Thread: Shake up

Im pretty attached to my home town of Kaikoura and its hard to convey the experience of what happened in November, but today I got another little reminder so I thought I'd throw some thoughts out there that might be of interest.

Aside from slips closing the roads, the earthquake triggered a bunch of slips across the Seaward Kaikouras, the biggest being in the Hapuku North branch where a big chunk of the Surveyor spur above 4000 ft slid down obliterating Barrats Biv and making a small lake. There are rows of slips in various places - front of Mt Fyffe, Kowhai, major other slips following fault lines through the Inland road, Hapuku to the Puhi Puhi and beyond in to the Clarence.
Some of these bigger slips are still unstable with obvious further rockfalls with each rain or hot Nor West.

Pic below taken late December I think, shows another fall from big North branch slip/s, you may notice some coastal uplift in the foreground. Also note the multiple small grey slips- many of these took days and weeks to show post quake.



Ive always been curious what farm animals do in an earthquake, and I can tell you it varies. A few horses came to grief but surprisingly few. Our own cattle and buffalo were ok - they didnt like it much or the aftershocks but they stayed put. Some people reported the dairy cows being a bit weird before the quake but I take that with a grain of salt (one person insisted the cows were off before the big Japan quake too!)A few cows and sheep died in slips. Deer too (wild ones seen dead under slips or fallen in to valley)
Anyways, what you want to know is what did the wild deer do?
Many people saw them low down and confused immediately after- standing on farm tracks showing less fear of humans than normal. In one case a mob of 16 wild deer was seen in the middle of the day (on private land) from a road.
After a couple of weeks once our power was on I went for an explore in one area. All sign was low down, saw two deer within 1 km of starting walking, nothing up higher. I returned the following week and took the spiker for meat.



Things have returned to normal in terms of what the deer are up to and they appear to be in their normal small hind groups and but the hills remain unstable. Road access is still restricted to some places.



Yesterday on a steep face I shot this little girl, she was with one other, no sign of any problem with how she was moving

Today I was boning out the carcass and I noticed she had a part healed broken leg.
Midshaft transverse femoral fracture to be precise, overidden but stabilised in poor alignment. Not gunshot related as no marks to skin or scarring through muscle, I'd date it as 4-6 months healed as it has knitted but was still reasonably callused and the bone hasn't straightened alignment yet.
Its the sort of break you get from a blow from the side, barring traffic accident at 1000 ft Id say shes been hit by a falling rock.


I guess the earthquake left a mark on all of us.

Originally Posted by ethos

I guess the earthquake left a mark on all of us.

They all do. 6 years on and its still fresh. All I can say is that it does get better...

I can't begin to imagine what it has been like for you guys down south. Interesting post thanks.

Very interesting post, thanks for sharing.
New slips equals new feeding areas too

Amazing what animals can hide, cheers for the update and glad things are settling a little..... Good job on getting some winter venison sorted

Good write up. About a minute or two before the big shake here all our calves started mooing making a real racket, they are about 600 meters from the house but could hear them going nuts. Also interesting is that our dairy cows went bonkers during the shake, then they promptly all sat down, it's pretty eerie seeing a whole herd of 600 cows sitting down, sometimes when they are all full and happy you will see the majority of them sitting but there's always a few standing up so to see them all sitting down is very odd behaviour. After we got them all to the shed and milking it was business as usual although they did freak out and scatter a few times when aftershocks hit, I think being confined on a concrete yard was amplifying the effects of the shocks and they didn't really like it. Interesting also to note that after a few days of aftershocks they wern't phased at all by them.

Thanks for posting

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I can't say to much, public forum...

Your final under statement is imense.

I'll PM you if that's OK?

I like to know your opinion of 'you know where'.

Interesting write up, it must have been a terrible time during and after the quake.

Originally Posted by Mooseman

Interesting write up, it must have been a terrible time during and after the quake.

Pretty surreal, you see a bunch of things more clearly though and just how incredible people can be. You find out a lot of things about people around you and yourself. Even hunting became less important -for a week or two!

Originally Posted by ethos

Pretty surreal, you see a bunch of things more clearly though and just how incredible people can be. You find out a lot of things about people around you and yourself. Even hunting became less important -for a week or two!

It really does change priorities in a flash. Things that were important are now not so much, things that we took for granted are appreciated that much more. Like every tomorrow that we get to see as today....and the way that things like this do bring people together.

great report, into something a lot of us never had to, or will endure.