There are disadvantages to a hero’s death. Wednesday afternoon’s funeral service for firefighter Dave van Zwanenberg, who died trying to save the life and limb of others when Cyclone Gabrielle smashed into Muriwai last Monday night, was an extraordinary event - over 500 mourners, the coffin on a gleaming red antique fire engine, an honour guard, the reading out loud of profound poems, all of it set on a hilltop with amazing views of the ocean horizon curved like a bowl. It was the very thing Dave - everyone knew him as Dave - spent his life avoiding: fuss.
His wife Amy - too cruel to title her a mere week after her husband’s death as his widow - made a sweet, funny, beautiful eulogy in the form of a letter, and apologised to him for all the bother. “You would be mortified at the fanfare in your honour.” Friends, too, made dry little comical asides saying they were sorry, mate, but there was nothing they could do about it. The plain fact of the matter is that he died heroically. He couldn’t just slip out quietly.
Dave van Zwanenberg died in a landslide while helping at a damaged house in Muriwai during Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / File
It’s quite rare to actually mention death at a funeral. We hold back; there’s something too intimate about the last moments to talk about it in public. Dave’s best friend Tom Brownlie went there. He went there by choosing exactly the right words. “You needed to help people,” he said, “and you drove into a cyclone on a dark night, and you were hit by a hill.”
Slips were everywhere you looked from the hilltop service above Muriwai beach. Out to sea, the white tail of the Pacific flicked at the black sand; on land, gulleys and hillsides were ripped open, exposing blood-red clay, where Cyclone Gabrielle had sunk its claws into the earth. Collapsed trees, collapsed houses … ”Dave’s just leaving Muriwai now,” celebrant Barbara James-Bartle told guests at the service at 2pm, “and he should be here in about 30 minutes.”
Dave was running early. The funeral procession, led by three riders on horses, then dogs on leashes, including an Alsatian with arthritic hind legs, then Dave’s famously rumpled Toyota Hilux 4X4 ute, arrived at 2.20pm. The guests stood in the open air. It was a warm, sunny afternoon. A minute passed in silence, then another minute. The Alsatian panted in the heat. A horse poked its head over a fence; a braid of black hair rested between its big watchful eyes. Finally, there was Dave, on the old red fire truck; and there, on top of his coffin, a model of his son’s Lego set.
The funeral for volunteer firefighter Dave van Zwanenberg, who was killed in a Muriwai landslide. Photo / Dean Purcell
Guests were asked to sit. Many brought picnic blankets and folding canvas chairs. Before the service, barbecue reggae played over the PA. It felt slightly jovial - a rare lovely day in the worst Auckland summer of all times. And there were laughs during the service, because Dave was a funny guy with a filthy sense of humour. But it was a day for grief. Amy van Zwanenberg’s letter to Dave talked about their baby daughter (“she calls out your name”) and son (“He wants you to take him to school and play Lego with him.”)
We were there to mark a hero’s death. It was also a Muriwai death, a cyclone tearing at houses in the bush on that secluded Auckland coast. “Our little battle-scarred town,” said his wife. His friend Josh Edington-Lalande said, “When we first met, Muriwai was a small place. In winter, the wind blew all day. In summer, sea breezes came up most afternoons.” He described a life of surfing and kite surfing. Waves two-storeys high, “so powerful and dangerous”. Dave loved every moment of it.
Dave's wife Amy speaks at the firefighter's funeral in Muriwai. Photo / Dean Purcell
It was also a vet’s death. Dave called out for horses foaling at 3am, Dave comforting a dog in the back seat of a friend’s car. He loved every moment of working with animals.
More than anything it was the death of a man with a young family. “It was love at first sight and love everlasting,” said his wife, weeping behind dark glasses. Much else was said about him - his nickname in the fire service was Siri, because he knew the answer to everything, the time he ran the length of the Kaimai hills at night on a whim - and then the celebrant said, “Farewell, Dave. Will the pallbearers please step forward?”
The coffin lifted back onto the old red fire truck, Amy and the kids sitting next to the driver. It drove away, and Dave’s son looked excitedly behind him, as if trying to see the Lego set he had built to go with his Dad.
