The moon Man

I arranged for a shuttle to pick me up for my Fifteen minute trip to the airport. Two other people had been collected from an hour “up country”. They happened to mention the name I recognised and within Two minutes of conversation they turned to me and said “so you’re the Nuffield scholar then”. Clearly I hadn’t covered my tracks effectively!

I got the opportunity to visit Craige Mackenzie in the Canterbury plains. New Zealand was still reeling from the devastating earthquake and I met many people who had been directly affected.

The press was full of predictions from “the moon man” who had correctly forecast both previous large earthquakes and was expecting another one this weekend. The flight was virtually empty as apparently most residents had chosen to vacate Canterbury for the weekend. Transiting Canterbury airport and stopping off in the outskirts of the city was a pretty surreal experience for me. I chose not to become a “disaster tourist” and was amazed that in the areas that I passed through I didn’t even spot one a sign of earthquake damage despite being only Five miles from the epicentre. An unknown fault line turned out to be the eventual downfall of an apparently beautiful city. More disconcerting was the fear that I could experience an earthquake myself at any time and yet everybody around me were just carrying on as normal.

My drive to across the Canterbury plains reminded me of crossing the Kansas and Nebrasca flatlands except that I noticed the irrigation channels running alongside the road contained torrents of water with 3metre weirs about every half mile.

Craige assured me that they had a beautiful mountain backdrop but rather like visiting Wales, it was shrouded in cloud. He’s harbouring some very interesting precision Agriculture initiatives.

Back on the plane the following day heading to Palmerston North and you guessed it, Twenty minutes after my departure a level 5.4 earthquake struck Christchurch, fortunately there was no further damage.