window, he counted as each household along the street evacuated in the early morning light. Tiring from his stacking efforts amid rising waters, he grabbed his bag, two cans of food, hammock, poncho, axe and fire starters. His dog swam ahead as he fought against the current, before being rescued by an emergency services truck. On board, he recalled a house with wheelchair access, noticing the occupant’s car was still there. They rescued a 92-year-old man with a carer who couldn’t carry him through the flood waters. “Someone with a tractor showed up and cut off the current so we could lift him on, and we carried him out to the marae”.
Over some hours Justin and a couple of his neighbours sat atop a hill at a cattle yard on the outskirts of town and watched the river submerge their homes.
The intervening weeks have been spent cleaning out silt; awaiting a bed he sleeps in his hammock, strung above the mud stained ground. He’s fixed ten washing machines, five fridges, a chest freezer and a television for residents on his street, salvaging and drying out the whiteware. It’s taken time to process the event, he says, “but the weird thing is I’ve been living on the street since 2018 and I’ve found out I’m related to people through both my parents here. We were neighbours this whole time and didn’t even know. This has brought us together; we started yakking and, damn,” he says, shaking his head.
Gentle and contemplative, Justin was raised in Nūhaka, just outside Wairoa, before moving with his mother to Australia in 2000, only returning to Wairoa in 2018.
His nan died in 1989, a year after Cyclone Bola flooded the region – the river breaching at the same bend. After the event and shortly before her death she raised the house on blocks. This house holds his legacy. In the corner of the yard is a pōhutukawa tree he planted for his son, telling him the land would someday be his, and instructing him to select a spot. For some reason, he adds, the tree was left untouched by the flood.
Inside, rummaging through his piles of belongings, he hands me a paper card. He describes receiving a food parcel, “I opened it up and it had pencils and lollies and this card, from Renwick Kindergarten – I don’t even know where that is”. Tearing up, he shows me the cover, adorned with a picture drawn by a four-year-old named Kyrah, the inside of the card offering hopes that the receiver was OK, and safe. “I’m going to keep it on my fridge for the rest of my life”, he says.
Anna Rankin is a freelance journalist and writer currently working as a reporter in Wairoa
