KEY POINTS:
Concluding our five-part serial, Coastlines, by Graeme Lay. The story so far: Oliver Norton is in beautiful Logan Bay to interview German mountaineer Werner Weiss. He learns that Weiss' presence is resented by some locals. Then a cloudburst brings havoc to the hillside community
Blundering his way back into the house and out of the storm, Oliver saw his cellphone glowing with a left message. Opening it, he heard the guttural voice of Werner Weiss. "Oliver, I just heard a storm warning on the radio. There's a weather bomb coming. They say it'll be right over the peninsula." Werner chuckled. "So, as the English say, batten down the hatches."
A bit late for that, Oliver thought ruefully. It was now 4am, and although the rain was still falling, he also detected a lessening in its intensity. Half an hour later it had eased further, as if a valve was being slowly closed. And then, with remarkable suddenness, the rain stopped altogether, replaced by a total, and ominous, silence.
In Logan Bay in early summer the sun rose over the eastern headland, the one that had once been a pa site. When dawn broke Oliver went to the sliding glass doors and stared out at the scene before him.
Most of the house's deck had been demolished by the careering water tank; the remaining timber dangled, like a bird's broken wing. The tank had come to rest on its side against the unoccupied holiday house below his. Silty water was still coursing down the drive, rocks and broken boughs littered the ground along both its sides. On the hillside above the house there were great gouges in the land, and fallen trees were strewn across the slope. Logan Bay looked as if it had been saturation bombed. Only the sea was as it had been before: constant, unalterable, beautiful.
Oliver dressed quickly, put on gumboots and walked down to the street at the foot of the drive. In a state of shock, he made his way through the heaps of mud, rocks and broken branches which had accumulated there. Between two houses was a gully several metres deep, down which brown water still gushed, and higher up on the hillside two houses had slipped off their foundations and were slumped at crazy angles against the houses below them.
Oliver remembered Werner's words. Any tree holds the soil in place. Cut down the trees and you weaken the land. He called Werner on his mobile and they agreed to meet on the beach in half an hour.
Further along the street a council workman was clearing a jam of broken branches with a front-end loader, and two of Logan Bay's volunteer firemen were slicing into the larger logs with chainsaws. A few homeowners were wandering dazedly through their properties, tugging at the heaps of debris which had banked up against the buildings.
Oliver stopped briefly to chat sympathetically to the firemen, then walked on, towards the reserve and the headland. Staring up at its broad face, he saw that in several places the soil had slumped away, exposing the sub-strata, the slips like raw wounds in the land. The hillside looked as if it had been shelled by heavy artillery.
Paradoxically, though, the sun was now blazing, and above the headland the sky was cloudless and blindingly blue. Oliver reached the end of the street and entered the reserve.
The banks of the stream had been scoured away, and tree roots protruded from them. The stream itself was a muddy torrent and the little bridge had completely disappeared. Oliver made his way down the course of the stream, clutching the tree roots as he went. Then, minutes later, he came to the place where the stream poured out onto the beach. There he stopped, horrified at the sight that lay before him.
Strewn across the sand were hundreds of bones. Thigh bones, leg bones, pelvic bones, shoulder bones, skulls. Stained yellow-brown with age, they were unmistakably human. Oliver stumbled around the debris, unable to take his eyes from the sight.
The words of his friend Michael, the historian, came back to him. The Ngati Kaha threw their victims over the cliff. Many of the dead were cut up, cooked and eaten on the beach. And their remains had been entombed in the stream bed, for 186 years. Until the storm had disinterred them.
Oliver stared at one skull, lying in the sand apart from the rest. It was small, and several of its tiny yellow teeth were still intact. Then he heard a shout. Looking up, he saw Werner, jogging along the beach towards him.
Oliver and Werner stood among the crowd which had assembled on the beach. It seemed that all the Logan Bay residents were there, along with the campers and other visitors, standing in silence, watching the ceremony. As the Maori priest recited a long karakia, a row of black-garbed kuia standing behind him keened and waved their karaka branches. The bones of their ancestors had been gathered up and placed in flax kits. Other members of the local iwi, men, women and children, stood in a group behind the priest, their heads bowed. Among them, Oliver recognised the young man who had intimidated him with his tractor the day he arrived at Logan Bay. Tears were streaming down the young man's face.
The Pakeha people stood back as the kits of bones were carried down the beach by the elders, the kaumatua, on their way to their iwi's burial ground, near the marae outside the town. Then, after the Maori people had climbed into their utes and driven away, the Pakeha dispersed, to return to the massive clean-up still facing them.
Oliver and Werner sat on the deck of Werner's house, lagers in their hands. The setting sun's rays were focused on the pa site at the other end of the bay. On the headland's grassy slopes, the ugly gullies stood out vividly.
Werner sipped his beer, then said thoughtfully, "You never know, some good might come out of all this."
Oliver gave him a sceptical look. "Good? How?"
"People might learn to treat the land better."
"To treasure their trees?"
Werner nodded. "Yeah, but not just that. They could learn more about the past. Respect who was here before we were." He paused. "Know what I mean?"
"Yes, I think so," said Oliver.
There was a long silence. Then it was broken, by the song of a bellbird, calling from the forest that Werner had planted.
* Graeme Lay is an Auckland novelist and writer.
