You can’t sink a rainbow
Iwas 21 when the Rainbow Warrior sank in downtown Auckland, 10 July 1985. I had no idea of the significance. It was just another headline that would go away and be replaced by something else.
I was working at Newmans Rentals in Mt Wellington, Auckland, hiring cars and campervans. When a poptop campervan came into the depot with a broken windscreen, it was a routine task to arrange a replacement vehicle. It was slightly odd that the husband, named on his Swiss passport as Alain Turenge, remained with the vehicle throughout and declined all offers of help to transfer their belongings to the new poptop. His wife, Sophie Turenge, stayed in the waiting area. Two days later, Rainbow Warrior sank at her berth at Marsden Wharf. Late on July 11, the police contacted me at home to ask about the Swiss couple so it was an odd coincidence to find them in Reception when I arrived at work the next day. We called the police who said to hold the couple so we told them we’d arrange their refund – they were returning earlier than on their booking – and take them to the airport.
The police took nearly an hour to get there. At one point I looked up and saw the man watching me: feet apart, eyes locked on. He didn’t act on his instincts.
Finally a man, unmistakeably a detective, entered Reception. He talked quietly to the receptionist, but she had no idea why he was there. I walked over to stand beside him: “They’re right behind you,” I said. And so he and his team of detectives collected the French agents who would soon be known as Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur.
I’ve always struggled to understand the Rainbow Warrior; the whole event was simply too big. In May I attended a play, Fallout, written by Bronwyn Elsmore, and have read the article in this issue by Henk Haazen, engineer of the Rainbow Warrior at the time and skipper in several protest flotillas. Both provide a perspective: Rainbow Warrior’s voyages to repatriate the people of Rongolap Atoll from their island home, poisoned by nuclear fallout, shortly before the bombing; Greenpeace’s work afterwards that helped to end nuclear testing. Henk asks: why do we honour these anniversaries?
For me, it finally makes sense. It’s a reminder of the need to protect the planet, to keep our oceans clean.
Happy boating,