Kerre Woodham: Human spirit at its best

It's been all about Christchurch this week on the radio. Well, Christchurch and Kaiapoi and the greater Canterbury region.

I have been struck by how stoic the Cantabs have been. Perhaps that's the secret to the Crusaders' ongoing success on the rugby field - this region really knows how to work as a team and how to knuckle down when things are tough.

Oh, the quake shook them all right - literally and metaphorically. And precious few of them have had much sleep. You can hear the exhaustion in their voices.

The aftershocks are unnerving and they're desperate for the day the ground stops shifting beneath them.

They know that they may well have another week - at least - of quakes and they're weary.

But to a man, woman and child they are full of praise for the rescue workers and emergency services. Even those who've lost everything are seeing their glass as half full. Some of them will never return to their homes.

Many of them have lost a great deal of their possessions and more than a few of the people I spoke to feared losing their livelihoods as well.

But they keep repeating how grateful they are that nobody died. And how appreciative they are of the support they've been receiving from the rest of the country. And, most of all, they're humbled by the acts of kindness that have been the mark of this civil emergency.

There was the dairy owner, immediately after the quake, who gave away batteries and basic foodstuffs to terrified people who had no cash, only eftpos cards which were redundant in a power cut.

There was Sam Johnson, who set up the Facebook site that galvanised more than 1000 Canterbury University students and supportive locals into working bees that have shifted hundreds of kilos of contaminated silt from the homes of Christchurch residents.

It's ugly, laborious, back-breaking work but, every day since the quake, the kids have turned up, shovels in hand, ready to help those who need it.

There was the taxi driver from First Direct taxis. On Sunday, he turned up on the door of a Christchurch woman's house to check she was okay.

He knew she was disabled and lived alone because he'd taken her to do her shopping on several occasions.

There are the meals made and the muffins baked and the scones delivered. There are the homes opened and the bedrooms rearranged to accommodate families who have lost everything.

So often we hear of the very worst side of human nature. It's the freaks who command the column inches - the animal torturers, child killers and anti-social thugs.

The one good thing to come out of this quake has been to see when push comes to shove, the majority of us are good and decent human beings.

Nominations have opened for New Zealander of the Year. One of my callers reckons the title's been won, collectively, by the community of Canterbury.

A number of Aucklanders I've spoken to have wondered whether we would show the same sort of forbearance in a natural disaster of this magnitude. Whether any one of our certifiable mayoral candidates could have displayed the whole cometh the hour, cometh the man gravitas that Bob Parker's delivered this past week.

And I'm going with yes. We would come together and pull through.

Despite hysterical overreactions from a couple of talkback callers when Auckland's magnitude 4.5 earthquake was felt three years ago, resulting in a number of outdoor furniture sets toppling over, I think we would come together as a community. And I think a leader would emerge from the rubble.

Let's face it, Bob Parker was way down in the opinion polls for the Christchurch mayoralty against his main rival, Jim Anderton.

People in Auckland would help one another out, I'm sure, because the instinct for survival is still alive and well in our DNA and our best chance of survival is sticking together.

That's what we've seen in Christchurch and what we'd see here. Let's hope we don't have to put my theory to the test.