More than 12 years ago, the peaceful coastal settlement of Brooklands was ravaged by the giant September 4, 2010, earthquake. Like several great swathes of Canterbury, the town was red-zoned, deemed too unstable to live in, and 500 houses were bulldozed. But some refused to leave. Today, the stoic ‘stayers’ live in an eerie wasteland, many still suffering quake-damaged houses. Kurt Bayer reports.
Elsa and Ivy, the bonny boxer dogs, bound away, chasing tennis balls down the grass that used to be the neighbour’s front lawn but now, like acres all around, yawning in all directions, is spare, abandoned land, running down to the salty, silty, shallow lagoon.
Over the woodpile, orange-billed oyster catchers hueep and weeer. Banded dotterels and herons sparkle in the early light. A motorboat purrs in the distance.
This here, the open space and fresh sea air, was what the dogs’ owner – and the 25 or so other “stayers”, or remainers, those who still live in creaked and cracked homes nearly 13 years after the savage earthquake that almost literally wiped the town off the map - had always dreamed of.
A former milkie, Christine Prebble’s round used to encompass Brooklands, a growing township 15km northeast of Christchurch, and she was drawn to the possibilities of a seemingly idyllic waterside lifestyle. A Kiwi haven of watersports, walks, cycling, fishing and hunting.
The elongated stretch of Brooklands Lagoon, Te Riu Te Aika Kawa, fringed with saltmarsh, had long attracted humans. For centuries, local iwi, Ngāi Tahu came for fishing, flax, and spiritual practices.
Later, a tumbledown clump of Fibrolite houses and baches cropped up on the former swamplands. It was a city getaway, weekend and holiday pads for boat owners and fresh-air seekers.
When Les Griffiths moved his family here in 1961, it was paradise. Originally a carpenter, he worked for years at the old Waimak sawmill close to home. It was an ideal spot to bring up children.
“My wife, Lorraine, used to go mad at tea times because you could never find them,” says 86-year-old father-of-five Griffiths. “Out in the lagoon or racing around in old bikes and cars, making beach buggies. Kids can’t do things like that anymore and it’s a shame.”
Historic maps and photos show dramatic changes to the lagoon and wetlands over the past 160 years, with floodwaters rushing down the Styx River, which empties into it, and the grand Waimakariri River flowing past its entrance. Sand blowouts, sediment deposits, and riverbank protection measures saw an ever-changing face.
In the early hours of September 4, 2010, it all changed once again. At 4.35am, a massive magnitude-7.1 tremor, emanating from out west at Darfield, rippled some 50km across the flat expanse of the Canterbury Plains, and bumped, jumped and twisted the now suburban settlement of Brooklands.
The sandy, once-swampy ground shook and swayed, causing widespread damage to properties, roads, and infrastructure. It sent oozing grey geysers of liquefaction – until then a little-known natural phenomenon for Cantabs, whereby ground shaking causes soil to behave more like a liquid than a solid – to come bubbling up out of the earth.
While it was the deadly February 22, 2011 quake five months later, which claimed 185 lives, that caused most of the destruction across Christchurch, it was this September 2010 jolt that determined Brooklands’ future.
The damage to homes was significant. Many were considered write-offs. Insurers and the Earthquake Commission (EQC) wanted to pay out. For those with mortgages, the banks wanted their money safe.
Some had no choice but to leave the post-disaster zone. Many never wanted to stay and got out quickly, heading for sounder land.
But some – for varying reasons, including insurance and financial, as well as believing such a lifestyle location would be impossible to replicate – stayed.
The Griffiths’ house moved dramatically in the quake. It slid almost 30cm in places and dropped another 7-10cm. A crack runs right through its concrete foundations.
They were fully insured and freehold, but they found the bureaucracy of insurers and EQC a nightmare.
Some of the proposals baffled Les Griffiths.
“One of their crazy ideas was to cut this place in three and slide it over so they could repair the foundations... I mean, bloody ridiculous,” he says.
“They were terrible times. My wife didn’t want to shift, and I didn’t want to eithe, and by the time they got around to sorting it all out – and it was such a long time - you sort of just … carried on.”
Christine Prebble’s old milk rounds used to encompass the northern suburbs of Christchurch, around the meat works of her Belfast area, and for a while, into Brooklands.
She would keep an eye out for available sections, but they hardly ever came on the market.
But one day, 27 years ago, her kids came home from doing their own rounds all excited.
“Mum! There’s a section on Charon St!”
They piled in the car and had a look. She bought it that day.
At 1240sq m, it was a vast bit of land, one she would never have got in the city. And it was just a decent golf stroke from the sea. Both her children water-skied, and she did too. Her son used to paddle across the estuary, climb the sand dunes on the other side, and surf Pegasus Bay.
“It was all about lifestyle, being outdoors,” says Prebble, a keen gardener who cultivated a vege patch, fruit trees, and flowerbeds.
They built a dream home. Life was good.
When the quake came, Prebble was holidaying in Rarotonga. A few days later, when she came home, the ground still rumbling with aftershocks, she found her house had shifted.
The violent shaking had visibly slid the weighty property down the hill. Liquefaction oozed from the earth, creating a “Mount Vesuvius on the front lawn”. The heinous silty sludge made the driveway unpassable.
Insurers judged her house a write-off.
Between June and November 2011, the Crown zoned nearly 500 properties red in the Brooklands area. A review over the next year confirmed that the green/red criteria had been applied consistently and boundary lines were drawn sensibly.
But a small group of about 25 residents declined the Government’s offer for their home and decided to stay.
For the properties bought as part of the government’s official offer process, the land then became owned by the Crown.
The bulldozers started rolling in. The land was cleared of buildings and on July 1, 2020, under a Global Settlement Agreement, the red zone land was transferred from the Crown to council ownership.
It meant that the council was given responsibility for maintenance of the cleared land, including mowing, tree trimming and security.
Christine Prebble and Les Griffith – whose wife Lorraine passed away in 2015 – are neighbours. They used to be surrounded by properties.
But now, open expanses roll all around them. They can see the lagoon out their windows, the Port Hills to the south, and the mighty Southern Alps out west.
This town, as The Specials sang, is coming like a ghost town.
Saggy exposed powerlines. Driveways that lead to nowhere, the houses long razed. Lonesome fruit trees with rotting spoils at their overgrown base. Horses are led down the middle of empty, corrugated and split Third World roads.
The stayers’ bins are still picked up. Christchurch City Council rubbish trucks come along every week, although some streets no longer have any houses at all. Cul-de-sacs to nowhere.
The power is still on the main grid. A new sewage system put in by the council works and there is ongoing regeneration work on the cleared land, with native plantings and more walking tracks.
“We are a bit of a liability for the council, really,” says Prebble. “They could have just ignored us and left us to fend for ourselves, but they do care. We’re lucky really.”
Christchurch City Council’s head of parks Andrew Rutledge says Brooklands’ remainers are treated just like any other residents.
“We supply services to all ratepayers regardless of where they live,” he says.
The local authority is currently working on draft landscape plans for the red zone, focusing on “ecological restoration”, which will link the blank canvas with the surrounding regional park facilities along the coastline and Styx River.
“Once these are consulted on and ultimately adopted, we will begin a programme of works over the coming years to implement the plan,” Rutledge says.
Some stayers are so fed-up battling insurers and authorities, including EQC and Christchurch City Council, over the past 12 years, that they declined to speak with the Herald for this article. Some also felt burned by media in past dealings.
There have been fears that stayers could have their properties compulsorily purchased by the Government at some point, putting rebuild, refurbish or development plans on hold.
Jan Burley has been a tireless campaigner for Brooklands and says the area desperately needs clarity before they can move forward with their lives.
She wouldn’t be dragged into the issues again but did say: “I love this place too ... I’m not going anywhere but I live in reality. I just want certainty. How can you live the rest of your life without certainty? And they won’t give it to us.”
Geoff and Jude Slater are different. They’re not stayers, or leavers. They’re newcomers.
Two years ago, they moved into the town’s old fire station, leaving behind a saffron-growing operation at West Melton that had become affected by slight changes in climate.
A familiar tale, this was a lifestyle move. They weighed it up, and went for it, allowing Geoff to pursue his lifelong passion for woodwork.
So, they leased the fire station, after the local brigade moved down the road to Spencerville and shiny new building.
Geoff works in the bays that once housed fire trucks (“There’s no fireman’s pole though”), crafting displays “for market stalls and that sort of thing”.
They sleep in a caravan at the side, with a makeshift shower set-up. There’s a full kitchen set-up inside.
“But we haven’t got the bar running. It was a very social station, like many of them are!” he says, smiling.
“The locals love the fact it’s still being made use of.”
The stayers have embraced the Slaters, who they say are friendly and welcoming. They love being near the water.
“We tossed up getting a jet-ski last summer,” Geoff says.
There are two downsides though, as far as he sees.
The boy-racers drive him potty. He’s not alone there. Every other Brooklands resident spoken to by the Herald raised concerns about youngsters revving it up both night and day, doing burnouts, speeding wildly, and keeping them on edge. Snaking black tyre marks are everywhere on the cracked tarmacadam. Police are often called out by fed-up locals, but the offenders are often gone by the time they arrive, locals say.
The other problem is drainage. The Slaters got flooded last winter and they wonder just what state the underground system is in.
“Other than that,” Geoff Slater says, looking out to the flowing Waimakariri River, across the empty lots, “you can’t really beat it, can you.”
Christine Prebble agrees. She knows she must rebuild “at some stage” but more than 12 years on, she has no plans to move.
She enjoys her new quiet, although she admits it can sometimes feel eerily desolate. But she makes use of her bonus extended backyard. She mows it, with the council’s blessing, and runs the dogs.
The house is more than liveable, she says, although the ground beneath is pocked and sketchy. When the occasional quake rumbles through now, it feels “quite soft ... a bit like the cushion of a hovercraft”, Prebble says.
“I’d like to wait and see if I can rebuild here on this site,” says the 69-year-old grandmother. “The red zoning may change, things change, who knows?
“I don’t really want to be anywhere else. I just don’t want to go.”
Life is quiet again in Brooklands. Les Griffiths says it feels like it did back in the 1960s.
“It’s as close as you can get to paradise,” he says, chuckling, casting an open palm across the lounge window’s vista.
In the backyard, site of the old apple tree that Lorraine Griffiths planted all those years ago but has since been blown over, is a plaque to his late wife. It is set in the ground and came about after a mix-up between the funeral parlour and the cemetery. Griffiths says she is remembered where they always wanted to be. Where they brought up their kids and shared the good times and the bad.
For Griffiths, this will always be home.
“I don’t want to go anywhere, not now,” he says, gazing across the abandoned plains. The only sound is the wind rushing the tussock. “Nah . . . not now.”