The bach was knocked off its foundations by a wall of mud and debris. Photo: RNZ / Nik Dirga
First Person - Dozens of homes out on Auckland's West Coast were damaged or destroyed by Cyclone Gabrielle. A month on, RNZ's Nik Dirga returned to Karekare and the ruins of a bach that had been a part of his family's lives for more than 50 years.
It was a month after the cyclone when we finally saw what it had done.
The old bach was built by my late father-in-law just over 50 years ago out at Karekare in West Auckland. Like hundreds of other homes across the country, it was a victim of Cyclone Gabrielle. It was knocked askew as if by a giant fist when a landslide came down the hill above, and neatly shoved about 20 degrees off its foundation.
You go to a place often enough and it becomes permanent to you, then one day, it's simply no longer there. This is the cost of a disaster like Cyclone Gabrielle for so many people. Our story is not unique, and so many others have it so much worse.
Karekare is a small community, which doesn't get anywhere near the tourist traffic of nearby Piha or Muriwai. As has been well pointed out by other news coverage, it's also been largely cut off since Gabrielle, with the only two access roads shattered by slips and collapses.
I've been coming out to this place for more than 20 years, but for most of the family, it's been there for their entire lives. The bach was a fairly sturdy old kit-set converted fibrolite garage. For decades, this unassuming bach - no TV, no phone, a rather rugged outhouse toilet - was the little home by the sea.
The front entrance to the bach was completely blocked. Photo: RNZ / Nik Dirga
As children my wife and her sister spent weeks at a time out there, only going back to the city occasionally, sunburnt and sandblasted by long days on the black sands. It wasn't a flashy place - it was a space to doze and read magazines in between beach adventures, to while away the long summer nights under starry skies. My late in-laws held frequent parties, the bush ringing with laughter and the sound of clinking wine glasses.
Time passed, and my wife's parents, who built the bach, are long gone. The grandchildren grew up and became old enough to go out for a night with their mates. It may have been a little less busy than it once was, and it was starting to take a lot of work to keep it in good shape, but we still loved our little humble bach.
After the cyclone, we heard how badly Karekare was hit and waited for news. Neighbours were able to send photos and we soon knew it was grim, but we waited weeks for access to be able to safely get out there and not be in the way of others dealing with their own even worse problems.
It's still hard to fathom how completely isolated Karekare has been, just 40 minutes or so from Auckland's CBD.
A month after the cyclone, hardworking locals have done their best to restore limited access for residents only, but a drive down "the cutting" is still pretty terrifying. At least a dozen enormous slips have roared across the already narrow, steep road, leaving huge chunks and enormous drop-offs.
Don't look down, we told each other as I drove down. Look out for anyone coming up the same one-lane road - which desperately needs a temporary stoplight to funnel traffic now that more and more people are returning to the area.
Reminders of the cyclone's fury are all around Karekare. Photo: RNZ / Nik Dirga
Once you arrive there at Karekare, you look in one direction and everything seems the same as always - the looming cliffs, the rolling dunes. But you turn a corner and then see the remains of another beloved family bach, nearly a century old, piled up on the side of the road. Nothing is quite normal here now.
Our bach was small and fairly hidden. The narrow winding path that leads up to it abruptly ends now in a wall of jumbled nikau and pōhutakawa, mud and branches. The outhouse long-drop toilet that we kept meaning to replace appears to have been utterly wiped from the face of the earth.
The hillside above that was covered just a few weeks ago in thick bush has been scraped almost down to bare rock, like some lunar landscape. Actually getting up to the building requires a scramble over steep undergrowth.
It's all horribly precarious, yet weirdly the same. Parts of it seem untouched. A single water glass is broken on the floor, but fragile pottery on a windowsill unmoved. The wood of the sturdy deck, only a few years old, has bent out like rubber, pushed by geological forces I can't even imagine.
We talk about what we want to salvage. Precious journals containing the history of the bach. A photo of my father-in-law reading to his three grandsons on the back porch, two of them just toddlers at the time who are now young men.
We plan to pull out well-read children's books, a box of dominoes, undamaged art prints, a few ceramic pieces. An ancient eggbeater that hung on the kitchen wall, for who knows how long. It's sentimental, my son says.
The bach was first built in the early 1970s. Photo: RNZ / Nik Dirga
But as my sister-in-law says, every single thing in there has meaning, down to the squeaky floorboards. Someday soon, once all the red tape and paperwork and inspections are done, 50 years of memories will likely be reduced to raw parts.
Any kind of natural disaster, whether it's flood, fire or earthquake, takes away things you felt were certain in life.
From Esk Valley to Tokomaru Bay to Muriwai to Karekare, each place and thing that has been lost in the cyclone has meaning for people, whether it's a grassy back yard children have played in for years, a beloved tree that shaded people as they dozed in the sun, a battered old chair that was a comfortable companion every evening for someone.
Everyone has their eggbeater, the thing they are sentimental about. It's just stuff, we're often told. But stuff is still a part of who we are, of the memories we keep, in the end.
The sense of life being knocked askew will remain for a long time for Cyclone Gabrielle's victims. Photo: RNZ / Nik Dirga
More than a month after the cyclone, everyone who's still dealing with it is cranky and exhausted. People are eager to get things "sorted," but there are months and months ahead of dealing with insurers, contractors and the government, with decisions to rebuild, repair or move on. I don't even know where you begin.
The news cycle moves on and cyclone stories won't always be top news, but for thousands of people all around Aotearoa the echoes of the storm are still resonating, and they will for a very long time to come.
* Nik Dirga is a digital journalist at RNZ.
