Earthquakes

Periodically earthquakes have shaken our country and each one seems to have hit a different locality with the most damage, but we did feel them in the Waikato.  The day of the Murchison one (in 1929) the men folk were loading pigs for market and the loading race swayed so much they were afraid it would collapse.  Many years later when we travelled through Murchison and Ikamatua, the places where the ground had sunk and the road had had to be realigned were still visible.

The day of the Napier one was the first day of school in 1931 and was felt strongly in Hamilton.  The men were on the way to the house for morning tea and the water in the swimming pond was swishing from end to end.   “My word Lizzie’s having a great swim,” said my Father.  Mother was in the ‘home’ with Rewa and felt the necessity to run to the nursery and make sure her little one was safe.  Thirty years later, history repeated itself when I was in Tauranga Annexe with Diana.  Several aftershocks were felt that year, an especially strong jolt about three weeks later when we were in church and the minister (Reverend Hume) stopped mid-sentence to wait for the shaking to stop. 

At one of our meetings recently, a man who was a boy in Napier recalled the horror of that day.  All his Mother’s jams and preserves flung off the shelves and smashed.  In the tidal wave that followed a large boat washed up onto dry land and others sucked out to sea as it receded. 

The Edgecumbe one caused the railway line to twist and damage was done there to houses and roads.  I was in a meeting in a pack house in Te Puke and a number of aftershocks occurred at odd times afterwards.