Precipice
Stories of landslides and community restoration in Muriwai New Zealand following the devastating 13 February 2023 Cyclone Gabrielle.
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Precipice
Coordinating the Community: Disaster Recovery and Community Restoration. Ep. 13 Precipice Podcast.
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In this episode I speak with Kenton Osmond, a long time Muriwai resident who is a member of the Muriwai Community Association and was a key figure in establishing and managing the Muriwai Emergency Response Group following the cyclone for almost 9 months.
Kenton talks about the creation of this group, their role coordinating messaging and communication, organising volunteers to help and delegating, connecting with other emergency services and the council, and the multitude of excellent initiatives that were expertly developed to support the community.
We discuss water supply, cordons, the red stickered group, communicating with the community in different ways, connecting with MPs and preparations for future weather events in Muriwai.
Kenton also shares how the event and the work he did impacted him personally.
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
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Hosted and produced by Mandy Jakich. Commissioned and funded by Muriwai Community Association, supported by the Auckland Council Recovery Office.
On the 13th of February 2023, the small vibrant coastal community of Muturawai Beach, northwest of Auckland, New Zealand, was 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 Yakic, as I speak to fellow Murrui 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 Murruai find a way forward. Welcome to Precipice. In this episode, I speak with Kenton Osmond, a longtime Murawai resident who is a member of the Murawai Community Association and was a key figure in establishing and managing the Murawai Emergency Response Group following the cyclone for almost nine months. Kenton talks about the creation of this group, their role coordinating messaging and communication, organizing volunteers to help and delegating, connecting with other emergency services and the council, and the multitude of excellent initiatives that were expertly developed to support the community. We discuss water supply, cordons, the red stickered group, communicating with the community in different ways, connecting with MPs, and preparations for future weather events in Muriwai.
SPEAKER_02If you're planning a response to an emergency, you have to factor in that the first three days you'll probably be without power and the cell phone batteries on the towers only last, I think, six or eight hours. So you have to have a pretty bulletproof secondary plan.
MandyKenton also shares how the event and the work he did impacted him personally.
SPEAKER_02I've been here since 19, so 25, 26 years. Um I lived here on my own until I until my wife came over to live with me from Jersey, where I'm originally from, uh, with two children, and we've since then we've had another child. They're all pretty much left home now. I love everything that Mirawise's got to offer: mountain biking, surfing, running the dogs on the beach. It's a great place to live, and it's an amazing community. We knew there was a cyclone coming, as everyone did, um, and we were up at an event at a winery quite close, and the last act on stage as it was closing, wished us all well and Kia Kaha, big storm coming, and we all underestimated what was happening. We thought it's just another storm. Uh, we'd go home and ride it out like we did. Um, yeah, we weren't expecting anything like that at all. Um, living out in Miraway, you tend to prep for most storms. You fill up some water barrels, um check your generator, um, tie down things on the deck. Um, so typically we do that most storm most big storms, but uh this one we did those things and we'd briefed the kids that if anything went wrong, come down to our bedroom, which has got a um uh cinder block wall, so we knew it'd be safe if the roof came off or anything like that. Um But nothing special. We just presumed it was all gonna just pass like they normally do.
MandyWhen was the point where you started thinking actually this is more serious than we thought?
SPEAKER_02We st got an inkling that things were gonna be different this time when it was about 11 o'clock at night, and our local um messenger group, which is just our core friends, 15, 20 friends, it just started to blow up at 10 o'clock. Uh people were saying um there's a slide coming down, we've just been told to leave home, and there was just a and it just scaled up. The it the messages got more and more urgent. We had a very good friend, uh Mandy Yakic, who was um recently out of hospital, and we were scared uh confer con concerned for her. Where we live, we're we knew we were in a relatively safe area because there's no history of slides, but we didn't know whether it was flooding or wind or what the problem was. Um so we just sort of hunkered down at 11:30 and watched the the messages uh send support messages saying we had spare bedrooms if anyone needed it. Um but it was it we became quite aware that things were more important, more desperate than that by about midnight. During the night we were sending messages to and from people that uh were saying they had to evacuate, they were going down to the surf club, um, trying to get friends up to stay with us if they needed it, uh, because we seemed to be in good shape. So uh but the next morning, about four or five o'clock in the morning, we got a knock on the door, and our good friends John and Odette, um very bedraggled looking, soaking wet, uh, came knocking on the door and just asked to come in. And they had spent the whole night in the surf club with their dog and their feet up on chairs and about a foot of um water, I believe. Um, and they were the first to arrive and come and stay. Um it was at that point we just really realized the the size and the impact on on people. They had described two or two or three hundred, two hundred people, I think they described in the surf club. Um, yeah, so they just stayed and um, you know, we tried to normalise things. Um they didn't have a clue how their you know how their house had held up, they just had to grab what they could and leave. So they literally had their clothes they were standing in. So once they'd warmed up and the day had uh got going, uh I think about eight or nine o'clock in the morning, um we drove down the beach. It was fairly flooded, um, walked up into the forest, which you probably weren't meant to go into, but we kept a wide breadth away from the cliff. Once we knew there were slides, uh, walked up into the forest and tramped along the side of the forest to see if we could see whether Johnny's house was still there. Um I walked ahead, he wasn't sure that he could bear to see it, so he asked me just to go ahead and tell what was happening. So I walked 50 metres ahead, um, and then you could see slides either side of his house, and then we saw the tip of his roof, and then the whole of the roof, and um yeah, it turned out that his house was relatively unscathed, but the houses either side were eventually uh red stickered and removed.
unknownYeah.
MandySo how were you feeling at that point in the morning, the morning after? What what what did you feel like you could do, or you know, how were you feeling about being in your home?
SPEAKER_02Initially I don't think anyone whose home was had survived unscathed was really aware of the damage that was done to other people's homes. Because the homes were cordoned off, we weren't allowed to go and see them. As somebody that had no physical damage to their house, you you thought it had just been a bit of flooding or a little bit of a slide, but the whole of Domain Crescent, for instance, you couldn't get to. Most of Mototara you weren't allowed to get to. So it was only some weeks or months after as I got more involved that you could actually see what people had gone through on that night. You hadn't you had no awareness that it was very difficult to put yourself in the in in their shoes. Um yeah, you it was once you saw insider houses with all their belongings ruined and blown away and slid um that you really realised what had happened.
MandyYou were unaffected as far as your house goes. Did you feel like you needed to do something or sort of contribute in some way?
SPEAKER_02So initially, other than just hosting our friends, um it was difficult to know what to do because there wasn't any coordination. At that time, it was just the emergency services cordoning off the homes and making sure that nobody was going in, putting their lives in danger. The initial response was just to make sure uh a secondary uh disaster didn't happen. I went to see Dennis from the um volunteer fire brigade to see how I could help. And we decided, given my background and the fact I was involved with the Maraye Community Association, that I might be a good person to coordinate all the comms for Fire New Zealand and the emergency response uh and the Auckland Emergency Response Group, I think they were called.
MandyAnd what is your job? What what what has given you that kind of experience?
SPEAKER_02So I've worked in marketing for 20, 30 years uh as a creative, sort of understanding you know messaging and how people might react. And I was quite involved with the community. So I was given the role of coordinating the messaging to trying to get it out to as many people as possible. Obviously, with Facebook, not everybody's on it, and there's also the problems of making sure everyone sees all the messages. So initially what we just started doing was doing printouts and putting them on the notice boards, just giving the the emergency information as we got it and um the emergency advice that we could share with the group. So in the first couple of days, the core groups were the Auckland Emergency Response, which was Auckland Council, Fire and Emergency New Zealand, the police, uh, and Red Cross um and also council, I guess trying to work out how to do things. Um I sat with them as the liaison to the community initially, um, but it became quite clear that uh we needed to set up our own group as residents to divide and conquer and share information. And I sort of agreed to coordinate all those groups together so we could make a plan not just for the emergency response, but what we could do to help a community that were unhoused, uh, what we could do to provide food. I mean, you have to remember these people don't have anything from their houses, they've just walked out the door that night and they haven't been allowed back in. They've got nowhere to live, no cars to get their kids to school, no clothing, no bedding. Um, and effectively they're just either in the surf club at the golf club, which is housing people. Um, so we just had to find places for them to live and all the basic necessities uh to look after themselves and their kids. So, as somebody that's lived in the community for 25, 26 years, I'm lucky enough to know uh a whole bunch of great people, but also some of their strengths. Um, what we decided to do was decide who would be good at something and then just shoulder tap them and say, We need you to help out with this. At that point, nobody was even considering work, they were just just getting on with surviving, and everybody we asked instantly just said yes and took on a role. So we got in touch with Tolan and Andrew from the golf club, and they were good enough to take people in and open the showers up because they had a generator and uh their own water supply. We also got in touch with Cheryl and Denise from the campsite and asked what they could do to help. They were closed by the council, so but they they got permission to open the campsite up and just let people come and stay. Some people were had motorhomes or borrowed caravans. Uh, caravans were lent to us um and we had whole families, their campsite was pretty much full. Another resident, Anne, volunteered to put together a food store. Um Mags coordinated all the offers of help and then put people on hold until we're ready for that help or uh or organized um shipping of of food of bedding into the area. We got in touch with the local posties um to come up with the solution. Obviously, people's post needed to arrive, but the houses were no longer there. So um the postman would come down to uh the surf club at a given time and wait all morning and be available to hand out post from his van, or within time he got to know which place on which campsite or who was staying with who to deliver mail. So, with so many of the affected houses losing their cars and the slides or not being able to get back to them, um, the kids couldn't get to school. So um Richie's, I think, organized the a shuttle bus to come down park at the bottom of the hill, so all the kids would get up and walk all the way down to their houses from wherever they were staying, and we had a morning shuttle run from Murawai out to the local school and then onwards to meet their other buses. Um it's just another example of the little things you have to think about that we take for granted in normal life that um have to be organized when everything sort of shuts down.
MandyAfter the cyclone, many homes did not have access to water. Can you tell us about that?
SPEAKER_02During the slide, the main water facility for the community on Mototara Road was damaged and the water was undrinkable. Um a decision was made to bring in some water tanks which were held down at the Sand Dunes Cafe car park, and people could fill up canisters. Um dumped into IBC tanks that were delivered. Uh I think the fire brigade also went round and filled some of these tanks that we managed to put into people's houses. So the community got would would meet up every day filling their tanks at the same time of day, their little tanks, and then um take them home. You have to remember there was no power either, so everything was just little canisters on their kitchen cabinets and water.
MandyAnd the rest of the community was water tanks apart from Mototara Road.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so everyone on the top half of the community is on water tanks, uh, and typically we we would share our water with them. Um then a static tanker or two were delivered to halfway up Motorra where the water could be gravity fed from there. And the likes of Andrew Speedy, who runs a water delivery service, was running 24 hours a day, topping that up. So anyone below that tank had some sort of water that they could drink coming out of their pipes. Um, it was a good, I think, six months before the full water system came through. After a couple of weeks, the group started to function really, really well, and everyone started to learn their roles as as they were. The group was mostly run by people that weren't involved, weren't affected by the slight the cyclone in the same way. They were um people that whose houses were undamaged and pents were available to help. Uh we had a food store, we had clothing, we had bedding, all running out of the surf club. We had a warehouse up on uh in Waimauku holding extra supplies. Uh we had the golf club uh allowing showers and feeding people, and then we had accommodation being found part-time and more long-term, uh as close to the community as we could do. The school was giving pack lunches to kids. Um, the whole thing was starting to function. Some water was coming online uh for some properties, but still very little power. Um, most people running on generators and sharing their generators, they would they would um run for a couple of hours, top up their freezers, and then run the generator next door to plug into their neighbours. Um but the whole community was pulling together and working as one. The part of the community that was was able to help were the unaffected people, and everyone else was just trying to hold their lives together. After about three to four weeks, we had realized that the affected people had started to feel excluded from the these roles, and they started to come in and say, you know, how can we help? What can we do? Um, and that's where we actually got some indication of the size, the damage, and the emotional damage that was that was done, and how much more ongoing help was required. So the responders were sort of split into two groups. They were the white stickered and the red-stickered group. You know, my house is fine, but how can I help? I don't have a house, and what the hell can I do? Uh Jeremy Jones, who'd lost his house, he thought, and Mike Hibbert, much the same, um, managed to find time, come down and join the group, and build re be real representatives of the people that needed the most help. Um they ended up forming their own WhatsApp group uh where the information was shared widely, and that community was able to pull together and help each other in a way that the response group that was initially formed wasn't. The response group would primarily work with the council and the emergency services and coordinate responses and uh chase actions that need to be done. And then the red stickered group would come to every meeting and then take those core messages back and share them out and work together to coordinate the responses that they felt they needed. It was effectively two groups working as one, but we would be in touch uh two or three times a day organizing, organizing that effectively. I I would coordinate um if there was something that was required, there was always somebody in the community that could help or would be good at uh finding a response or generating a way to to make those changes happen. With the benefit of hindsight, um Facebook, which was the best thing we had at the time, might not be the best system for communicating with a wider group in an emergency situation because it's an algorithm, it only feeds part of the story to some of the people. It's not it's not a one f one size fits all. The WhatsApp group that the red stickered people use is fairly bulletproof if you've got everybody included in the group, if they've got the technology or they're involved. Um if it was to happen again. You would hope that we would have a plan in place that everybody in the community would have one source of truth that everybody could hear. Um what would have been ideal for Mirawai would have been a a local radio station that you could tune into and broadcast the news out and the or WhatsApp. We had no cell phone coverage for the first two or three weeks, so uh printed printouts were were were best. And um once cell phone was restored, Facebook sort of did a job because there was no power, so people didn't have laptops. If you're planning a response to an emergency, you have to factor in that the first three days you'll probably be without power, and the cell phone batteries on the towers only last, I think, six or eight hours. So you have to have a pretty bulletproof secondary plan. Um, and that's something we're working on at the moment, which is you know, friends look after their group of neighbours, and it's a spider web of contacts.
MandyThat's neighbourhood net.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's neighborhood net. As a natural disaster, with you know, the the likelihood that there will be secondary slides, the whole community was buttoned down instantly. From day one, people weren't allowed back to their houses, so they didn't know what state they were in. Uh cordons were put in place at all the entrances into the community. Effectively, there's two roads in, they were both blocked off. Uh, and with a hard cordon at the top, which was manned, and a softer cordon at Y-tier road that lets some traffic in and out if you're a local one-way in, effectively from now on. Um, this was to make sure that the wider population didn't just come in for sightseeing, but also to stop uh opportunists um going through and stealing all those belongings that are locked in people's houses. The council and Auckland Transport, I think, put the cordons in place. However, having them manned 24 hours a day was obviously an expensive exercise. Uh the community were really good. They would go up and take food and cups of tea to the to the people working the cordons overnight. Um and they did a great job. Um, very little traffic or sightseers came in. Uh however, uh within about a month or two the cordons were due to be lifted. Uh, the whole community was rightly very scared that their properties were going to be um broken into and looted effectively. Uh and there was a lot of pressure, uh, it was you know coordinated pressure to insist that nobody would come back in into the communities that that that wasn't welcome. Uh there was there was talk that there was one person looting, but um you know there were a few break-ins, but nothing out of control. The houses I think were empty for three or four months. Um so it was imperative that that that that their properties were safe and also that people could get back to them to get their belongings, uh rat-proof them, get the food out of the freezers, all that sort of stuff. Um so it it was um it was a difficult time for people that couldn't get back to their belongings or their houses to to secure their what would happen at the top of the hill is you would get stopped and they would ask you your name and address, they'd look at a list and check you're meant to be there. Uh we put um we printed some stickers that people could put on their cars, saying, you know, proving that they were a local. So after the first few days, once people had sort of digest what had happened, uh found out if their houses still existed, um rightly people wanted to know some answers. Were they insured? Were there any plans for their houses? Were there any plans to shore up their slides? What was going to happen in way of reparation if if if if they weren't covered? Um council held a meeting down at the golf club attended by pretty much everyone in the community, and it was it was very, very heated. Um I think it was too the meeting was too early, and the council hadn't had time to formulate a plan because it involved the government as well as the council, as well as Auckland and the wider government. So um the meeting didn't work go very well. As I recall, we'd put out uh requests for questions and we'd organise them into similar questions, you know, not not everyone's got word for word got submitted, but we had a list of questions, you know, what happens to our insurance, what happens if we're not covered, uh, how long is it gonna take? Just the basics. Um but the because the the the first meeting was so quickly after the slides, the answers weren't there and there was a lot of heat. Um the meeting ended up getting cancelled because it just turned into a bit of a a bit of a mess. It got a bit shouty, and I think we were largely dissatisfied with the council's initial approach, and I think it was just too big an operation for them to understand at that time.
MandyThey didn't really have a plan, did they?
SPEAKER_02There was yeah, there was definitely no longer term thinking at that stage. Because of the concern that people had for you know, what happens if my insurance doesn't come through, what happens to the value of my land and my house, what you know, what what are the long-term plans for for rehousing people if you know the land isn't livable again? I contacted Venushi Walters, who was the Labour MP for Upper Harbor. She was chosen because she was a lawyer, she had friends out here, and she seemed like a really good fit for our community needs. Um, effectively, she became our conduit to the government, and we organized a meeting for the residents only to discuss their thoughts and work out where they potentially lie legally and what we thought the New Zealand government should do to help. This was about a week or so after the council meeting, and it was like night and day the attitude in the meeting. It was, you know, we when I say we, the group representing all the all the residents, put together the the right people that could answer some likely um scenarios and then go and find the information that needed to be answered. One unit after the same sort of results, whether it's from the government, the council, or their insurance companies, and that put us in a really good position. We had a national government at the time and a local representative, Chris Penck. Um we got in touch with him. One of the reasons we went to Venushi was uh she was recommended as a you know a great all-round supporter of causes and a lawyer. It was amazing um making contact with her, uh as was pretty much everybody we got in touch with because Murawai was very much in the news at the time. We just phoned her directly, explained who we were, what we were doing, and why we needed some support. And straight away, as with all the other people that supported us, she just said yes, should be there straight away. Um, and she also had a PA who was my uh point of contact for anything and and and and also any information that we needed government-wise, I could call him and he would use the resources that he was allowed to to keep us updated and give us uh information on developments. So at this point, following that meeting with Venushi Walters, the and most of the people in the group were the Red Stickered residents. It was a really good time for them all to get together and realize they were in the same situation that that that they you know that they could work as a group to pull resources, and that's where their red-stickered group really, really took off, with the likes of Maria, Mike, and Jeremy sort of pulling pulling it all together because they had the support of the wider community, they could carry on solely targeted on their specific needs.
MandyHow did you actually manage to find time to do all of this work, Kenton, while you also had your work commitments?
SPEAKER_02So I'm lucky enough to work from home and work for myself. I provide a freelance service to advertising agencies, and effectively I just shut the front door for the time it took uh and just managed to concentrate on what needed to be done. But it was a full-time job. I'd be down at the community hub at eight in the morning and writing emails and Facebook posts, um hassling counsel um pretty much all day and fielding all the members of the groups that were doing their you know, their specific roles, whether it was accommodation or food or or just ongoing supplies. Um it realistically took about three to six months full-time work.
MandyHow did this involvement affect you emotionally?
SPEAKER_02Other than attending the two boys' funerals, uh I didn't really have a chance to get emotionally tied up or emotionally upset by the whole thing. Um it was only once the cordons were lifted, the boys were buried, and people's lives came back together that you realised what a toll it's taken on the whole community. Um even now I could watch an advert for dog food and have a little cry. Yeah, it's it really uh impacts you long term uh seeing how many people's lives have been turned upside down. Being busy is a gift because you don't have time to worry about things. Um shortly after the second funeral, uh, you know, you just hit a wall and you realise what you've seen, how many people are uh uh are affected, and um you know, you know, it it it you you you tend to yeah, you team tend to sort of let out all that pressure all in one go. That's what I did. Um and you know, as a result of it, I've sort of walked away from community involvement because I feel like I've done all I can and I'm sort of tapped out a little bit.
MandyDid you get to the point where you thought actually I have to I have to tap out for my own mental health?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah, you really do. And I think it's the the other thing that is really good is there's a point where uh, for instance, the red-stickered group went, you know, we've got this job, we'll take this now, we'll run with it. And new people surface to the front. They start with a personal grievance and then realize that there's a lot of people that are in the same situation, and it becomes a group grievance, and they take the reins and they run with it. And that was what was amazing about the whole thing was as soon as people were ready to help or able to help because they'd got through their initial um response, um, they did everyone stepped up. There it wasn't one person or twenty people, it really was two or three hundred people together, and that's possibly why Miraway has come out of this as well as it could have done. Um, you know, we're active, we're closely knit, and we're um committed to each other, which is, you know, it I like to think it's it's it's a good sign of human nature, but it's a particularly good sign of our community. There's a lot of skilled people out here that you know have niche skills that can be turned to anything. I guess a bit like the cliffs, it's uh like the scars on the land. It's it there's a scar mentally on on everybody that's been affected by it, and you every time you drive past an empty section or a house that's been moved, you you know, it just tears away you a little bit. But um look, it's made me appreciate the community more, how tightly knitted and how how caring they all were, but it's also nice that it's it's becoming a distant memory too.
MandyDo you feel like you respond to weather events differently and have a different sort of view on weather in general?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think everybody out here responds to weather events, and I think that's down to the fact Eve on the night of Cyclone Gabriel, we all went, oh, it's just another storm. And then we had one recently, and we were like, what if it's not just another storm, but it was just another storm? Um I think it's very easy to be blasé, but it's wiser to be prepared, and I I like to think we won't be as unprepared if anything happens again.
MandyI think the communication was really good with the from the Miraway Community Association before the last storm, which didn't turn into anything much, but I thought that was quite managed really well. It was quite reassuring.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it it is it is really good. Um and you do take your house for granted and you go, Oh, I've got a water tank, I'll probably be alright. Uh I've got a generator now, I'll probably be alright. But it's you know, you can't you can't imagine what what might happen until until you see it.
MandyIs there anything else that's sort of you could say to communities going through a similar event?
SPEAKER_02You know, we're told about global warming and more extreme weather events happening more regularly. Um if I was to live in a commun new community, I'd hope that they had a plan uh in place for a situation like this. Do you have uh a local association? Do they have an emergency plan? Uh fire and emergency New Zealand involve them. Do they do they have a coordinated event management system? Um get to know your neighbours, you know, work out who needs help. You need to effectively know what you could do for three days without power and water and being completely isolated if no vehicles or rescue can come to your help, how would you survive? How would your neighbours survive? You need to really just have that little emergency situation scenario just just planned out in your head and and and think about how would you cope? How would the people that you know cope? And you know, what could you do to help those that might not be able to?
MandyWhat have you learned from this experience?
SPEAKER_02From events like this, you you learn where your strengths lie and perhaps what your weaknesses are. Um taking on too much might be a weakness. Uh ask not asking for help might be a weakness. But at the same time, if you're surrounded by good people, there's usually somebody that will stand up and offer to take something away from you or help or um come up with a better plan. Um, and that's why you know our response I think was as successful as it could have been, uh, given the fact there was always somebody offering to take some load, or if you asked somebody for help and delegate, they would always say yes. So yeah, so delegation is is something that I've learned, and asking for help is another thing.
MandyAnd do you think looking back you might have pulled back earlier?
SPEAKER_02I think it was the right time to pull back, which was good. I think I think I'd used what skills I had in the right way. Um I think the the one thing I would like to have done is not got quite so angry with the situation. Um mostly it was anger at bureaucracy or people saying when I say people, I don't mean the community. I'm talking about council saying they were going to do things and not doing them. Um when you're promised something and it doesn't happen, that doesn't help anybody. But yeah, but not not not letting yourself get wound up too much, but then you have to because it's an emotional time and it's an emotion a high emotional cost for the people who are affected. And you know, like I say, we were lucky enough not to be affected uh physically by the event. There was an enjoyment in feeling like you were doing something worthwhile. I think it was possibly the most worthwhile thing I've done. Like coming from advertising, you get somebody to get a credit card or buy a car, there's not a lot of reward. Whereas actually, you know, I feel I see people that I feel like as a community have been supported, and and you've got to be proud of that.
MandyIs there something hopeful or meaningful you'd like to leave us with?
SPEAKER_02The meaningful and hopeful thing is realizing how resilient and strong people are. And you know, before this I'd walk past people and nodded and said hello, but you know, as a result of this, I got to know people. Um and yeah, you know, you only see a little bit of a person until you know them. You know, your preconceptions are probably wrong about most people. It's only when they get a chance to prove themselves or you see you see that and then that you you reevaluate them.
MandyPrecipice was commissioned and funded by Mudawai Community Association, supported by the Aucton Council Recovery Office. Artwork by Taylor Williams, soundtrack by local Midwai band Tin People, written in response to Cyclone Gabrielle. Num Mahe, thank you to the Midwai community for their input and bravery and for sharing their stories. And thank you for listening.
