Emergency Accomodation at the Campground: Cyclone Gabrielle Hits Muriwai. Ep 5 Precipice Podcast..

In this episode I speak with Denise Mackle and Cheryl Beattie. Together they are managers of the Muriwai Campground, and accommodated displaced families in the campground on the night of Cyclone Gabrielle and for months after the event.

Cheryl and Denise talk about the impacts and logistics of providing emergency accommodation for families who couldn’t return to their homes, receiving and coordinating donations of caravans from families and organisations, the financial impact on the campground business, and applying for and receiving government and council funding and donations.

They share some of the challenges and the highlights of hosting displaced families after the cyclone, what they learnt through this experience, advice they have for other communities, what they think Muriwai did well and what could have been improved from their point of view, and the negative side of the cordon for their business and the community.

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

Mandy 1:02

In this episode, I speak with Denise Mackle and Cheryl Beattie. Together they are the managers of the Mudowai Campground and accommodated displaced families in the campground on the night of Cyclone Gabrielle and for months after the event. Cheryl and Denise talk about the impacts and logistics of providing emergency accommodation for families who couldn't return to their homes.

SPEAKER_04 1:28

It was harder looking after the number of people in dealing with those in those first couple of weeks than it was when we have 400 people here.

Mandy 1:37

They talk about receiving and coordinating donations, the financial impact on the campground business, and applying for and receiving government and council funding. They share some of the challenges and the highlights of hosting displaced families, what they learned through this experience, advice they have for other communities and other campgrounds, what they think Murawai did well, and what could have been improved from their point of view.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

At the time it felt a very divided community for different reasons. As time went on, I think it became worse.

Mandy 2:14

And they discussed the challenges of the Mirawai cordon for the community and for them as a business.

SPEAKER_04 2:23

Hi, I'm Cheryl Beattie. I'm one of the um managers or licensees for the Mirawai Campground. Denise and I were lucky enough to win the expressions of interest when the campground was reopened in uh February 2017. Um, and we've run it ever since. I've had a couple of other small businesses, but obviously nothing of this scale, and we'd never run a campground before, we had no idea. Um, so it was very much a learning process, and um yeah, the campground wasn't particularly ready when we took over. Um there were still workmen here uh up to two months afterwards we opened. I did work for New Zealand Post, I did a lot of um project work there.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Hi, I'm Denise Um and I'm the other part of the partnership for the business. As she all said, we came here in 2017. It was like winning the lottery, actually, because we'd both been made redundant at New Zealand Post and were offered several jobs, but we decided we want to do something different. Um, and we both liked the idea of a campground. We had to do a presentation in order to get the lease, which we put together, we got the lease. Um, it was like winning the lotto, but we didn't have any idea what we were doing. So fortunately, we weren't as busy as we are now. Um, but we we worked through it. I mean, as Chael said, um, she worked in projects. I've worked for New Zealand Post for 20 years. We, you know, we just put our heads together and did what we had to do. And we've had nine years this February doing that, um, and a lot of ups and downs with COVID and cyclones and things like that.

Mandy 4:14

Yeah, you've certainly had a few events since you took it over, haven't you? Yeah, exactly. You guys were very much involved in the recovery part of the cyclone. But could you please talk to us about before the actual cyclone hit and how much information you had and what you were actually expecting. And then also we can talk about how you prepared the campground for the event. Here's Cheryl.

SPEAKER_04 4:43

I mean, obviously the most people were aware that something was coming. I mean, we were um I particularly was waxing lyrical that it was going to be going to the east coast and that whilst it'd be windy and rainy here, it wasn't going to be anything major, because that was the information that we had that it was really going to hit the east coast much worse. And obviously that didn't turn to play because it turned round and actually hit the west coast worse. So um we we only had nine people here, I think that night because people were hunkering down wherever they were. I mean, we have a lot of tourists come to this campground um either when they arrive from overseas, because we're in eight hour from the airport, or when they're leaving, but um they would have stayed in situ. Um and we did we did have some but not many, and and we basically just told them that um they could hunker down in the kitchen or the laundry if they felt uncomfortable. But we weren't expecting anything like that. We didn't think it would hit this side of the post.

Mandy 5:51

And you were lucky that you'd had Waitangi weekend, which was a long weekend public holiday, like the weekend before, wasn't it? And here's Denise.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

In hindsight, the reason for the devastation in Muraway wasn't only down to Sight Point Gabriel. So previous two weekends, so we had anniversary weekend floods everywhere across Auckland. Um I was trying to get to Elton John for the second time. Um and we were standing in in absolute drenching rain for three hours, and then they told us he wasn't going to perform, so we had to go home. That was an absolute nightmare. We didn't think we were going to get home that night. It was disastrous. Um, and when I came back to the campground the next day, all the way along the roads were small slips, and there were some in Murderway as well, um, on the on Mototara Road, just small ones, as someone had put a cone around. Um, and then of course we got um more rain and more rain, and then we got the cyclone with the rain um and the wind. And I think that was what finished it off. But in hindsight, you don't think about flooding having an ongoing effect, you know. Once it's gone, it's gone, but it hadn't, obviously. Um and yeah, we as she all said, we only had nine campers in the campground. We normally at that time of the year, if the weather's good, we would have anywhere up to a hundred during the week. So it was it it was a a matter of it's not going to be good weather for driving, even if it's just windy, you know, coming along the ridge in a camper van is not ideal. And I think the tourists in that they were just staying pot. So we were lucky to only have nine people. I don't know what would have happened if we'd been full with 400 plus people.

Mandy 8:03

That night you were obviously just you know in amongst the cyclone like the rest of the community and sort of worried probably for you for the safety of yourselves and and the gr campground.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Being on the west coast and having been in the camp at the campground close to the sea, we were used to very high winds and we were used to rain. Um we knew that the winds were extremely high, but it wouldn't have been the first time that we'd had high winds. That's why we spoke to our campers about what to do, because we'd previously had high winds, but we were more concerned about the noise our little shed out the back was making when it lost its door and then it was banging all night, um, and that sort of thing. And ah, is that a rubbish banana? Is that but we honestly, from my perspective anyway, had no idea that we were in danger. Back to Cheryl.

SPEAKER_04 9:03

Because we're where we're situated, I mean, we're right behind the dunes basically, and so we're much more impacted by the sea and that we wouldn't have heard all the trees banging or any of that. You you because the wind was coming this way, so we didn't get any of that. We had no idea that there was a whole lot of noise going up behind us, couldn't hear it though.

Mandy 9:25

So, when did you realise that night that things were pretty serious in the community? Well, we went to bed.

SPEAKER_04 9:31

I mean, we just said, Oh, you know, this terrible weather just went to bed. And it was only until we got the um alert.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Here's the niece. So at 1.30 in the morning, my cell phone went off and I said to Shell, everyone's evacuating. Um, and so we quickly got up and we went to the office, and we could see all these car lights coming up our driveway when people were it said in the message to evacuate to the surf club. And I my first thought was, oh, in the dark, because we realized we had no power at that point. In the dark, they're mistaking our driveway for the surf club, which people do sometimes. Um, and we could see someone with a headlamp further down, and we we opened the door, we now he came up and saw us with the light on. I said, What's going on? And he said, they can't get to the surf club because of the flooding. So we're bringing them up your driveway and then we're parking them in the campground and then walking to the surf club. And I said, Oh, that's that's great. Yeah, absolutely. We've got piles of room. What's the plan? And he said, uh, play it by air is the plan. And at that point we thought, this is serious stuff, you know. That was when it really hit us, but it wasn't till days later that we un we learned that it actually started at 11:30 that night. What was happening out in the community, we had no idea until that alert went off at 1.30. Um, and of course, we immediately contacted our nine campers um and because we knew that they would have got that alert on their mobile phones. Um, and one of them we were concerned about, we couldn't contact. She was in a cabin on her own, but she'd taken herself off to the surf club, um, which was great. We got her eventually. Um but yes, we we had not wasn't till daylight because everything was dark and black, and it wasn't till daylight that we realized what was going on, because our office window you can see one of the slips, which you can still see, um, up in the quarry track. And we were like, Wow, look at that, but that was small compared to the major one.

Mandy 12:04

Yeah, and the uh the gates couldn't be opened. Um, so how did people actually get through into the campground?

SPEAKER_01 12:11

You mean the gate at the regional park? So someone obviously managed to open that because the cars were driving into our campground. Ironically, we have a key to that, but nobody thought to come and ask. Um, we could uh um open it manually, but someone obviously contacted the ranger or something and got got it to open in the in the end. But then of course they couldn't drive around, they drove in here, which was ideal, really.

Mandy 12:40

Yeah, and that must have still been quite scary for people to go through the campground in that in those conditions and you know, with their families and their animals and everything, and then sort of go through the field into the surf club.

SPEAKER_04 12:53

Yeah, because the the the track down to the from there where they were parking, I mean it's all over the place. So it's and especially in the Howland Gale, would have been easy.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

I think it was the fact it was so dark. You know, there is no if you lose power in the middleway, there's nothing. There is no light. Um, and because it was stormy as well, it was obviously very c overcast in that. Um even the even the local um fire truck got stuck um in the campground. I don't know what he was doing really, but anyway. But yeah, it was interesting because some people Odette was one, she um evacuated in her camper van. Um and we had a couple of other caravans that we found in the morning. We didn't know they'd come in, they just came in and parked up, and we we came across them in the morning when we went out.

SPEAKER_04 13:44

Um, so how they drove a caravan down through that, who had no idea. But yeah, one um family in particular, they just got back from holiday up north and the caravan was still attached to the car. So they just jumped in there and took off down here.

Mandy 13:59

In those days afterwards, you did become, you know, quite a pivotal part of the recovery and and you were providing accommodation for so many people who'd lost their homes or or couldn't go back to their houses. How did that kind of develop?

SPEAKER_04 14:16

It initially started that they just started turning up. We had just people coming in that were just beside themselves, um asking if they could come down and stay. Of course, we set a course, you know, whatever. Um just had to tell them that obviously we had no power. And unfortunately, in the this particular campground, when the power goes off, there's no water, so the pumps don't work. So there's you can't flush the toilets, you can't have a shower, you can't do anything really. So they have to be aware of that. The only saving grace is that the field taps that are in the field are the old ones, so they actually work. So we just put buckets in the um toilet, and everyone had to learn to go and fill up the bucket and flush it down the toilet when they went there.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

You know, the old-fashioned way. Yeah, from our perspective, it was self-generated, basically. It was people who had thought through the process of I know someone who's got a caravan, a friend of mine's got a caravan. If I bring that, can I stay? Or um, you know, I'm borrowing a motorhome. The thing was that they wanted to be close to home. Some some people did leave, they had to. Um, they, you know, they went and stayed with friends outside Middleway, but the ones that had the opportunity to borrow a caravan or a camper van, they wanted to be close by and know what was going on because at that point it was a mystery to everybody. No one knew anything.

Mandy 15:49

Did you have any people turning up who were just like didn't know what to do and and didn't have a camper van or anything but just came to you for for support?

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Yeah, we we had um quite a few people turn up. Smiley's caravan had delivered five caravans to the campground um a couple of days later, and we were able to accommodate those people that were absolutely devastated um and had nowhere to go, but again wanted to stay in your wine. Following the cyclone, one of the local volunteers, Simon, Dan O'Keefe, he called around and we didn't know then. He didn't know us. First off, he checked that we were okay. So he was the first one to check that we were okay. And then he said, I'm going to get a group together of the businesses in Midwai so that we're not duplicating the services that we can offer everybody. And he said, You guys need to be a part of that. And it was at that first meeting that we learned Smiley's was going to provide these caravans. We knew five wasn't going to be anywhere near enough, but in the, you know, in the short term, that was going to cater for some people.

SPEAKER_04 17:09

People were then offering um accommodation like their own camper vans and whatever. And Dan helped facilitate Obesia Group, and we met every day, this group of people from the community and businesses, about what's the best way to assist and get things done. Um, and one of the ladies volunteered to start up a spreadsheet where we could say, well, they're offering this caravan, we've got this family. Um, and so we worked with her. Dawn Bardsley was helping with this extensively to try and and match people up with what was being offered, and we got through a lot of people that way, didn't we? And matching them up.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Yeah, the generosity of people who hadn't been impacted but could provide a caravan or a camper van, they didn't care that they didn't know who was going to go in it. They were just generously offering that for as long as it was needed. It impacted us as well, you know, the fact that these people just wanted to help.

SPEAKER_04 18:17

But yeah, it was full on. I mean, it was like we were just, as Denise has said but previously, that it was harder looking after the number of people and dealing with those in those first couple of weeks than it was when we have 400 people here. Because of the um the emotional drain it was because everyone was so upset. And they had didn't really have anything and they didn't know about their houses, and it was all just a nightmare.

Mandy 18:44

How many people did you end up having in the campground?

SPEAKER_01 18:48

It was seventy-five, I thought.

SPEAKER_04 18:50

Yeah, it it because it it went up and then it went down and it went up and it went down. So some people were here only a little while, um, but then some people I think we didn't it didn't all um finalize till November of that year, where the last person was no longer in the campground.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

I think that person was enjoying themselves so much they didn't want to leave. Um in that first week, in the first few days, obviously the meeting that we had every day was taking its toll on us. Um but as she all said, it was the emotional so so if you back up the bus a bit and say we run a campground, 99.9% of the people that come in our door are smiling and happy because they're going on holiday and they're so pleased to be here. This was the opposite, you know. We we would be trying to to do stuff, and someone would turn up and they'd be in tears, or they wouldn't be in tears, and they'd say, Can we park our caravan here? And you'd say, Of course you can. Look, you can go over there, or and they'd just burst into tears, and of course, then we'd have to try and hold it together. Because we weren't offering a lot. We were offering what we could, but it wasn't from our perspective, it was not a lot. By the end of that week, we both looked at each other and thought, we felt like we'd been in in the middle of the cyclone, you know. That's that's what it was like, really, wasn't it?

Mandy 20:30

All that emotional support that you're giving the people in the campground, it would have taken its toll. And were you getting support yourselves from Auckland Council or from anybody else in uh as far as you know what you should be doing or what you could be doing?

SPEAKER_04 20:46

Not really, no, no. I think he got in contact and said, Are we okay? But I'm not sure I think the council didn't know what was going on either. So there was they had so many of uh like he was the property manager that he would have had a number of things going on all over the place because obviously they deal with PHA as well, so there was issues all along the coast. So I think it like the the human as well, overwhelmed as well.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Yeah, I think we learned um from the meetings that we went to, there was a volunteer who um was a counsellor, um, so she was offering her services um free of charge, obviously, um, to help people, and I think she laid out some things that could help, you know.

Mandy 21:33

That was local councillor Helen Aish, who I also speak to on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

But everyone's circumstances were different, and to be fair, we didn't have the time to go to those sessions or anything like that, um, because we were so busy in the business and and helping people and and that sort of thing. But our property manager did call us, I don't know, was it two or three days later? Might have been two. Days it's hard to remember, but it wasn't of significance. You know, thinking back to three years ago, it was a courtesy. That's how it felt. Hey, it was a courtesy. Um, whereas Dan came the next day and said, Are you guys alright? Um, the people that maintain our machinery in the pump room, we'd built a relationship with them. They're from a company that's subcontracted to the council. The guy that was in charge of that, he texted once he'd knew about the cyclone, he'd text me and said, Are you guys all right up there? And to me, that that wasn't his job. You know, that it wasn't his responsibility, but that meant so much more than the phone call from the property manager. But as Human said, everybody was busy, you know, it's like priorities, you know, you get things thrown at you.

Mandy 23:00

So and as far as the your business goes, and and you run the campground like a business, how did you go with like were you were you charging the people who were staying? You know, when could you actually open up to the public to have other paying guests? At that point, it was just people can come and stay.

SPEAKER_04 23:17

It's uh we weren't overly concerned, the extent of the damage and all that sort of thing. We had no idea how long it would go on. But anyway, so then it became as oh, we're gonna run out of money. Um because we have um uh three staff, so um we were obviously continuing to pay them. Um and the timing of it was we just had December, January, so we had major bills falling on the 20th of February for that period. Um so we had all of that to catch up with, but also obviously we everything was cancelled. So we not only we had the people here, but we were dealing with all of our customers that had booked and were um wanting to know and having to cancel them and having to that took hours every day as well. Um and uh I th I can't remember whether MSD approached us or the MP for Teatatwo, um Vanisha, she was very helpful in her um guy that worked with her. So eventually they set it up that the people here, MSD, started paying for their accommodation here. Um so we gave them uh we did a discounted rate uh for um the period.

Mandy 24:47

Did that just mean that the people who were staying from the Murawai community didn't have to think about money and MSD just paid you straight straight through? Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

So it was actually TAS, the the temporary accommodation services. Um it was then that um started paying the irony of it was that when people first turned up, we weren't charging anything. Um and then we were told after a couple of weeks that the council would reimburse us for those two weeks. We weren't particularly worried at that point. And then after those two weeks, TAS temporary accommodation services were organizing um large camp events, they were hiring those and bringing them in for more people. We waited I don't know, was it two months to get the council's two-week payment? Whereas TAS was just they were so prompt with which was great because we got down to the last few dollars, didn't we? And we we thought, well, we're not sure what we're gonna do about this. And then TAS payment came through, um, which was yeah, was a it was great.

SPEAKER_04 26:08

It sort of gave us a bit of a lift, and we did get um a ten thousand dollar grant from the commerce or from business channel, which I think the government organised um some sort of emergency relief or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Yeah, we had to apply for that, um, and that basically covered two weeks' wages for our girls.

Mandy 26:32

And what was the what was the process for applying for that kind of funding?

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Um, we had to do fill out some form online with them or something. Yeah, we had to fill out form, we had to say how many staff we had. Um, the thing for us at that time of year, our girls were on their highest hours. Um in the winter the hours drop back a bit, but we keep them at a level where can sustain them because they're so good we don't want to lose them, and we usually do spring cleaning and that, but how we pay it in the winter is because the summer we earn all the basically we earn all our money in the summer, and that helps us maintain through the winter. Obviously, we didn't earn that money that year.

Mandy 27:16

Um and how how did that affect your winter after the event? It must have been really difficult.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Well, the fact that Taz came along and provided camper vans for more people, that actually kept us going. That was what kept us alive for the winter, really, didn't it? I mean, we we obviously didn't do what we would normally do. Um, but uh for us the main thing is that we could pay our girls to stay with us. Um and we we yeah, I mean, you do what you have to do. You've got GST from previous months, you've got tax, it doesn't matter what you're gonna earn in the future, this is all paying for what you've earned.

SPEAKER_04 27:57

I mean, the council did give us um rent relief, um, which they didn't do in COVID, but they did for this. So that was um again a blessing relief. Um and I don't know what other people did with private landlords, but you wouldn't have been able to survive without that. We do run a pretty tight ship in that we don't spend money we haven't earned. So we were lucky enough to have um you know funds that reserve reserve funds. We never go down to the wire. But that this was the only time that that's ever happened.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

You look at the bank account every day and you go, oohs.

Mandy 28:39

Then that's another element, isn't it, of of the event. It's it's all the things, like it's the emotional toll it was taking on you, but um also just your business. I mean, you you must have been really uncomfortable with where the business might have ended up. But then you were sort of from your heart supporting the community. You know, I think with Middle Eye, we're lucky that we have that we have a campground in this community because it was an ideal place for people to come and stay reasonably long term if they wanted to.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Yeah, I guess Cheryl and I think very similar along the lines of if someone needs help, they need help. The business comes second. 2023 was our recovery year from COVID. This was a double whammy for us because it wasn't a recovery year, if you know what I mean. It was very bad timing, wasn't it? But you know, we've out of the nine years, we've had three bad years. That's pretty good odds.

Mandy 29:40

What did you notice about the people who were staying with you? I mean, obviously, as you said, they were in shock and and terribly upset. But um, were there some things that you noticed that maybe you didn't expect? A lot of them were quite feisty.

SPEAKER_04 29:54

Um I mean that it was um we turned a blind eye, but yes, as you know, everyone left without anything. Um and we surreptitiously suddenly there's a new duvet here, and there's a hair there, and uh people I mean, they basically went back in and got stuff that they needed to in in a lot of cases.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

Um we had a lovely lady staying here um on her own. She wasn't a well person, and she'd been staying with her daughter and husband, and they had three-month-old twins in a a tiny wee little place, and she just needed her space, really, and they needed their space, and so she came and she stayed in one of Smiley's caravans, and to look at her, you think if you blew hard she'd fall over, you know. But don't underestimate that lovely lady, she was the kindest, loveliest person, but she got snappled by the police for unfortunately she didn't plan it well, but she wanted to go back into home and get her sewing machine because that's how she made a living by sewing things, and she decided to drive up Motor. I don't know if she did or someone took her up Mototara Road, right? Yeah, right next door to the major um slip to get her sewing machine. But they parked in the driveway, so it was pretty obvious they were there, and um, she got a bit of a growling. But that that's what we mean by feisty, you know. It's like, nah, I'm going in there, lived a good life. If something happens, it happens.

Mandy 31:44

Yeah. And I I imagine that you learned a lot about yourselves as well through that time of of caring for those people.

SPEAKER_04 31:51

I mean, we're both essentially practical people, and you just have to deal with what you're dealing with because I mean, obviously, as I said, I own a property in Motor Road, so that was rent sticket. Obviously, I had to the morning after the cyclone, it's like, well, I had to get out of both the tenants, and you know, are they okay? Um, luckily that they'd all all been evacuated, obviously. So then it was like, well, what are they gonna do? So then obviously I have to stop the rent, there was no rent coming in for the houses, and I've got a mortgage, so there's all that palava going on as well. So I think you just deal with whatever's there. So I don't know that I've learnt anything emotionally other than you you'd be surprised at what you can deal with.

Mandy 32:38

As far as advice for other communities goes, and you know, even for other campground managers, what did you learn about the logistics and how you were looking after the community? What what did you learn? What would you maybe do differently, or what would you advise other people to do?

SPEAKER_04 32:58

Again, Mirabai is a small community, but it is disjointed. A lot of people don't associate with those people or they don't know them or whatever. It's essential that um whether you're a business or anybody in the community should be aware of what is going on in their community. And I know um they're trying to get together neighbor watch here and stuff like that, and that and knowing who your neighbour is, what their capability is, um, and that sort of thing, I think people know they should, but they're just so busy. And people, you know, it's three years later, blah, you know, forget, forget, forget. But the more people you know that you can go to, um, the better, I think the skill and talent that was brought together quite quickly that was in the community, they were able to have different skills that could champion different things because uh the other learning was that you just have to keep asking and talking and being persistent because you don't get it is as it is whoever says the most and talks the loudest gets things. If you don't, you'll just be put at the bottom of the queue. And I think Mirawa was very good at being vocal about what was required in the community.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

From my perspective as a camp business owner, I've always felt that we're in the midst of the community, but we actually don't know that many people in the community, not on a personal basis. And I think that's because there wouldn't be many people here that have stayed at our campground. That's right. So we know people from Waimalku, we know people from Kumu, because they actually come and stay here and they think it's funny because they're only driving down the road. But I think because we don't um associate so much with people, obviously, you know, there's the MCA group, um, and you know, we knew Kathy.

Mandy 35:09

That's Kathy, the owner and manager from Sand Dunes, the cafe down at the beach. We know the business people.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

Um that's probably from um the Cyclone, though. Um we knew Kathy before that. We've always had a had a relationship with her from the cafe. Um not always uh agreeable relationship, but um, but yeah, it's sort of it it's a it's a funny feeling in that you're part of the community, but at the same time you can feel isolated from that community. And Chiral mentioning the neighbor, what are they calling it? Neighborhood neighbor net. Neighborhood, yeah, neighbor net. The other night we or a couple of weeks ago we had an MCA committee meeting, and um I said to Claire was chairing the meeting, and I said she was doing an update for the lady who is organizing it. And she was saying, Oh, this is happening and that's happening, and this is and I said to her, Claire, we're not in a neighborhood net. What neighborhood net would we be in? And she stopped and thought, Oh, cripes, you probably should have your own neighborhood net. And I said, Pretty much, yeah, because we don't have anyone around us. We're the only ones in the regional park, like the ranger lives there, he's in the street. We're the only ones in the regional park that stay here overnight, you know. Um, and so again, if I hadn't raised that, we wouldn't be in the neighborhood net. But we need to have our own. If we have 400 people here, we need to know what what what to do, you know. So that is a big learning for us. I I don't think people understand that we live here, you know, that we're here overnight. I think they may think we go home, you know. So this is just a day business and we go home, but we are actually here 24-7. So yeah, it's um a learning.

SPEAKER_04 37:11

Yeah. And and the yeah, I I think w we're a little bit working with the ladies in the community garden thing. But again, when you've got a business like this, it's really hard to set aside time to do socialise, socialise and community things because we have to be here. Um, we have a a limited staff that you just can't walk out the door and say, I'm going for a meeting at this time. You have to make sure someone's here, how busy we are, la la la la la. We we feel like we should do more in the community, but we don't have time to, so it's a bit of a conundrum, really.

Mandy 37:52

And is there anything as the actual running of the campground that you learned when you were sort of looking after these people, or did it feel like kind of business as usual as far as actual guests staying in the campground once the power was back on?

SPEAKER_04 38:07

I mean, we have a lot of return customers, so we have some good friendships with some of the campers that come here, have been coming here all the time. So it was just like having them here. So they all just became we all got to know each other all really well, eh? And and yeah, we had a nice time and everyone got on really well. And yeah, so it was just like um long-term campers, really.

Mandy 38:31

Yeah, I can imagine. And it's so good that we were so lucky to have you guys, you know, supporting people in the way that you did, and and actually, like I said, having a space for people to go to.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Well, that I mean, anybody in our situation would have done the same thing, though. You know, you you you give what you have. Um, and it wasn't a lot on the first few days. It's good, you know, everyone was quite happy when the toilets flushed. Um and the showers could in the showers, yeah. I mean, the showers weren't such a biggie because the surf club were offering showers and the golf club were offering showers, and you only shower once a day usually.

Mandy 39:10

You said, you know, that you were affected emotionally, obviously, by it, but were there times where you also felt a little bit of anger or bitterness about some of the things that happened?

SPEAKER_04 39:20

Absolutely. We we yeah, and we again from a business perspective, uh the cordon obviously was a huge issue for us. Um and we we couldn't understand why we weren't allowed um our customers who had bookings and who we knew their names, addresses, emails, couldn't come and stay overnight at the campground with the booking. Whereas other businesses were allowed to have their um people come into Marrowide. So we battled for weeks and weeks with um parks and the council over what the reasoning was, and we weren't getting anywhere. Um so we cancelled all our Easter bookings. Um we just emailed everyone and said we don't know that you can get in. Um so we'll have to we cancelled everything. And then they turned around and said we could have controlled entry when we just cancelled everyone. So the reason that wasn't great, I have to say. That was a lot of um what would have helped carry us through wind.

SPEAKER_01 40:30

The reason we we cancelled um we was probably two weeks out from Easter, maybe three, because we needed to give people the opportunity to go somewhere else for their holiday. And Easter's pretty much the last holiday of the year, really, if you're camping. Um, and we just felt, I mean, a lot of these people were regular campers with us, and we thought it was unfair to say, oh, we'll we'll let you know next week, or we'll let you know the next, because then they would have missed out elsewhere as well. Um, it was that was one of the things that I think both of us felt very passionate about was that we were getting told no, no, no, no. And then suddenly we find out that there's a business that's having people come in and play golf. Then we find out there's a business that is allowed to bring in people to surf, and um, obviously the cafe was open because that was fine, you know, that that that wasn't a problem. We were the last business in Middlewide to be allowed to open. And in fact, we had to go to a special meeting with the Auckland Emergency Um people to say to them, we've got half a dozen concession site holders. Now these people um pay a yearly fee and they're allowed to stay here a hundred days a year. They holiday here, they don't live here. These people have paid to be in this campground. We know these people, we've known them for nine or six years, I suppose it was then. They are trustworthy people. They have families, they have homes, they're not going to loot, and we have to just about do circles and jump through hoops just to get those guys allowed in. Um but you know that that um the fact that people were allowed straight complete strangers to come in and we weren't allowed it sort of did make us, it did make us bitter, but it did make us think, well, why is there one rule for one and one rule for another when they knew us well and they knew the type of people that we we it's not like we ran a um a bad campground or anything, you know? So yeah, so we did with that did make us cross.

SPEAKER_04 42:58

Yeah. There was um parts of the community which were very concerned for security for their houses. And so they didn't want anyone in Miraway. And I presume that they thought that at night the risk was higher. Um, but I mean we were getting messages from international tourists who basically they they don't book, they just turn up. And they're they turn up here at at the cordon at five at night expecting to camp and they've been turned away. And they're having to drive to Takapuna campground or only to the East Coast because there's nowhere to stay. And it's like this is ridiculous. Even when we got controlled entry in in April, they had to have a confirmed booking. So people would still could be turned away if they didn't have a booking. But luckily we got on with Richard the um thing. And he would just run out to me. He said, I've got a German here, is he alright to come down? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

Well, I've got a couple of German girls here that said they haven't got a booking. Shall I send them down? Yes, please, Richard, you know. Yeah. These international tourists have no inclination whatsoever of looting people's houses. You know, they they they've had tragedies and disasters in their own countries. And the people that are going to loot are gonna find a way in somehow anyway, you know. Um other thing we found, Cheryl's houses were red-stickered. She did not know that there was a red-stickered WhatsApp group, right? So you found that out quite some time later. Yeah. And asked to join it. How it originated, I don't know, because they didn't obviously have everyone on their on their list. But what what we found was the red stickered group were quite vocal, and and fair enough, they were passionate about their house and their belongings, that's their livelihood. But it was it sort of separate or divided the community in that there were yellow stickered people, there were white stickered people, they were all stickered, and it's a bit like accepting everybody on face value. The yellow stickered people didn't know exactly what they had to do in order to become unyellow stickered. The white-stickered people were feeling, is this going to happen to me? Is it still happening? Um, I feel guilty because I'm white-stickered and my neighbour's red-stickered, what do I do? But those two groups weren't part of that vocal red-stickered group. And I always thought I felt for those people because as a community, everyone suffered emotionally, financially, whatever it was, but the red-stickered group ruled the roost. And um, it was a shame really that that they in their passion, and and I've got nothing wrong with passion, in their passion to survive and guard what they owned, they were oblivious to other people who maybe could have contributed to what they were doing, or actually just felt part of the community in the fight to keep us safe. It well, it did come down to basically the red sticker group against the businesses in the end. But we were the only business that wasn't operating, so it was only us um when the others all were able to operate. Um, Kathy obviously was open and operating, but she didn't have any foot traffic. So, in a way, she was worse off than us, even though she was open because she was relying on locals and anybody from our obviously who'd come to camp with us, we were searching them down there and saying, Go and you know, patronize the cafe. At the time it felt a very divided community for different reasons. As time went on, I think it became worse. So the golf club were amazing in the initial days um of welcoming people in and providing um showers and whatever they could, and they had a lot of members who had businesses and things and donated huge amounts of new products and everything. I mean, it was amazing what was over at the Surf Club. I you probably would have seen some of it. Um, and that was great, and that all was everybody was you know full on. But then time is a funny thing because you know, three years later, I think people have forgotten what to do as well. And this is why we have this emergency plan that is being worked on at the moment, but every disaster is different as well, so um, yeah, whether whether you can say as a campground, we would know what to do next time. I guess it would depend on what happened next time.

SPEAKER_04 48:03

But we certainly know more people that we can connect with immediately than we had in the past. I think. And it's good to know that to um get things done, you need to be quite vocal about it. But yeah, it that is a concern for us, hopefully, with all these events that are going on that we've New Zealand's had recently, there does seem to be a reasonable bout of warning. Um, so people can prepare, you know, not go camping for a start. Um, but you just never know. So um that's a bit of a worry if w if you did have a lot of people here and for some reason there was an emergency, as I said where you couldn't actually leave Mirawai. I mean, that could be quite tricky. But again, I think if people are resilient and everyone just does what they have, and as Denise said, you just give what you have um to hope everyone gets through.

SPEAKER_01 49:01

We were asked our perspective on from a business owner perspective, um, as opposed to a red-stickered property owner, um, about the cordon. And we wrote just a little bit that the cordon had made it tough from a business perspective for us, um, and it had made it tough for for a lot of people, not just us, obviously. But we also were of the opinion that the community had reached a point where the cordon, if it remained, the community wouldn't heal. So it was an artificial, from our perspective, it was like an artificial environment where you're protected. You're protected from the outside world, but that protection from the outside world has an impact on the community itself. Um and shutting out those non-residents, which they were, the community would rely on its own positivity um to sustain the normality of day-to-day happenings, you know, going to work, coming home from work. And it it almost is um the negativity feeds off itself. So these the people in the community were tired, they had concerns of finances, they were worried, they were doing their daily, you know, to and fro work and that sort of thing. But it wasn't the previous to the cyclone, it was a vibrant, exciting, and colourful community. And by shutting out those people from the outside, we weren't we weren't the community we were. And and we we wrote and said we think it, you know, by all means put up every safety thing you can, cameras or whatever, but the community's going to die. The lifeline is cut off to the outside world, and it's not the colourful, vibrant community that we knew prior to the cyclone. As a learning going forward, in that how long do you hang on to the event and the aftermath and the you know what what is a good time to go? Okay, if there is a good time, let's regroup and move on. And and I look at places in the rest of the world, you see, where they have massive typhoons and um tsunamis and and things like that. And Japan is a good example where you know they lose a whole road, a big hole, and and it's two days later and it's a motorway again, you know. I mean, no, that's extreme, but that's how they work. It's like, yes, it's happened. Um what can we do about it to get it back to what it was? And obviously these things that take time, but I think um I think you can um cause a vacuum if you're not careful. As Cheryl spoke previously about the louder you speak, the more notice you get gets taken of you, and and and it is sometimes a war between the extroverts and the introverts in any meeting. I think, and I might be wrong, but in hindsight, the community here, that meeting that we were first invited to became bigger than Ben Hu eventually, because someone said, Oh, we should have so-and-so here, and we shouldn't, which is fair enough, if you know, if there's a reason for it. But it was self-run. So it was run by people in the community, whether they were affected or not affected. Um, and sometimes I'm not sure that's a good way to go, um, in that everybody had a different agenda, I suppose, or they were wanting different outcomes, or that you know, and and that doesn't always work. It's no criticism of anybody in particular, but we did find as we went along that whilst we were part of that group meeting from day one, certain people in that group were taking side meetings, which often happens in in organizations as well, and they were having their side meetings, but with important people, so with MPs and you know, that sort of thing. Um, and we'd find out after the fact, we actually wrote an email, a letter, and said, you know, yet again we've heard that there's been this meeting going on, and we'll or you'd see something on Facebook, and you go, when did they do that? And and I don't know whether that was just the characters of the people or whether that was the fact that we didn't have uh an a leader for that meeting who wasn't impacted, who could um see the wood for the trees as such, you know. And um, I don't know if that's a learning going forward. I don't know who you would uh originally it was the Auckland emergency management team.

SPEAKER_04 54:37

They yeah, they ran it initially and they had brought their own people in, and and so that was very structured. That's right, that's what I'm trying to say. And and you know, following the agenda. So there was this but then once they left, because they were there obviously to as a tick box, we've got to get through this, this, that but then it became once they left, it became more meandering um because the focus was going to all over the place. Um but again you'd have to bring in an external person, I think, for that to be done in the same manner, because anybody that lives in a community that's affected is going to have their slant on it. Um so if you want that independence. So you I think you'd have to weigh that up in each community.

SPEAKER_01 55:23

I think so. I think it's important obviously to have community members there so that their perspective is heard, but not necessarily the main, you know, you need someone who's impartial as such because they're chairing the meeting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that you have that structure. Um, because at one point there everyone was busy, so you get go to this meeting and it would be just the same agenda that or the things that had happened, you'd hear it repeated, and you're thinking, well, let'd be back at the camp doing something, you know. It was that it was just the momentum was getting lost because of the lack of structure, I should say. And not everyone, whilst they they have a lot of talent, they're not always good at running meetings, you know. Yeah, it takes a certain um person to be able to run a meeting.

Mandy 56:16

Is there anything that that you might like to leave us with something hopeful or meaningful as a final word?

SPEAKER_04 56:24

Well, I think again, it's it's don't be surprised how resilient you can be. Um, because generally people you just get on, New Zealanders particularly just get on, get, get on with it, you know what I mean, and and do try and help each other and in our community focus. So we're very lucky in that way, I think, that people like to they do operate in everyone's best interest um in the face of adversity. So yeah, I mean you can certainly take heart from that. Um, I think. We had a lot going on. Obviously, we've got a whole lot of people staying here. It's completely different if you're just a couple on your own and you've lost your family home and having to deal with that and not people understanding. So for us, we were able to cope because we were immersed in it. But I think if you weren't, you would struggle. And I think that's I mean, I know that like the community tried to do community events, but um, and try to have the hubs for people to meet, but it's I still struggle about whether we got it the right got the right people because if you don't, if you've isolated yourself, you're not gonna go to those things. So how do you reach out to people that are struggling that you don't even know are struggling? I still think there's questions around that.

SPEAKER_01 57:53

And I I guess from my perspective, I would say don't sweat the small stuff. Um, because in the first week or two there was only big stuff. And then as time went on, that disappeared because it got dealt with a lot of it. You know, the immediate needs got dealt with, and then there was a when small stuff started creeping in and taking over, and the longer we went, the longer that small stuff became big stuff because it had to fill that void. So every time one of the big things was sorted or or or temporarily sorted, something would nip in there and become really important when actually at the end of the day it was it, I don't know, it may have been to someone and not to someone else. But I think to me that's the length of time that everything takes to happen, whether that was the council to make a decision, whether it was um the insurance companies to immediately come to the fore, um, you know, the rates, stop paying your rates and all that sort of thing. People just uh in all of the areas found it difficult to make decisions. Um but that's council as well, you know, council, nobody can make a decision because they're scared it'll come back on them. Um so yeah, don't don't sweat the small stuff. I know it's an old adage, but you know, when there's a disaster, there is learnings. There's always something good comes out of something bad. As a human being, we like routine and we like familiarity. And it's like if you lose your job suddenly, they always say, you know, one door shuts, another door opens. And I think a lot of people learn that actually they could survive elsewhere or whatever they had to do. So yeah, I think I think learning is for everyone.