I’ve been visiting Cashel Street Mall in Christchurch ever since I was a child, usually on day trips to the city with my parents and sister, or to visit my older sister who lived there. We’d park in the Lichfield St car park, and walk through the alleyway to the pedestrian only shopping area, that runs from the Bridge of Remembrance over the Avon River, down across Colombo St. When I was a student, we’d make the occasional foray into the Mall from the university, having saved up some precious dollars to buy something, or simply to remind ourselves what the centre of the city looked like, after hitting the books (or let’s face it, watching soaps on TV) for too long. Since we’ve lived in Wellington, whenever we have passed through Christchurch, we have almost always visited the city centre, usually grabbing a park in the Lichfield St car park, even if it is simply to have a meal along the river, do some Christmas shopping in Cashel St, or grab a coffee and watch the people go by. It’s part of my ritual of visiting Christchurch, and so on Tuesday, on the way to the airport, it seemed natural to go there again. It seemed important. It seemed only right to go.
We parked by the Avon River, under a large tree for shade, even though the Lichfield St car park was only metres away. We walked the short distance to the mall. As on any sunny day between Christmas and New Year, it was filled with holiday makers. Asian tourists snapped away with cameras, and there were queues to buy ice-cream. The shops were open, and a woman walked passed us with a shopping bag from Ballentynes Department Store. You’d think everything was normal. But this is Christchurch in 2011, and nothing is normal there now.
We walked across an empty parking lot at the corner of Cashel St. “Only $1 per hour!” I commented, surprised. “There are a lot of parking spaces in Christchurch these days,” said my sister, ruefully. Yes, the parking lot had once been a building, now demolished as a result of the September 2010 and February 2011 earthquakes. Cashel St was virtually unrecognisable. Lichfield St car park is now clearly visible, as the dozens of buildings that stood in front of it have disappeared. The car park is still standing, but closed after further damage in a June aftershock. On the side of the building is a poster of Sam Johnson, the young student who rallied a Student Volunteer Army of hundreds, doing extraordinary work helping the people who were affected by the earthquake. They are once again putting their shovels to use helping remove the mud from liquefaction that appeared on 23 December with a new swarm of strong aftershocks. He’s a local hero, and the world is in good hands if the youth of today are like him, and the volunteers he recruited.
The occasional building still stands, still operates, but on either side there is nothing. A “For Lease” sign in the window of one seemed hopeful, but perhaps futile. The shops I knew so well have fallen, but in their place, new shops have risen. The Cashel St Mall is now a container mall, reopened at the end of October. Kiwi ingenuity has seen the creation of a shopping centre created out of shipping containers.
The shops are surprisingly nice – you’d never know when you are inside that they are containers. Even the banks have set up in containers, my favourite designer Trelise Cooper has a container, and there were a few cafes, even a two-storey container cafe with sun terrace. The human spirit is amazing, and life goes on here in Cashel St.
At the end of the street, where it meets Colombo St, there are large barricades. Ballentynes is now open – one of the few buildings to have survived. But that’s about the only normal thing on this street. The rest of the street and in fact the entire central city has been blocked off since the February earthquake, now known as the red zone, too dangerous to enter. After the aftershocks just two days before Christmas, we were mindful that the danger still exists. Desolate, quiet, abandoned, the central city is a wasteland now, I half expected to see tumbleweeds blow across in the warm summer breeze.
Along Colombo St, I could see the Square, once the heart of the city, and in it, I could see the remains of the Christchurch cathedral; once the landmark of the city, it again symbolises the city, but this time, with its toppled steeple and collapsed walls, it symbolises the destructive power of nature.
We walked a short way along Colombo St – heart-breakingly, we could see into what was once a coffee shop. The menus still stood on a table, the table and chairs left as they were on 22 February. Beside it, a building was no more. All that remained were mirrors on the wall, perhaps once changing rooms in a retail clothing shop.
We turned, and soberly walked back to the car, not forgetting to stop on the way for a real fruit boysenberry ice-cream from one of the temporary stalls.
Wow, Mali. Are you glad you visited? I didn’t realize the damage was that bad, but I think I only read one article about the Earthquake. I didn’t realize there were two.
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Dona, yes really glad. And yes, there have been several earthquakes. The first in September 2010 was a 7.1 but did little damage, no casualties. It was centred out in farmland, and occurred in the middle of the night. The second in February 2011 was a 6.3 but extremely shallow and very close to the centre of Chch. It was very destructive and killed 181 people. Since then there have been thousands of aftershocks, some of them as large as 6.0 and as recent as 23 Dec. The large ones have continued to do damage as they’re often shallow and close to the city.
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I hardly know Christchurch as well as you… but going through my files last night I found a bunch of photos from a few years back…
.. it was really nice to see your photos of the container mall. There is something super special to me about how kiwis respond. Though it does change how hard it is to deal with change– particularly when the earth keeps on moving.
And oh, I would love a flat white from the container!!!!
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Oh wow. Thank you for sharing these photos. I was in Christchurch on 2 different occasions, and I remember that cathedral and square well. I saw a lot of photos of the devastation after the earthquakes, but it is interesting seeing it a little while later. It can take so long to rebuild. I do hope things recover in Christchurch. It was the first place I slept in New Zealand, and I have very fond memories of it.
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Your photos are lovely – a real illustration of Kiwi, and Cantabrian, spirit. My ex-not-mother-in-law said that the day Ballentyns reopened was the day she felt that things were getting back to normal.
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Thank you so much for sharing these images and these reactions. The destruction is heartbreaking. How fragile the whole world is.
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Poor battered city. I just wish the earthquakes would stop and it could at least start to rebuild properly. Flying over the city a few weeks ago was shocking. Most of the inner city was a patch work of demolished blocks.
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I love those container stores–the idea and the look of them.
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Wow – this post made me feel sad and inspired at the same time. Disaster zones are always all over the news when they happen, and never afterwards – it’s fascinating to see how people in NZ have moved forwards. The container stores are amazing.
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I too really like the container stores. And Indigo is so right: the world is scarily fragile. Thankfully people appear to be amazingly resilient, although as one who didn’t actually experience the event (or others like it) that may be a facile view of things.
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My sister – who drove me there – and I both really like the container stores too, and would love to see at least some of them retained long-term, as a reminder of the earthquakes, and the days in the aftermath of the quakes.
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