Looking Back on ‘The Big One’ / Ten years on from the Canterbury quakes with Gary McCormick and family
February 2021 marks 10 years since the Christchurch earthquake. For Gary McCormick and Katherine Cottier, February 2021 has additional significance as they prepare to celebrate their identical twin daughters’ tenth birthday.
AS WE SIT DRINKING TEA IN GARY AND KATHERINE’S
beautiful old villa overlooking Lyttelton, we start sharing recollections of 10 years ago. It’s difficult because no one who experienced the earthquake of 22 February 2011 feels particularly comfortable about revisiting it again.
Only a few days after the earthquake, Gary penned a poem called 22.2.2011 in response to all that misery and destruction. It was published in a book called Christchurch 22.2: Beyond the Cordon, a photo documentary of the rescue operation with images by police photographers. The poem also inspired composer Philip Norman, who set it to music – the catalyst for the percussive score being a further round of destructive earthquakes in December 2011.
It is an angry poem. The earthquake is personified as ‘a miserable low-life bastard … full of hatred and dark breath’. So much anger because of the lives lost and buildings destroyed. Caught up in there too is personal anger about how the earthquake put his own family at risk. Only days earlier, on 11 February 2011, Katherine had given birth to their identical twin daughters, Florence and Bridie. Her mother had come to stay in Lyttelton and lend a hand, and on the morning of the quake had set up the baby girls in the lounge while Katherine was sleeping. She woke in a panic to the sound of pictures crashing from the walls, before hearing her mother call out – ‘It’s okay, I’ve got them.’
‘From then on it was constant anxiety,’ says Gary, a gifted entertainer and poet whose award-winning career encompasses multiple TV shows and series as well as many years as a breakfast radio host on More FM. ‘ I’m still annoyed about several hundred things, one of the key ones being that our twins were only 11 days old and so vulnerable, as was Katherine and everyone else at the time. What I find too, strangely enough, is if I hear a train or a loud truck go by and feel that vibration, I immediately leap to my feet or go through an internal variation of that. It makes me angry that I’m still affected in some way.’
Katherine talks about her own ongoing heightened awareness of potential seismic dangers. She describes swapping tables at various cafés during travels in Europe in 2019 to ensure a safe exit if an earthquake hit. ‘What we learned on 22 February 2011 is that the impossible is possible,’ she says.
That lesson was learned over and over again in 2011 with the lowlife original throwing a multitude of aftershocks. Katherine and the twins escaped some of them by spending eight weeks in the Wairarapa with her parents, only to get hit with an aftershock during the girls’ bath-time on their first night back home. ‘The power went out and here I was grabbing this slippery baby into my arms, reaching for the other one, and cowering under the dining room table.’ Katherine pauses before adding, ‘In that moment, I had to make a decision about whether I was going to fall apart or pull myself together.’
There were many more jolts in store. Gary was at home with his elderly parents – who were visiting from Whanganui – when a bad one hit (13 June 2011, magnitude 6.4). ‘ My
OPPOSITE Lyttelton will always be ‘home sweet home’ for Gary and Katherine, pictured with their daughters Bridie, Evelyn and Florence.
father was holding onto one of the twins when suddenly the bookshelves started falling,’ he recalls. ‘I saw the look on my father’s face… it was shocking for him. Luckily I was there to stop the bookshelf coming down on top of them.’
As this particular aftershock struck, Katherine was in the Lyttelton tunnel on her way home. ‘The potential of what could have happened was utterly terrifying. By comparison the reality was relatively tame – all the lights went out and I veered into the other lane,’ she says. ‘However, when I eventually got out of the tunnel and looked up, I could see a dust cloud where the Timeball had been and knew it must have been fairly significant.’
In the midst of all the mayhem, Florence and Bridie were the couple’s two little miracles and a source of so much joy. Katherine has a history of endometriosis and was told it was highly unlikely that she would ever have children, even with IVF. Nevertheless she persevered and endured three rounds of IVF over two years before finally conceiving the beautiful twins. Never did they expect to conceive naturally but this is, in fact, what happened some four months after the twins were born.
‘People always say there’s a spike in births nine months after disasters and wars but we were not expecting to contribute to that sort of thing!’ Gary says, laughing as he recalls a dinner with Katherine’s parents at which he announced that ‘one of us is pregnant’ prompting Katherine’s father to look in shock at his wife, thinking the pregnant woman could not possibly be Katherine. Their third daughter, Evelyn, was born in March 2012.
Much has been made of Gary being an older father – he was 59 when the twins were born – but three babies born within 13 months would be enough to challenge anyone.
Gary describes how he used to get up in the night to help feed the babies before heading out the door at 4.15 am to start his breakfast radio shift. He concludes that it must have been the adrenalin that kept them both going. ‘And we ran a military-style operation,’ Katherine observes. ‘It was a pretty strict routine – I don’t know how else we could have done it.’
On top of all this, they had to arrange EQC repairs on their 100-year-old villa and then had to move out temporarily.
‘People always say there’s a spike in births nine months after disasters and wars but we were not expecting to contribute to that sort of thing!’
Once the repairs were done, they sold up and moved to their current home.
‘The twins were born, there were all the earthquakes, Gary’s dad died, I fell pregnant again, our cat died, we moved twice, sold a house, bought a house and Evelyn was born – all within 13 months!’ says Katherine.
Neither Gary nor Katherine ever thought about moving away from Lyttelton. They say it would have felt like a betrayal. Lyttelton is their home and that’s that. Gary is now 69, his passion undiminished for both fatherhood and breakfast radio. ‘Someone at work said it’s like doing a West End show five days a week with a different script every day. That’s a very accurate description. I like the excitement and I think I’d find it difficult not to have that excitement in my life.’ Last month, he was also on the road again touring with Hammond Gamble (a show of comedy and blues).
The experience of being an older dad, meanwhile, just keeps getting better. ‘We’re lucky to have three individuals blessed with an enormous amount of self-confidence,’ he jokes.
Part-way into our interview, the girls come bouncing in from school, all smiles and ready to raid the biscuit tin. Florence is the eldest – by two minutes – and a natural performer, who is honing her love of writing at the School for Young Writers and eloquently informs me she wishes she could save the world from global warming and COVID-19, and also wishes she could ride horses more often. She is currently a little obsessed with horses. Her twin sister Bridie loves to dance and hunt for fossils. She comes across as a kind and well-organised girl, who keeps a bullet journal, loves petting dogs and is concerned about homelessness and social injustice. Florence has a fondness for books by David Walliams ( Bad Dad) and James Russell ( The Dragon Defenders), while Bridie almost always has one of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five novels on the go.
The two are best buddies; Gary says they invariably wind up holding hands as they cross the finish line in athletic events, though they are naturally competitive with anyone else – and each other.
Their sister Evelyn likes to knit and do craft activities, has a phenomenal memory (Dad never gets let off the hook), a great sense of humour and a passion for competitive gymnastics. She trains at Te Wero Gymnastics, where Katherine serves on the club’s board. Evelyn’s dream would be to meet celebrated world champion gymnast Simone Biles.
Winnie-the-Pooh is a favourite read and she also enjoys books by Jacqueline Wilson.
The girls love walking in the hills or going to the local market together. Last February, Katherine took them all, with friends, on a short tramping trip and sleepover to Quail Island to mark the twins’ birthday and something similar is planned for their tenth birthday.
Gary won’t be joining them. He’s not a fan of outdoor adventure. ‘One of the good things about being an older father is I decide what I like and don’t like,’ he says. ‘The girls have a good understanding of how the world works and that an older father is not likely to do things like jump on a pogo stick!’ His forte is keeping the girls entertained with stories over dinner or at bedtime. There is no shortage of laughter in this loving household.
As well as being a busy father, Gary is grandfather to baby Hugo and he’s desperately hoping his daughter Celeste and partner Sanjay will return to live in the house they bought in Lyttelton, before committing to work in Wellington. His other adult daughter, Mary, is an actress and writer who recently graduated with a Master of Screenwriting from VCA (Victorian College of the Arts) in Melbourne.
I ask Gary and Katherine if there are particular moments that stand out for them as a family over the past 10 years. ‘Surviving it would be our number one,’ says Gary and then, of course, there are all those special milestones with the girls like toilet training, learning to walk, learning to read. They are happy to be living in a close-knit community where it is possible to give their girls some independence as they get older.
Lyttelton suits them well. Katherine is involved with various events within the school and wider community.
She doesn’t think Lyttelton is back to where it was before the earthquakes but is pleased that there are some exciting projects on the way and believes the essential soul of the place remains intact.
Gary agrees, noting that some of the characters he met while filming the Heartland series in Lyttelton 30 years ago are still around. ‘There are a lot of hard cases here, a lot of creatives,’ he says. He doesn’t feel much of a pull towards Christchurch’s CBD these days. ‘I can live with what’s here in Lyttelton.’
The memory of the earthquake, 10 years ago, is still there. He hasn’t succeeded in ‘getting it out of his system’ but each passing year is at least a poke in the eye for the miserable old thing that we all sincerely hope won’t be back any time soon!
Lyttelton is their home and that’s that. Gary is now 69, his passion undiminished for both fatherhood and breakfast radio.