‘I won’t go back until I am sure the house won’t slide’
SIXTY years after moving into her Otago Peninsula home, Cecille Wesley (83) is not sure if she will be able to live there again.
The same volcanic forces which gave Otago Peninsula its unique beauty make it fragile, something Mrs Wesley knows all too well.
When water flows down the peninsula’s mostly treeless volcanic hills, like it did in last week’s flood, it has a habit of taking parts of the land with it, sometimes with serious consequences for its residents.
Mrs Wesley is used to this, but the Harington Point house she and her late husband moved to in 1957 has never been under threat as it is now.
On Sunday, a day after the downpour stopped, a massive slip tore down the hillside, taking out Pipikaretu Rd below her house and forcing a neighbour who was out for a walk to run to avoid being swallowed as it careered down.
To make matters worse, cracks which continued to grow over the course of this week formed on all sides of her house and down Pipikaretu Rd.
Mrs Wesley remained cheerful when she spoke to the Otago Daily Times on Thursday, but she faces uncertainty as the land around her house keeps moving.
The next step would be to find out whether she could move back to her house, but until she was sure it was safe she would continue living at her daughter Moana’s house just down the hill on Harington Point Rd.
‘‘I won’t go back until I am really sure that the house isn’t going to slide down the hill.’’
She was determined to move back to the home she had lived in off and on — her husband who was in the army was sometimes posted elsewhere, meaning they often moved — for 60 years if she could.
The Harington Point community is close to her heart and the locals are used to seeing her walk along the beach with her dog Pebbles, picking up rubbish and the odd archaeological discovery as she goes.
While she had been aware of the danger of living on a constantly shifting landscape, it was something of a reversal that she had moved into her daughter’s house.
Normally it was the other way around, with her daughter coming to her after her house was flooded, or when there was a tsunami warning.
‘‘I was expecting a knock on the door in the middle of the night for her to come to me.’’
Moana Wesley, whose house was centimetres away from being flooded last week, had a few ideas about how the situation on the peninsula could be improved. Like her mother, she was aware there would always be the risk of flooding and slips on the peninsula, but they both believed more could be done.
Taking a lead from her mother and father, who planted a block of trees in the 1970s and 1980s to stabilise the land next to their house, she had planted trees next to her house on the flat.
She believed more trees needed to be planted on the peninsula, saying while it would not stop water from roaring down its steep hills but would sometimes stop it taking chunks of land with it.
vaughan.elder@odt.co.nz