I visited the mall yesterday and was quite impressed with what they have done. The cargo containers have been nicely converted, brightly painted and smartly branded to create some good looking stores.

Rather than just placing them in the street as I had expected, the containers are off to the side in new cleared spaces, and there’s plenty of new tarmac in place and even some greenery and other landscaping features.

There are two main mall areas now – one on either side of the street with the south-side mall replacing what used to be the Guthrey Centre, and the north-side mall replacing what used to be the Shades Arcade as well as the Whitcoulls building and the Old Weekly Press building – my former office.

Cashel Mall Cargo Containers South Side

Cashel Mall Cafe

To the right of Ballantynes

You’d think it would be strange to stand where my old office used to be and view these cargo-container-stores, but the reality was that it was so far removed from what used to be there that it was actually quite difficult to make the connection. It was only when straying to the attractive wooden boundary fences and peering over that you’re suddenly taken back to the time running right up to, and shortly after, the earthquake.

Looking further up Cashel Mall towards Manchester Street, you can see dusty and damaged streets, car parking buildings with gaping holes along one side, and, of course, the ever-present Hotel Grand Chancellor which is at least now surrounded by cranes suggesting that maybe the end of the building is in sight. There’s even a Fletcher Construction flag hanging from a window way up at the top of the building.

The other side

A building held up by a steel cross on Hereford Street

Hotel Grand Chancellor - Demolition on the way?

Cargo Container Stores

The stores that have secured a place in what is really quite a tourist attraction include quite a few boutique stores as well as a few other large players. Some of which were in the mall before the quake plus a few others that were in nearby streets that can no longer be accessed.

They include Scorpio Books, Johnson’s Grocers, Diesel, 3 Wise Men, Yoobee (an Apple reseller) the Contemporary Lounge (and Ballantynes still in its original place), Kathmandu, Simply New Zealand and more. There are also two cafes – Crafted Coffee Company and Humming Bird, both of which had queues out of the door.

Cargo Container Stores - North Side

The 'before' shot. Back when the tram tracks were being installed.

Cashel Mall ASB

ASB is the only bank to grab a container, which is fair enough seeing as they appear to be a large sponsor of the mall. The ‘Re:START’ Cashel Mall signs also display the tag line ‘Supported by ASB’.

Parking

Parking around the area is plentiful with a few Wilsons $1 an hour car parks along St. Aspaph Street as well as another on the Hereford Street side of the mall and one more right on the land where The Bog used to be (accessed from Lichfield Street).

The old Cashel Mall

If you do head to the mall on a busy day, patience is definitely required while driving along the damaged roads as there are obviously lots of places where the lanes suddenly merge and, of course, also lots of people driving while looking at the destroyed buildings and streets either side.

Definitely worth a visit though. It’s fantastic to see some life back in the city centre and even the return of a few buskers.

Links:

• View the video on YouTube or Vimeo
• View more New Zealand Photos

If you happen to know the musicians and singers that appeared in this video, let me know in the comments below and I’ll add a link to them above.

I once read a great piece of advice – celebrate every victory.

With that in mind and in the spirit of writing, I figured I’d write another blog post!

I’m quite proud of that statistic although it’s quite a messy one as statistics go. Mainly because this blog ran quite sporadically for a fair time and has had a fair few over-hauls and identity changes during its life. Often with quite a change of purpose – from its early days as a ‘direct support’ blog that was highly related and inter-linked with my role at the time, to what it is today. This.

Following that, I transferred to a more personal Blogspot blog, and then a free-hosted WordPress blog (which you can still find here) called the Redarmband of New Zealand. I think I’d just watched a Terminator movie and liked the whole ‘red armband to show you’re human’ idea of the movie and transferred this concept to my blog with the intention of writing more human blog posts than some of the robotic news posts that were being published to the net.

These posts have now been imported into this hosted WordPress blog that you’re reading now. Back then I was basically writing about whatever I happened to enjoy at the time, which tended to be interesting stuff that was going on in Christchurch as well as the occasional web-related post.

The blog has always been a great opportunity for me to learn more and experiment with blog writing, social sharing, CSS and html coding and WordPress set-ups, and these days I’m tending to do less of the ‘news’ posts and more of what I love; primarily posts discussing the use of social media in New Zealand.

In the old format, I made a blog post for when Christchurch took the title for the world’s largest scrambled egg and I attended my first Christchurch TweetUp where I met a few of the Christchurch personalities that I still chat with today.

Then people started to read it …

In its new format, I hit my most views when I posted a few photos and information just after the September 2010 and February 2011 earthquakes. On the day of the September quake, I managed to get a laptop running at my aunt’s place (my own house had no power) and quickly put up a blog post about the earthquake. With information that I’d heard on the radio, I wrote:

Aftershocks are expected for the days following the initial earthquake. Many could be reasonably substantial.

I still have a recording from the radio with a representative from EQC saying that the aftershocks could last for a week or two! Talk about positive thinking.

Later on, after going for a wander with the camera, I posted this blog post with some more photos. In that one I said that I was sitting in a house with two collapsed and one about-to-collapse chimnies. Looking back on it I can’t believe we were inside that house without knocking down the last chimney and clearing the rubble from the roof .We spent a fair bit of time doing just that in the next few months but until that last chimney had come down, the house was quite dangerous!

Since then, after being linked to from a few big earthquake websites, I carried on to write some more earthquake blog posts seeing as, owning a camera and a laptop, living in Aranui and having an office in the red zone (it’s still in there and unable to be accessed), I was right in the thick of it.

Moving on, like I said, today I’m more focused on writing blog posts that are much more closely related to what I do for a living. Namely: online media and digital marketing, with a spot of PS3 gaming thrown in for fun. You can find my more recent web-related blog posts here.

So anyway, my wife has just handed me a copy fo Battlefield 3 so I’m off! Thanks for reading!

The film is called ‘When a City Falls’ and has had over 30,000 views in just a few days.

Created by Christchurch-based Frank Film, directed by award winning film maker, Gerard Smyth, and produced by Alice Shannon, the documentary movie is likely to be well received by Cantabrians as well as New Zealanders throughout the country.

The trailer sets the stage for a powerful movie that is sure to touch the hearts of thousands. Particularly those who experienced or were closely involved with the earthquake and devastating afterschocks themselves.

The trailer has already attracted a number of people asking if the film will be released overseas – in Australia (yes) and the UK (no answer yet) – and has incited some emotional comments from Christchurch-based YouTube users, such as:

Well done to the maker of this film. Its hard for me to watch as I was in the CTV building with my two young children when it collapsed.Its great to see the people of CHCH staying strong and rebuilding their beautiful city. Thanks to the wonderful men and women who rescued us x

freeflyer81

The movie will first screen at Reading Cinema at The Palms Mall on November 16th when it re-opens for the first time following the earthquakes, and will come to cinemas nationwide from 24th November.

The disturbing scenes coupled with the fact that Reading Cinema viewers will be sitting in a building that has been closed for so long following earthquake damage may be too much for some people to stomach, as this commenter suggests:

I still live here in Chch, still cry. Know what you mean about not trusting buildings but putting my faith in the Palms Mall for premiere. It use to be MY Mall, only 500m from my house, scared to go back, was there on Dec 26th that was the end for that mall, I’ll go back for movie, be brave, keep strong.

RuthCL100

The film was produced with grants from New Zealand Film Commission and NZ On Air.

While it’s obviously nowhere near the same quality, you can also view my own video from inside the red zone.

Film Links:

• When a City Falls on YouTube
• When a City Falls Facebook Page
• Frank Film Website

It’s a pretty good one at that – I always start my day by reading through the news on my phone while lying in bed. For me it’s the top stories and the technology section that meet my needs before I start my day.

Reading through so many Stuff articles, it’s become apparent that there’s a fair few typos that crop up – at least one typo in every second article I read. Often they’re pretty minor slip-ups and they’r'e never actually words that are spelt wrong. They certainly run a spell-check before they publish but that doesn’t pick up on some of the more amusing errors where the wrong word appears or words are mixed up in a sentence.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’ll be a few up-stuffs in my own blog and I wouldn’t usually bother writing a post about another’s mistakes, but … some can be quite funny!

That brings me nicely onto Stuff’s article about the New Zealand Vs. Tonga game last night. It was a great write up by Duncan Johnstone but he did make a wee amusing error. Unless All Blacks fullback, Israel Dagg, really has injured his thing.

At least it’s been noted as lengthy, which will really cheer Dagg up during his recovery.

Dagg's Lengthy Thing

Good on ya Stuff ;)

As was forecast, we’ve woken up to a fair bit of snow again.

At this stage it does seem to be a bit more snow than in July. Already I have 15 to 16 cms of snow in my driveway and it’s still coming down.

It’s at that great powdery stage at the moment where it crunches underfoot and you can walk through it without too much difficulty. Last time it was only the following day that the snow compacted down and became a lot more slippery, so I guess we have that to look forward to.

I went into the garage and could hear the snow on the roof moving and making low rumbling sounds.

The Christchurch City Council have announced a list of road closures and, in a round about way, are telling people not to be daft enough to drive on the roads if they don’t have to.

In the meantime, Christchurch looks awesome and the dog is certainly enjoying himself.

Christchurch Snow Depth in Aranui

A table covered in snow.

Thick snow on the car.

Snow on the Port Hills

Dog in the snow.

 Update for Tuesday 16th August

Again, as expected, we’ve woken up to even more snow. I cleared the driveway yesterday … that was a mistake! It’s completely covered again.

It’s now even thicker, just reaching 20cm in our front garden. Fun times. We won’t be able to get out of the house for a while. Good job we bought bread and milk this week before the supermarket shelves emptied.

The car has made its own snow-barrier to block itself in.

More snow.

Streets of Snow in the Eastern Suburbs

Depth of snow in Christchurch on 16th August 2011

This morning I went down to East Gate mall in Linwood to check out their supplies. Milk was getting pretty low although there was still a fair amount left on other shelves. A friend on Twitter also told me that Pak’n'Save Wainoni appeared to have plenty of milk but not a great deal of bread.

Bread is another item that always gets cleaned out pretty quickly when these events happen, although there were two towers of stacks of bread that had just come in the door and a staff member told me they were unloading a large delivery from a truck that morning.

We’ve seen a number of panic buying situations since the September earthquake almost a year ago. In fact, at the time of the February quake when my wife and I made the decision to get out of the city for a few days, we saw panic buying as far south as Timaru.

I remember standing in a queue, waiting to pay for some essentials which I intended to bring back up to Christchurch and pass around to friend’s and family and a lady in front of me had a shopping trolley half full of loaves of bread and said to her friend “We better stock up before those Christchurch people come down and take all our food”. Thanks for being so understanding!

Stock up on Firewood

Back to the snow and heaps of people have been stocking up on firewood. Those people that chose a log burner instead of a heat pump will be pretty happy with themselves right now as, despite the convenience of a heat pump, you can’t turn a heat pump on when there’s no power supply!

City Firewood were fantastic in giving out a heap of vouchers recently so that people affected by the quake could pick up free firewood. They’re a great choice and the wood from there is very dry and burns well, and they also have free trailer hire or free delivery for loads over 6 cubic metres. You can get 1.5 cubic metres of kiln dried pine for $112.50.

There’s a place in Bromley called Pearsons Landscape Supplies. They have a pricelist you can check out on that page and also have free trailer hire but also free delivery for loads over 3 cubic metres. Although it appears that they’re out of stock at time of writing and it’s possible that their wood isn’t kiln dried like the wood at City Firewood. That could be one reason they’re a bit cheaper than City Firewood, with 1.5 cubic metres costing $97.50.

Other Essentials

Other items that get picked up pretty quickly are items you’ll get from a camping or outdoor store. This type of thing includes camping stoves and gas bottles. Not so much for a snow storm but when the earthquake hit, it suddenly became very difficult to find hand sanitiser – an essential item when you have no water supply and are using chemical toilets.

Preparing for the future, I put together an earthquake survival kit and tips blog post back on 8th September 2010. A lot of the stuff on this list could come in handy at others times that you’re stuck at home, like following a snow storm.

Stay warm!

P.S. Sorry the photos on this page are low quality. The Vodafone 845 Android phone is a good phone for the price but the camera is pretty average.

It’s still falling quite heavily and is sticking to everything. We’ve just let our 18 month old German Shepherd out for his first taste of the snow and he’s rather confused.

The Christchurch City Council have warned people to stay off the roads. You can find their list of road closures here.

The hazard is increased by the potholes and cracks that still exist from the earthquake. These holes are now covered with snow and quite invisible so you can imagine why the council are so keen for people to stay at home today.

I'll just put the windscreen wipers on. She'll be right.

Great for keeping your beer cold.

I see the car port is doing its job then??

Snow on the roads in the eastern suburbs.

Crying out for a snow angel.

Update: When the sun came up, I went for a walk to Breezes Road to take some photos of the Port Hills covered in snow. Check out those photos on the photos page.

As time goes by and we continue as best we can with our daily lives, it’s amazing how you start to forget that we haven’t seen Christchurch city centre for months.

Yesterday marked the 5 month anniversary of the 22nd February aftershock that caused so much damage to buildings in the CBD. And this month it’s been 10 months since some areas were closed off after the original 4th September earthquake in 2010.

Last week, after not being allowed access to our Tuam Street office since February, we were finally given the go ahead to retrieve essential equipment from the office. As we were escorted in by CERA (Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority) staff, I took this video out of the car window.

I posted this video to Vimeo. You can also see it on YouTube and Facebook.

So far I’ve only really seen photos of damaged buildings in the city centre and no videos. The photos I’ve seen only tell so much of the story. They each show a single location.

Hopefully the video above goes some way towards providing a bigger picture of how much damage there is in the city centre. After we collected our gear and headed out, I was pretty shell-shocked. There’s so little left that’s recognisable. It’s quite hard to get your bearings as many of the landmark buildings are no more.

For some reason, it’s almost more shocking to where a building used to be rather than the damaged building itself. Driving past the site of the CTV building was an eerie feeling. It was very strange to be driving along Cashel Street and look left all the way to Latimer Square.

Photos of the Earthquake Damage

Previously, I’ve taken a lot of photos myself and posted them in the Christchurch Earthquake set on Flickr. You can see those photos on the New Zealand Photos page, plus a few examples below.

This was my first impression of the city centre after the 22nd February 2011 aftershock. The clouds are made up of dust from buildings that have just collapsed. Cars have swerved across the road and people are gathering at piles of rubble.

I took this photo after the 4th September 2010 earthquake. It shows a damaged building on Manchester Street and then looks down into Sol Square. You can see how close you can get to the damaged buildings and imagine what it would be like to be close to this building at the time of the 22nd February 2011 aftershock.

Two members of our office carrying gear through the cordon. This was taken shortly after the 4th September earthquake. Police allowed us free access past the cordon and simply advised us to watch out for falling masonry. The access situation was much different after the February aftershock.

After the February quake, army soldiers man each entrance to the city’s red zone and allow access only to those with a pass, such as this truck driver. When we went in, there were huge trucks and diggers on every corner.

This photo was taken around May this year. It’s actually taken from outside the cordon on St Asaph Street, looking through the wire fence. The buildings are on Colombo Street and buildings like this further up can be seen in the video.

This photo was taken recently on Fitzgerald Avenue. Again, it’s amazing how close you can get to buildings that look like they are about to collapse. In the background, you can see that work has begun to remove the dome on top of the damaged Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrement.

Looking like a scene from a Terminator movie, this photo shows rubble from collapsed buildings on Moorhouse Avenue, next to Henry’s and Pak’n'Save.

Before the quake. This is one of my favourite photos. I took this from the top of the Cathedral Tower in early 2010. It’s near the time of the Busker’s Festival and shows a busker attracting a crowd in Cathedral Square.

I haven’t had access to the red zone before to take photos so most of mine are from around the outside of the cordon and the eastern suburbs. For photos inside the cordon, it’s highly recommended that you check out Ross Becker’s photos on Picasa.

Ross is a documentary photographer and was commissioned by the National Library to document the city’s rebuild. He has had access through the cordon to photograph the Christchurch CBD and his photos tell a sad story so far.

Note: The audio playing in the background for the first half of the video was audio that I recorded on 4th September and 22nd February. If you recognise the radio presenters, please let me know in a comment below and I’ll link to them from here and from the video descriptions.

The presenters did a stirling job dealing with callers at at time that was confusing for everyone.

For use of any of the material on this page or for further information, please contact me.