Never to Return: Cyclone Gabrielle Hits Muriwai. Ep.3 Precipice Podcast.

Caroline Bell Booth joins me in this episode. Caroline lost her home on the night of the cyclone and now lives in Wellington. She is a television director and used her skills to be an advocate and the so called ‘poster child’ for the Muriwai community.

Caroline recounts the traumatic events she experienced on the night of Cyclone Gabrielle, the personal impacts of the disaster and the surprise issues she had with insurance. She explains her advocacy role, the importance of communities having a spokesperson and the challenging and gratifying aspects of being the face of a community at a time of crisis.

Caroline talks about what she has noticed about herself since the disaster, why she felt she needed to leave Muriwai after the cyclone, how this experience has changed her relationship to land and safety and what she feels the Muriwai community did really well .

Precipice launched on July 20th 2026. 3 seasons will be released across 4 weeks and then the full series of 26 episodes will be available for you to listen to at your leisure.

Season 1: Cyclone Gabrielle Hits Muriwai 

Season 2: Disaster Recovery and Community Restoration                     

Season 3: Community Initiatives after a Cyclone

Listen on You Tube  https://www.youtube.com/@precipicepodcast

Follow on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/precipicepodcast

Hosted and produced by Mandy Jakich. Commissioned and funded by Muriwai Community Association, supported by the Auckland Council Recovery Office.

Transcript

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Mandy 0:31 Mandy 0:31

A small vibrant coastal community of Muriwai Beach, northwest of Auckland New Zealand, was a ripped apart by Cyclone Gabrielle. This podcast captures what happened on the night and in the days, months, and years that followed. Join me, Mandy Jakich, as I speak to fellow Muriwai locals, volunteers, and those involved in the emergency and recovery effort. Hear about their experiences of loss and upheaval, the impact on their lives, and the community-led initiatives that helped Muriwai find a way forward. Welcome to Precipice. Eddie Wood joins me in this episode. Eddie is a surfer and kite surfer who came to Aotearoa New Zealand from the UK in 2012, and he's lived in Muriwai for most of the time since then. His house came down with one of the biggest landslides in Motutara Road, opposite the Muriwai Lodge, on the night of Cyclone Gabrielle. Caroline Bell Booth joins me in this episode. Caroline lost her home on the night of the cyclone and now lives in Wellington. She is a television director and used her skills to be an advocate and the so-called poster child for the Mudua community. Caroline recounts the traumatic events she experienced on the night of Cyclone Gabrielle.

Caroline 1:24

Everyone was yelling at me to run. And that was because they could hear the hills behind our house cracking.

Mandy 1:33

She talks about the personal impacts of the disaster and the surprise issues she had with insurance. She explains her advocacy role.

Caroline 1:43

The role of being um that face of the community was a deep, deep honor for me. I'm so grateful that people trusted me with that.

Mandy 1:56

Caroline talks about what she has noticed about herself since the disaster.

Caroline 2:02

There's something really distinctive now about sudden change, about blindsiding. It affects me really strongly, and I have to parent myself through those moments.

Mandy 2:13

And Caroline shares why she felt she needed to leave Muriwai after the cyclone.

Caroline 2:31

I lived there for a total of eight years, seven before the cyclone, and one year after. And it provided for me a life that I wouldn't have traded in for anything. My job by trade is a television director, and I specialise in drama. Currently I'm enrolled to do my master's in screen arts, so I'm speaking to you from Bornicky and looking forward to studying that chapter of my life. Prior to the event, um I I was concerned, not I had no concept of the um the scale of what would happen, but in the preceding weeks there had been a lot of rain and there had been a very small slip of land on our property. Um I was more concerned about following the messages from civil defence and so forth about um tying down furniture and so forth, but also having lived through a couple of storm events at Muriwai, I was comfortable with and prepared for the fact that we would probably lose power for a couple of days and that would affect our water supply and so on and so forth. So um, yeah, we organized the house in order to accommodate for something akin to what we had experienced before. And that included um a relatively terse marital argument about tying down furniture and where that furniture should be tied. And somewhat ironically, it was that furniture as we moved it off the front desk and put it onto a deck rather, and we put it onto the side deck, unbeknownst to us, that sort of became um a makeshift filter, if you will, for the landslide that hit the side of the house. It was the pile of furniture that um my husband had um strapped down um that actually prevented the landslide coming through the glass doors and in and permeating the house, if you will.

Mandy 5:30

And uh do you feel like you had sort of enough warning or had any sort of understanding of the kind of impact that it would have?

Caroline 5:39

Oh, absolutely not. But I don't believe that there was any way that um they could have predicted the change in the wind. And um and also, as I came to discover through, you know, the advocacy process in the months after, is that the saturation levels of the ground met with the um the ferocity of the wind, all of which shook the trees, that unsettled the already sodden ground, that sort of, I guess, agitated a little bit like a washing machine to to free things, and that then became the landslide. It it all just sort of loosened everything up. There's no way I don't believe that anyone could have predicted that outcome for that exact event. I do, however, have some very strong opinions about the council selling that land in the first place. I also would like to note that those trees that became unstuck in the land beyond our um boundary was all council land. And in the months prior, oh I can feel the anger rising. So in the weeks prior, after the you know, series of storms and bad weather that we had had, we knew that there had been um arborists out consulting with the council above our house to look at what needed to be done in terms of maintenance. Um and unfortunately, rather than just getting in and and getting that job done with urgency, um the trees came loose and ended up crashing into my life. So the events of the evening unfolded in that initially it was pretty uneventful. And um then as the wind turned, things took a a different tone, and at a certain point a tree um fell against our house. It wasn't a large tree, but it was resting on the glass of some ranch sliders, and we couldn't really see the scale of it, but to give you an indication of how serious we considered that, um, I didn't call 111 or anything like that. I simply text messaged one of my good friends who was in the volunteer firefighters and said, um, we've just had a tree down, it's resting against the house, we think it's okay, but just kind of letting you know. And um and they responded to that because they were concerned, and and rightly, rightly so. And so essentially to my surprise, and initially I thought, oh, this is a bit OTT, but never mind, um, they came to us and that included both both Dave and Craig. And um they did an assessment of the house and I still have video footage of that. And it was decided that after, you know, um using a chainsaw to to adjust the tree and take pressure off the door and so forth, that it was just a better idea to evacuate us. So we were in fact the first house to be evacuated. And so um in the lead up to the event, we'd you know we had a little f you know, a phone group chat with our local friends and just sort of said, look, if anyone gets in trouble, let's all just support each other. And and so we reached out to them and they came down and um some friends of ours took our dogs and um and one of them drove one of our cars away, which was really helpful. And through this time I was grabbing our grab bag, which I had prepared, and so we were evacuating to um Leah's house, who was the friend that I had initially called who was in the fire brigade. So we said, we'll go to your house, the dogs will go to our other friend's house, and um I think maybe in the story of of this event one of the moments that really sticks with me is that as I was leaving the house, I couldn't I couldn't quite hear because I was the last to leave. I couldn't quite hear. But everyone was yelling at me to run, and that was because they could hear the hills behind our house cracking. Um and so that's how we left the house, and for all the tragedy of that night, and me sending that text message what happened was that because you know the volleys had turned up outside our house, and you know, Modi Wai, small old community, and everyone was like, Oh gosh, what's happening at Caroline Matt's house? You know, and so everyone was alert, and that meant that also the volleys were on our street, like right in the thick of it, to hear those hills crack. So it meant that they could take action rather than wait, because if you think about the disaster of those houses, and if there had been families in there, the um I just think that the body count would have been so astronomically higher. Which is not to say that what happened didn't cover the huge cost and um the impact on those nuclear families. I don't know what would have happened to our house if the tree hadn't been adjusted or if the landslide had been bigger. But it's not to say that the people who lost their lives saved ours, but they saved a lot of lives that night. As a um as a consequence of an inconsequential text message that I sent, which is not to center myself in that, because theirs is the heroicism. So having evacuated, we followed essentially what our plan was in the circumstances of an evacuation, and that was for us to go to our friend Leah's house, or you know, initially it was the alternative should something happen at hers. And her place was Matutara Road, and um down the corner from the slips, but you know, it's a pole house on a on a hillside. I can't even remember whether that what happened to that house. I think it was red stickered. Um, and so we evacuated there. And at that point, it was sort of like we thought a tree had come down and there was some stuff going on, but uh, you know, I wasn't I don't remember being completely alarmed by it. So we went to Leah's house, and then um I think we were sort of pretty much just like put bags down, about to put a cup of tea on or something. And and then she messaged me or called me, and she said, We're about to evacuate Moshitawa as well. And and I think then she told me that maybe like that it was all coming down or I knew it was bad. She just said, My house is now at risk. Can you get the cat? And can you go? And I remember packing her, patting her under and her toothbrush, and I think grabbing her glasses and her laptop and just throwing together some sort of an emergency kit for her of her personal things and the cat. Then I reached out to a colleague and friend um on Edwin Mitchelson and said, It's you know, this is all happening. Can we come to you? Of course. We turned up there, they had a generator, it was comforting and lovely, and we sort of settled in, and this is a few hours had passed, and then I mean, we went sleeping, obviously, and I think there was a level of concern at that point, and then um Leah turned up, I think it must have been about two in the morning, maybe. She told us about Dave and Craig. She was just like, they're gone. And I was like, What do you mean they're gone? And she was like, a landslip. We were trying to get people out of, I think it was Eddie's home or around Eddie's home. And and it slipped in there under it, and it just I think she's saying it now, it just sounds so mutual. Um and then I think you know, we tried to just calm ourselves and have some tea, and I remember going to bed at like small hours in the morning and saying to my husband of the time we're never going back to that house. And I didn't mean that like I don't want to go back. I was just like, I don't think that that's gonna be possible. And I was right.

Mandy 16:45

Was he on the same page with you? Is he thinking the same? Hmm.

Caroline 16:50

Difficult to answer that question without without the lens that I now look at it. Um no, he um we're very different personalities. And um his concept was that it was all gonna be okay. That's my memory of it. But that was probably him dealing with the shock as opposed to acknowledging the scale of what was going on. I mean, the 14th of February is significant to a number of people for romantic reasons. Um it's now significant to me as the day we walked back to Domain Crescent and saw an absolute disaster zone. And my life irreparably changed from that morning onwards.

Mandy 17:43

What was it like in the hours or days after that event? How did you find handling that and and managing what had actually happened around your house and that kind of thing? Where did you go from there?

Caroline 17:56

I I mean you you kind of go into shock. And I think that in my personal experience, given that I sort of recognized that night that it wasn't possible to go back to the house, like I was like, they're not gonna let us stand there. And I thought, as did many, many Aucklanders, that I was thoroughly insured as a committed payer of insurance. Um and so I guess on some level, I was like, well, we can still access the house, we can get everything that we own out of it. Um, we'll be insured. We've always paid more insurance than we've ever needed because you know I typically sit a little risk averse. And I guess to hark back to that moment when I left the house, there was the sort of, I guess, the contextual thing that I described before of everyone yelling at me to hurry. But something else internally happened for me in that moment where I ran out of the house and I distinctly remember going, I've got the important paperwork, the dogs are safe, Matt is safe, we'll be okay. Like, and something happened to me in my prioritization of what was important in life, which at the time was my husband who I loved dearly, my dogs, who were the most gorgeous creatures on earth, and the paperwork that I needed to move forward. In the aftermath, you would have moments of like, oh man is T-set, or this little thing and this little thing. The things you pined were were your sentimental elements, and what I no longer had an attachment to, and I I just remember this as quite a visceral thing, is that I didn't care about the stuff. And if there's a massive change that has happened in my life, is that I just didn't, I just stopped caring about stuff, and I think other people have gone in a different way, and that's certainly um been a flavor to the personal impact of this journey for me, is the trauma of that moment of loss, you know, your brain can go in such different ways, and mine went towards it doesn't actually matter, the things that are most important to me I still have, and the other stuff can be replaced or wasn't meant to be, or whatever. I just remember that, and I think other people in the trauma are so it just almost goes into a scarcity mindset of stuff and things, and I've worked all my life for this, and these are the things that are most important that hold me to who I am and make me feel safe and and ground me and and show the world who I am. I think that that has been on a really meta level the massive shift that happened for me in that landslide.

Mandy 21:17

Do you think that's a a positive, one positive outcome that you've taken away?

Caroline 21:23

Yeah. I mean, I speak to you from this like shoebox-sized apartment where I've been setting up my new life and I've been really, really restrained. And how little do I need to have? And that's not because I feel panicked about losing it again, it's just that my attachment to it now seems incredibly facile. So, unless there is a functionality or a distinct artistic That comes from whatever I put in my home. It's it means nothing else.

Mandy 22:07

And you mentioned insurance. I mean, you were paid out by the council, I presume. Council and government. Yes. And government in the end, yeah. Can you just talk very briefly about some of the issues that you had with insurance before you knew you were going to be paid out?

Caroline 22:23

Oh, I mean, the the most harrowing thing about the journey with insurance was realizing that you weren't insured. And that it was not c made very, very clear. And I think that the banks have a role to play in this as well, because they require the insurance in order to um approve the mortgage. Is that after Christchurch, because the insurance companies lost so much money on payouts, they adjusted the details of what kind of events you were, in fact, insured for. And the loss of your home as a result of essentially the land around it no longer being livable, just reiterating land that the council owned and land that the council sold, in my and in my experience, um thusly making your property unlivable, you were not covered for that. For all the enlightenment, I've also come to see what a materialistic and consumerist society we have become. So unfortunately, it doesn't surprise me anymore. In our case, the home was impacted, like it literally had the council's pill resting against it. So we couldn't live in it, but the house itself, it was hard to quantify. It wasn't like it had flooded and we need to now replace the downstairs or something like that. It was like we can't live in it because of the threat of more of it coming. So you have a house that you can walk into that, admittedly, half a hill is resting against with the threat of another hill coming, which is why the authorities say you can't live in it, and fair enough. But insurance is like, there's nothing really wrong with the house.

Mandy 24:38

People who had more issues with the actual house. They they were they got insurance money, but then if you if your house was livable, you didn't.

Caroline 24:48

Yeah, but you couldn't live in it because so you were just caught in the you were hamstrung between two other authorities. Um, yeah, and so that was the hopelessness of the situation and where the advocacy started, because it's immoral. It's immoral, it's unjust, it's unfair, and you know, thank goodness for the political minds that were in power at that point and their ethos, because I fear deeply for the future of New Zealand, its geotechnical stability or lack thereof, and what will happen to, in particular, coastal communities or flood-prone communities where past councils have willingly sold land quite irresponsibly, or at very least naively.

Mandy 25:50

So we speaking of advocacy, you became a bit of a poster child for Muriwai, in that you were very much our public face. Um, and you were you were really advocating for our whole community and and making a lot of communications with media and that kind of thing. So can you explain to us the role that you had with that and how it developed and why you felt like you were somebody who could take on that role?

Caroline 26:18

I think my role in advocacy began after I think in the first day or two, I did a television interview. Um perhaps it was a live-to-hear or or some some interview. So to speak, is not a foreign one to me. So there was a level of, I guess you could say, comfort for me, in that that doesn't freak me out. I'm used to having my work be screened on a national scale, so you know, and sometimes I do interviews about that or something. So that it's not the first time I've been interviewed on television, so that felt fine. I think you also can just say uh complete trauma. Uh and but also I think um uh just in that first instance, feeling like I I had the ability to explain what was happening cohesively and succinctly, and I could see that other people were in trauma around me. I was in my own level of trauma, but um it just it just like felt in some ways like work for me.

Mandy 27:48

Did you actually reach out to them or did they connect with you, the media?

Caroline 27:52

No, they they connected with me. I don't recall how I I mean I'm sure that you'll find in the series of interviews that people's memory has dropped out a lot. I mean, I've just the brain is a wonderful thing and it limits you from remembering so much of it. But yeah, I I think it was Corazon Miller at the at the golf course. And actually now that I think about it, I think that there was some issue, and I said to her, if you want someone to speak to this, I'm happy to do so. So yeah, now that I think about it, I actually put myself there being like someone needs to understand this, and I can voice that. Yeah, I mean, as cliched as it sounds, you know, these kinds of events do you learn about who people really are, and in some ways that has been an incredibly humbling, at times humiliating, but ultimately very rewarding journey for me personally. It has also been a deeply devastating journey for me to find out who other people are.

Mandy 29:22

Could you just explain to us exactly what you did for the community um in this advocacy role and how it assisted all the initiatives that were being taken by the community?

Caroline 29:35

Look, I just I saw my role in the advocacy, which was um, I guess you could say the spokesperson for Muriwai. I was simply a conduit for the incredible team behind me. Muriwai enjoyed having a community that had incredible resources, not just socioeconomic, but politically connected, media connections, um strategic marketing skills, and we threw them all in, and we came up with you know a crackshot team that in collaboration with other West Coast beaches like PH, um we had a good story. We had uh a really good news lead and we knew it. And that's not to say that um we exploited it, but we knew that there was a time frame. We also had the pressure of a new government possibly coming in later in the year. These are not the initial thoughts, but this is part of the overall strategy with the advocacy. And on a personal level and also on a greater Auckland-wide level, um, it was important that with our resources and the attention that we could draw to ourselves, that we use that to set a framework for the buyout process that facilitated a level of recovery that was fair, um, so that communities who were not as well resourced socioeconomically or otherwise didn't have to do that work for themselves. And that, yes, they came later because we were the poster kids for the recovery. Um and, you know, my understanding is that that work still goes on, and my heart just literally bleeds for those families. Um that there was a path that could be followed.

Mandy 32:04

Why do you think it's important to have one spokesperson like yourself taking on that role?

Caroline 32:10

Well, I guess you you accrue a sense of connection with the audience. And I'm a storyteller. And so there were lots and lots of things that I edited out. And you know, with this team behind me, I knew what are the three key points that I need to hit in every interview, and so I'm honored to have done that job, but it also took a lot to do those things to sort of hold your grief and your distress of your worst, most vulnerable moment in life up for people to see, and to say, my experience is not unique. This is what everybody else is going through. The opportunity here is that I can show you a little window into what that is and what that feels like, and be able to hold that and show that for you. Everybody else around me is experiencing that as well. Um I think it's important so that people understand the human cost. It would be really easy to tell the story as one which is like community wants buyout, you know, gimme, gimme, gimme. And I certainly got a level of trolling um in response to me publicly sharing what life was like for myself and for other people. People contacting me via Instagram and social media, um, telling me how selfish I was, and that you know, clearly demonstrating from the way that I was dressed and the way that I spoke that I should shut the F up. From outside, like you know, New Zealand public. That's that's okay. That person's in pain. The role of being um that face of the community um was a deep, deep honor for me. Um I'm so grateful that people trusted me with that. Um the messages that I got from residents were so moving. And people saying to me, thank you for explaining in the way that you have explained it, clearly emotively but not emotionally. Thank you for showing everybody else what our pain is and doing it with a level of I guess dignity for the community. Um I'm just I'm just humbled by the love that people show me as a result of doing that, because I would have done it anyway. And I'm just glad that my sassy attitude and my love of words was able to for once not get me into trouble. In the event of something tragic like this happening in other communities, and I'm saying more when rather than if, to be honest, the role of being able to communicate to the wider public is a very helpful device to navigate through. It's only one part, and I really do want to stress that the points that I was making, the research that I was quoting, the um concepts that I was pressing, I was definitely coached into. I understood them, and I was a part of the team that brought that together. But the advice that I would give is within a community, those natural strengths come out. There are the researchers, there are the historians, there are the politically savvy ones, there are the marketers. If everybody can work together, and then there are the mouthpieces, if everybody can work together and really pursue communicating what the problem is, because if we didn't have the attention that we had from media, the politicians wouldn't have been under the same level of scrutiny and um pressure to make changes. It would have dilly-dallied, and it would have we would have been caught in a cycle. So my advice would be um work as a team. I think it's really important also if you are the spokesperson to make it personal, but not just about you. You are a conduit for so many people. And I would also say to those people, it's a weight of responsibility, it's an honor. And it yeah, it was it was it was training. Um it's something that I can do. So I I didn't see it as a burden at all, I saw it as a real honor and a privilege. But to also be very gentle with yourself because if you happen to be an empath as well, which typically storytellers are, you know, it does, it will drain you. So while you're taking care of other people and fighting a good fight as best you can, take care of your own heart as well. The impact of the cyclone and the events afterwards have taken a huge toll in my life. I note that the tone of my voice is quite light when I say that because now I am I'm looking at it as a past, albeit significant, event. And I haven't returned to being the person that I was. However, like in that moment when I left the house and I just sort of discarded all the superficial, I like to think that a lot of the BS that I was carrying prior to the cyclone, I'm letting go of or have let go of, or no longer resonates for me. I think that these kinds of unprecedented, unpredicted, traumatic events, you know, they change us, but they also shape us. And in the moment it is harrowing. It's harrowing, and and I and that's not exclusive to natural disasters, it's any traumatic event. And what I've noticed is the impact psychologically, not just in the aftermath, which you know is kind of obvious, but it's later down the track. And it's it's little things like it's like someone saying to you, oh, when you're feeling stressed at night, put on the sound of rain. There's nothing worse. Um I don't want to hear rain ever. Sometimes I've noticed the scale of your reactions to things that almost seem disproportionate to other people who are not particular or you know aware of what you've been through. For me, there's something really distinctive now about sudden change, about blindsiding. It affects me really strongly, and I have to parent myself through those moments. Woo wee, you know, and so all this language, parenting oneself, you know, it's all it all comes from the therapy that I've had to manage the shock of it and the impact of it, and then the impact that other people's experience then has on them, how that changes them, how their behavior, their reactions, their unknown psychological um demons come out because it's an event that just drips you, and it will show you what is really going on one way or another. These events just show you again, they show you who you are. Sounds so cliched, but they show you in the most brutal, harrowing light. And you better like what is there, because if you don't, your behavior just becomes repugnant. The personal landslide that happened is a domino effect to this landslide. I don't think was entirely unique to my situation because yeah, trauma just pushes you and your behavior and your fear into stark reality. Um, the circumstances of my personal journey meant that I no longer felt able to be in the community that I felt deeply attached to and connected to. My experience of that has been that the circumstances are such that staying there would not allow me to move on in a peaceful way. That said, to you know, to be fair to all parties, um I didn't want to stay in Whittier because I didn't feel safe. And after what we went through, I really struggled to see. I I kind of struggled to see how anyone would want to stay. I had quite a visceral experience that night, though. Some people weren't aware of the scale of it until later. Some people's houses were at risk, but they weren't actually affected. Some people weren't affected at all. I've I've always found Modi Wai like a place energetically where lots of things end. Um lots of people come to Modiwai and end their lives, either knowingly, by choice, or by accident. I've always thought of it as a place where things end. And lots of things ended for me there. I maintain some friendships with people there that I'd like to think I have forever. Just because they will understand a part of me a little bit like your siblings. That there are people there who will understand a part of me that other people won't understand. And it's with deep sorrow that that person isn't the partner that I chose in life. I think that that could have been a lovely journey to go through as humans. Um and I really celebrate and acknowledge the relationships that did stay together and have journeyed through that process to come out the other side stronger. But there are two people in a relationship and two very different realities. This experience has irreparably changed my relationship to land and safety. And politically my leanings have always been left. And now the role of climate change and how how weather patterns are changing in a way that is faster and more unpredictable. They're all interrelated and and interconnected. And I guess the this event and the story how as I hold it now has really brought home to me how we are all interconnected. And you know, quite literally, the air I breathe out is the air that the trees breathe in. You know, we we are a biosphere, and what I do impacts everybody and everything in a minute way, not that egocentric, but and conversely. And I think the magical thing about what happened in Muriwai is especially in those disaster days afterwards, is feeling how a community can come together. And there will always be dissent and there will always be some oddbods, but holding space for everybody and working together as a group and realizing as a group we A, need each other and B can work together. That has been one of the most profound lessons that I've had from this journey is that we can and do need to work together and also realize that part of being together and being in a biosphere is understanding what is happening for the land and the impact that our behavior has on the land and thus the land on us. It is a fool's journey to think that the land won't win. She has been here so much longer than us, and she will survive. And it's our job to try and live in harmony with that on a more pragmatic level, a less materialistic approach to land. You know, I'm specifically referencing council here, and you know, and selling land simply for the quick turnover of cash to keep councils afloat and all the rest of it. You know, it's it's all coming, all these decisions are coming home to roost right now. And unfortunately, it's the Joe Averages that are getting the raw end of the deal, and councils are impoverished as a result of really greedy and ill-conceived concepts from the past.

Mandy 48:34

What do you think you've learned about yourself and where where are you at now?

Caroline 48:40

That I like myself. Um that I'm deeply flawed with an enormous heart. That I believe in standing up for what you believe in. I believe in taking care of others. I believe that what Modiway went through is sort of a microcosm of what the world is heading towards. Um you know, like it's the journey is a massive spiritual reckoning. And you can deny that. You can deny that, but you will not use you will not get out of it the growth that you could get out of it. And I am I'm proud that at a certain point of this journey I actively made a choice to really learn about who I was through the process. And she is not perfect. This experience has irreparably changed my relationship to land and safety, and politically my leanings have always been left, and now the role of climate change and how how we are our weather patterns are changing in a way that is faster and more unpredictable. Um you know it's they're all interrelated and and interconnected. And I guess the this event and the story how as I hold it now has really brought home to me how we are all interconnected. And you know, quite literally the air I breathe out is the air that the trees breathe in. You know, we we are a biosphere, and what I do impacts everybody and everything in a minute way, not that egocentric, but and conversely, and I think the magical thing about what happened in Muriwai is especially in those disaster days afterwards, is feeling how a community can come together. And there will always be dissent and there will always be some oddbods, but holding space for everybody and working together as a group and realizing as a group we A, need each other and B can work together. That has been one of the most profound lessons that I've had from this journey is that we can and do need to work together and also realize that part of being together and being in a biosphere is understanding what is happening for the land and the impact that our behavior has on the land and thus the the land on us. It is a fool's journey to think that the land won't win. She has been here so much longer than us, and she will survive, and it's our job to to try and live in harmony with that. Um, and on a more pragmatic level, a less materialistic approach to land. You know, I'm specifically referencing councils here, and you know, and selling land simply for the quick turnover of of cash to keep councils afloat and all the rest of it. You know, it's it's all coming, all these decisions are coming home to roost right now. And unfortunately, it's the Joe Averages that are getting the raw end of the deal, and councils are impoverished as a result of really greedy and ill-conceived concepts from the past.

Mandy 53:34

Well said. And uh what do you think you've learned about yourself and and sort of where where are you at now?

Caroline 53:45

What I've learnt about myself from this journey that I like myself. Um that I'm deeply flawed with an enormous heart. That I believe in standing up for what you believe in. I believe in taking care of others. I believe that what Muriwai went through is sort of a microcosm of what the world is heading towards. Um you know, like it's the journey is a massive spiritual reckoning. And you can deny that. You can deny that, but you will not use you will not get out of it the growth that you could get out of it. And I am I'm proud that at a certain point of this journey, I actively made a choice to really learn about who I was through the process.

Mandy 55:01

What do you think Muriwai did really well as a community?

Caroline 55:06

I'm really proud of the way that we held space for each other. There was how we presented on a national front, but internally not everybody was on the same page, not everybody suffered the same level of loss. Not everybody understood what everybody else was going through. I feel like I was in a team that was very much at the at the nucleus of the impact. My loss was significant, it's not as significant as others, but I was close enough to their loss that I could feel it, and it still pains me. And that we held space for that, and that we took care of each other, and that we went through something that was really, really hard. I don't know what it's like out there now. Um, I still feel a deep sadness to feel, due to personal circumstances, ostracized. But I'm also really used to loss now. And I used to be somebody who would hold on to things very tightly. And Muriwai is just one of those things, one of those many, many things that I have loved.