Kaikōura gave a UK couple the fright of their lives a year ago. Now they’re back to see what round two has in store.
The biggest threat to tranquility in Kaikōura right now is a black-backed gull, harping on and on from the the top of a lamp post.
“Shut up,” Nick Schofield, biologist, moans up at it.
The town was sun-warmed and sleepy when he and partner Jenny Worth arrived last year too, excited to be working a season for dolphin tour agency Encounter Kaikōura before they returned home to the UK.
Then the earthquake came and upended everything.
Having never felt one before, they had no idea where it ranked on the scale, Schofield says.
“I was saying the whole time, ‘I really hope that wasn’t a [magnitude] 4, because if that was a 4 then I don’t want to know what a 6 is.’”
Their rented wooden bungalow rode out the shaking with minimal damage but the huge coastal upheaval left Encounter Kaikōura’s fleet of dolphin-viewing boats beached - along with Worth and Schofield’s plans for the summer.
Diggers at work at South Bay, where Encounter Kaikōura's boats operate from Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
“Straight away it was like being in some sort of weird disaster movie with all the helicopters,” Schofield says.
It never crossed their minds to leave, though.
“We really wanted to stay and help,” Worth says. “There was so much to do it wouldn’t have feel right just leaving and going somewhere else and forgetting about it.”
While Worth fielded phone calls cancelling Encounter’s bookings for the season, Schofield - who had been working as a guide on the boats - pitched in with the relief effort.
“Every day they’d say what needed to be done in town, like someone’s house being cleared up, or things being moved, or food being given out, so Nick did a lot of that with a lot of the other seasonal [workers] that hadn’t got work,” Worth says.
“Even though it was quite a horrible situation it brought everyone together - it was quite moving in a way.”
They ended up staying until May, and made their minds up to return before they’d even left.
Why on earth come back from the safety of Britain’s stable, solid bedrock to distant islands that refuse to stop moving?
“Good question,” Worth says.
“After the months of living here post-quake, it’s so cheesy but everyone does feel like more of a family and we got so close to everyone, I just didn’t feel like we were quite done yet - I felt quite sad at the thought of leaving and not coming back.”
Coming back seems to be helping psychologically, too, Schofield says.
“We genuinely thought we were fine when we were here, and then we were back in the UK … we were getting phantom aftershocks…. You know a truck drives past and the floor shakes and it genuinely scared the hell out of us.
“[Being back] probably helps … with trying to figure things out in your mind and cope with it.”
They’re back in the same house and hoping this season is less momentous.
“It feels really good to be back,” Worth says.
“It feels like home.”
Jenny Worth and Nick Schofield on the beach bordering town. 'I just didn’t feel like we were quite done yet,' Worth says. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
Main image: RNZ/Rebekah-Parsons-King
