Not sure what it is that I am going to write about, Somedays I do and some like today I don’t so I think I will just ramble on for a while. Just after I got to work his morning there was a txt from my son back home in NZ. Apparently there had been an 8.7 earthquake in Indonesia, followed a bit later by an 8.3 aftershock. I immediately check out the news on Stuff. There were tsunami warnings out but thank goodness on tidal wave.
It reminded me of when we lived in PNG. About 200 kms up the coast from us there had been a short sharp quake that caused a very localised tidal wave that wiped a whole village. Because the village was so isolated it was a day or so before the news got out. There were very few survivors. One I do remember was a child who was found up in a tree. A friend of mine, an Aussie nurse who lived in Port Moresby and worked for the medi- vac service was sent there and she said the devastation was terrible I just cannot imagine it. Because the village was so isolated there was no real way to know just how many people lived there or how many of them had been swept away.
It also reminds me of when we were holidaying in Northland back home in NZ. We did all the tourist things, well a lot of them and one of the places we visited was a Kauri Museum. In the grounds the owner had dug down to a fossilised Kauri tree. He discovered that there was a layer of trees all lying over on the same angle and rammed down through the layer of trees that were below. Only a huge tidal wave could have laid those huge Kauri tees over and punched them through the layer of trees that were lying under them. So some time in NZ’s distant past a huge wave devastated that part of the country and it must have been an enormous wave.
Family story…
I don’t know exactly how and when they made the decision to immigrate to New Zealand, ‘I’ve been told though, that Granddad didn’t know anything about it until just a few days before they were due to sail. A cousin I’ve talked to over here about it confirms that this is so. I really wonder why when it took so long to save up for it that they decided not to tell him or anyone about their plans.
Dad’s parents “hit the roof” over their plans to emigrate, and I believe it caused a big rift between them. Though Mum and Dad’ mother corresponded and she was often talked about, I don’t remember any mention of a Granddad on the other side of the world. After Dad’s mother died I don’t think he had any contact with his own father until Mum died in 1965 when there was an erratic correspondence.
Dad said that it took about eighteen month to get their passage, the delay may have been financial, (the fare was eighty six pounds, a lot of money when Dad was earning about five pounds a week!) or simply that ships were booked that far in advance. They sold up almost everything. The money from the bungalow went towards the trip too. I remember Mum saying that they even sold their electric appliances (jug, iron etc.) because they’d been told by someone that the electricity was different in New Zealand.
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