White Island Eruption: Life From Then to A Year On

To the Annie on December 9th 2019. Today is the fifth day of your cruise around New Zealand. The day you set foot on yet another volcano. Although not as tall as the one you hiked in Bali recently, this one is said to be the most interesting (and stinky). Through the years you’ve heard many romantic stories of these sea voyages being “life-changing”, well, this one will be for you. Just don’t expect that change to come in the form of a hunky six-pack with a bottomless bank account who will profess their undying love for you. This is a surprise package you will never in a million years expect. It will bring fear; it will bring pain; it will bring tears. It will put an unwanted pause button on your globetrotting plans, but it will also bring you closer to your loved ones and ironically give you the sense of calm and happiness that you’ve struggled to find within the career chaos of the recent years. While it is hard to believe when you first wake up, everything will work out eventually. Your life plans will still be progressing according to the timeline you’ve written in your diary, just not the way you thought (life loves to joke). So let me take you through some of the highlights and lessons in your next 12 months. 

You will have the journey of a lifetime. 

I don’t mean this in the Hallmark valentines movie sense. I mean it in a your-life-will-flash-before-your-eyes way. On this exact day, the skies are blue, and you will struggle to not hitting that ‘snooze’ button so that you will make it off the boat in time to head to White Island. You will make some wardrobe choices that will alter your appearance for life. I know you will choose those comfy Nike sneakers because you hiked up Mount Batur in them with no problem and the Royal Caribbean Cruise Pamphlet did say that it was an easy walk, but with hindsight, you should have gone with the pink timberland hiking boots instead. While you will hate yourself for choosing the polyester tights instead of loose cotton pants, you will thank yourself for opting to wear the hooded cotton Nike jacket instead of your usual roughly tied shirt. Enjoy your breakfast this morning because it will be the last proper meal you have for a while. 

When you arrive at the White Island tour pier, you will question why everyone gets a random tin hat so that they can immediately pass it back to another staff as you all get on the boat. You won’t remember to ask why because the choppy waves and seasick passengers will be a constant distraction. Somewhere between getting used to the temperamental waves and finally arriving at Whakaari (aka White Island), you will get way too excited about spotting a cheeky group of local dolphins. One crew will talk about being new to guiding, and you two will bond over both your wanderlust dreams. For some reason, you know you should be excited about this trip, but you don’t feel it. Let this be a lesson on learning to listen to your gut/sixth sense. 

First impressions last. 

The first thing that greets you will be a small island that peaks through the crystal blue sea. The constant puffs of smoke eventually blend into the open blue sky. As the boat swims closer to the island, you realise there’s not that much on there. The only thing that shows it’s more active volcano rather than a barren rock island in the sea are those light yellow streaks of sulphur and dancing gas vapours. Before you board those black rubber dinghies, everyone will get a Bob the Builder hard hat and gas mask. I can tell you in hindsight that you should have worn the gas mask first before the hat. Do not wear the band over your hard hat like they instructed or you will regret it later. 

Before you get in those rubber boats, the crew will split everyone in half and thank goodness you and mum were part of that first group. When you set off on the concrete jetty of that island, the smell of rotten eggs will hit you hard. You should have put your mask on here but because your guide said they were only needed if you really can’t stand the smell I know you won’t put it on. While you stand at the volcanic cone entrance, you can’t help but find things a little bit underwhelming. It’s nothing as pretty as the brochures or what mum as told you. The un-Annie-like lack of interest you feel right now makes you want to head back on the boat to take a nap. Looking back, that would have been a better option.

Alas, you trooper on because you might as well while you’re here. As your group ventures deeper, the smell hits you harder. Eventually, that mask will go on. You humour mum as usual and pose for photos at every photo spot that the guides point out, but you know you’ve had enough and want to get back on the boat. As you and mum journey closer to the active crater, she recounts how different it is this time. The streams of water that were here previously is almost dried up. The gas vapours seemed to have grown, and the island’s view is not as spectacular as it was when she was last here with dad. 

• 

Minutes before 14:11 arrives.

One. Last. Photo. If someone was to ask you what you will be doing before you get roasted by nature, I bet you wouldn’t say “taking a photo”. But jokes on you because that’s what you were doing. Attempting to get a funny in-the-moment shot of mum doing her weird photo-taking poses you had your new iPhone 11 pro max camera trained on her. Then comes the screaming that will forever be imprinted in your mind. “OH MY GOD, EVERYBODY RUN!”. An erupting pillar of black muddy substance shoots towards the sky as your guide Kelsey’s scream ring through the air. Your brain freezes, but already your legs are on the run. You feel mum is running behind you yet you won’t dare stop to check. Your ears ring with the ever-growing thumping of your adrenaline jacked heart. Your mind will repeat the mantra “don’t trip, don’t look back, don’t trip, don’t look back”. Deep down, you know even Usain Bolt will never be able to outrun the smoking tendrils of blackness, so your eyes start to look for some form of coverage to act as a shield. You spot a large rock not far from the helicopter pads and make your final mad dash towards it. 

A taste of Hell.

Just as predicted, you can not outrun the darkness. Its force will smack you down during your mid-dive to the rock like one would a fly with a swatter and nail you to the heated floor. That Bob the Builder hat is now long blown off your head. Thank goodness you managed to hold onto your mask. This is why the hoody was the right fashion choice of the day. While you are pumped with fear, know that your hands will automatically pull your hoody over your head and succeed in fighting the wind from tearing the mask off you. I know you hear mum screaming for your name but don’t look. Keep your eyes closed and your head down. It will be over soon, I promise. The heat that hits you amidst all the pitch blackness is excruciating. It will feel as if someone has thrown you into one of those old kilns used to melt metal and shut the door. The heated winds will sweep away your tortured cries for mum while your skin and body feel like they are melting under the pressure and heat. The intense pain will be unlike anything you’ve ever experienced, and it will be everywhere; the blazing hotness will envelop you in every direction with seemingly no end in sight. 

An image of the fossilised mother and baby figures you saw in Pompeii will flash in your head. While it is not the ideal situation to have a eureka moment, you now finally understand how so many Pompeii became that way. But don’t worry curiosity this time won’t kill the cat, just cook it a little, so hold on for a little longer and don’t give up. The heat and pain will vanish as suddenly as it arrived. Mum’s scream of “ANNIE WHERE ARE YOU” will bring the view of a clearing sky and rapidly retreating darkness. As you pop up behind the rock like one of those moles from wack-a-mole, a dust-covered mum will greet you and dash together to the concrete jetty. The burning sensation seems to get more intense the closer you make it to the jetty. But everything will get better as you take off your jacket and lower your polyester leggings into the ocean to cool them off (thank goodness you topped your fabric tech class in fashion school eh). The view of your now ash-covered tour boat sits on the not far horizon, but you know there’s no one inside and there’s no way off this island. Look after mum and don’t lose hope.

• 

Heroes will come on a boat.

While the boat isn’t like the one that Peter Pan stole from Captain Hook, it will take you back to safety, just like Peter did with Wendy. You will trust it enough to drop your favourite backpack as soon as you board it. Let me just warn you now; there won’t be enough freshwater or taps to wash the boiling ash off, and the water will only provide seconds of relief. For a girl that can faint at the sight of bloody wounds, you will do surprisingly well when it comes to looking at the skin and nails of your hands bubbling then peeling off like a glove. You will meet a kind-hearted gentleman who will help you cut open the legs of your tights to stop the melted polyester from further melding with your leg. It will be a shocking sight to see the skin of your leg balloon out as if you have put your leg through a balloon and blown it.

The sense of zen you gain as you stepped on this boat will now start to fade as you turn to see a shivering dust-covered mum in the arms of a lady. Her eyes are open, but not seeing; her lips are moving, but there’s no sound. It’s as if shock as eaten into her so bad that she has shut the world out. Shut you out. Don’t fret. You haven’t lost her; she just needs some time to process things. The pain and cold will set in with panic, but the kind gentleman who helped you out with your tights will help you keep it together. His fatherly hug will reassure you everything is going to be okay. He will use his back as a shield against the wind and fight your fears away. At this point, your legs will start to disconnect from your brain, and you can no longer instruct them to do anything. Unfortunately for you, just because you lose the ability to move them does not mean you lose the ability to feel their pain.

Eventually, you will be laid at the boat’s front under the beating sun with two other young ladies. Their cries for help and constant moans of pain will make the perfect symphony to keep you awake (let me warn you, it will be keeping you awake for many nights to come). You try to stay still because you are leaning against one of the girls and afraid to hurt her. Just when the gale-force sea wind starts to get the better if you, two young men with what seems like a Brazilian accent will come and wrap all of you in foils and towels. One of the men will always be running back and forth to get water from a bottle to cool down the painful burning sensation. Meanwhile, the other young man will be holding a large towel and leaning at 90 degrees for the rest of the journey to reduce the wind’s impact. I know you will be asking about these two, but unfortunately, we still don’t know who these two heroes are.

• 

Hope will be on the horizon.

While patience is not a virtue we possess, you’ve read enough novels and seen enough movies to know that if you close your eyes now, the ever calling darkness will draw you in. Watching people move foil-wrapped bodies to the front of the boat next to you and hearing the panic calling for those now horizontally laid bodies to stay awake will add a dose of stark reality to your mind. Whenever you want to let go, think of mum and think of Kiwi (you don’t want to make an orphan of your blue heeler). Look slightly to your left, through that anchor line hole in the ship’s side you will see hope grow. The mainland’s ever-increasing view will eventually replace the seemingly endless blue body of water.

You will be in good hands.

Do you know how blockbuster action movies always seem to end with a swam of belated police and rescue cars and all the uniform personnel form an indestructible wall? Well, you will have the exact scene, just not with you as the bad guy. Straight rows of police cars, ambulance and helicopters lined up on the ready is undoubtedly a once in a lifetime sight to behold. Few questions and a short adventure on the stretcher later, you will be transported to the nearby hospital in an ambulance with a screaming girl. You should find this girl later, and thank her for keeping you conscious with her screams of pain.  

• 

Lights, drugs and inaction.

From one classic movie scene to the next, you’re about to find out why they always have a shot of the moving ceilings and lights for every hospital emergency scene. By this point, the pain and shivering will start to hit real bad. Please hurry up and tell them to cut off the ring on your middle finger because it’s now beginning to look like a sausage with air pumped into its lining. I mean, we’d both prefer to keep that finger thank you. Now take a good look at the bracelets your parents gave you for your 18th birthday because this is where their journey with you will end. From here on, things will get trippy.  

You’ve heard stories about people seeing ‘the light’ but who’d ever imagine we would have such an honour at the ripe old age of 26. The experience will be a weird one. There are seemingly endless black tunnels which you are sucked through. Every time you come out the other end, you are at a different place being a different you. The light will appear in a blooming meadow with a single closed door. Don’t worry about touching it because you won’t get the chance even to take a step before you’re doing the tunnel thing again. 

Now let’s talk about drugs. Who knew you would ever do hallucinogenic drugs with the blessings of both the law and medical personnel. Although your adverse reaction to Ketamine mean, you will never touch that stuff again, but at least you now know what that fuss is about with those that like to get high. With it conjuring up and magnifying all the screaming and nightmare replays you can safely say you won’t grow dependant on that stuff. At least this way when people ask if you’ve ever done drugs you can now say “yes” and then “no thank you”. I know things will go black a couple of times, but everything will be alright when you next wake up. 

Love at first sight.  

First, is the gigantic face of Aly, your worried best friend. Then comes the familiar face of your cousin with his awkward smile and anxious eyes, on his finger is a kangaroo puppet waving in time with his speech. The round, warm faces of your two childhood friends will then join the party. With them by your side, the confusion and fear will instantly melt into warmth and love. These guys will help you can find mum and reassure her you are doing fine. What you will never believe is how much your dad will be crying over the phone. I wouldn’t blame you if you thought the sun wasn’t going to rise tomorrow because we have never heard dad cry or speak with such broken sounds. Make sure you reassure him everything is fine, even though you don’t feel it, so he isn’t worrying himself to death. You will later realise how much strength those words gave him to carry on. This night will get even better when you all receive news about being transported home. 

• 

• 

A World-class flight home with a six-star service. 

Life is like a movie. One moment you think you’re in Grey’s Anatomy and the next you enter one of those mission impossible scenes. Riding on the back of an Ambulance towards an army airfield with a friendly nurse for company may not be the way you envisioned your trip to New Zealand to end. Still, you will be able to brag about how much better the service is on a defence force plane than it is Qantas. The officer’s surprised look when he opens the Ambulance door to find you awake will put a goofy smile on your face. They will carefully escort you to your new member-exclusive lounge (aka. their office) where they will sort out your orange juice cravings, and spoil you with chocolates from home. 

Now back to that mission impossible scene. You know, that one where Tom Cruise did those crazy stunts? You won’t be hanging off the plane in a wire, but you will be inside one of those lying back on your one-of-a-kind first-class bed. They never show you how noisy things are inside by watching Avatar or Mission Impossible, but this will be one of those rides where you appreciate having earplugs. I know you will go on a search for those two officers who went above and beyond to entertain you and make your trip home comfortable. Don’t fret, I’ve found them, and you are welcome to contact them when you are ready. After a few hours of flight, you will be home back safely on home soil, and sleep will catch up to you as you get off the flight. 

A missing Christmas and even more missing memories. 

A long time ago, you made a promise to yourself about keeping and respecting every memory you will ever have regardless of them being good or bad because memories make us who we are. Now, I can tell you the human brain can be our best guardian angels at times. You and I won’t have any recollection of our stay in the hospital until the first day you can sit out on a chair with nurses’ assistance. According to Aly and Aunt Sophie, during your first few weeks in ICU and Royal North Shore’s Severe Burns Unit the once bubbly and curious you will retreat into a shell where no one can reach. Everything little thing will trigger you during those days. The only things that will help you take a chill pill are the constant piano music and having every light turned on. The once sassy and sarcastic Annie will become a total stranger.

You won’t have any recollection of the phone conversations you’ve had with friends and family overseas. You won’t remember any of the ICU team or doctors and surgeons who have treated you early on. You won’t even remember the raving Christmas and New Years Eve parties that your friends and family threw in your room! That is, until one day you are scrolling through Facebook messenger to find chats with overseas friends that you never remember having (there’s even photo evidence in those). What’s one more blackmail photo for your next birthday when you’ve got so many of theirs. So if the Burns Unit team calls you their favourite party girl, now you know why. If you are upset over losing a Christmas, I can tell you that we will make up for it this year. While this new body is clumsy and the compression gloves are a pain, we will still churn out three courses for our Christmas dinner. It may not be the elaborate six-course style and detailed gingerbread houses like the years past, but we will still be able to put on some decent turkey dishes and scrape together gingerbread men. 

• 

• 

Getting to know your new body.

I will warn you now that this part will be one of the hardest pills to swallow. The body that you’ve finally grown to love and be friends with over the last 26 years will change drastically. The efforts of all those gym sessions, skincare routines and self-love exercises you’ve worked hard on practising will vanish as the volcanic ash did with the strong sea wind. Being thrown back to somewhere less than square one sucks big time, and you will have more than a little cry about it. You are entitled to every single one of those dramatic break downs you will have in the coming months. You will have to learn to do something as ordinary as standing a walking. You will struggle to hold a fork and knife, let alone cut things. Frustration will be at an all-time high. But slowly, you will see the wounds that made you faint on sight turn into blushing red scars. You will finally tolerate touching your new body without wanting to throw up. The thick angry scars that mar your body will eventually become, in your eyes, your amour of honour. 

New armour, like new shoes, will give you pain, wounds and blisters as you work on stretching it out. This process will be long, repetitive and boring. Every time you want to give up, just think of the day you can return to your favourite golf course and get back into the dance studio again. I know you will freak out about missing fingernails and not being able to move or bend your fingers. Cry, but don’t stress too much about it. The fingernails, while no longer hand-model-perfect like they use to be will all grow back. Your fingers will be thicker with new scars, but you will eventually get them to curl into a full closed fist. They still aren’t perfect, and if we skip a day of hands therapy they will struggle to make a fist again the next day, but I know the day we can drop these boring therapies gets closer with each passing day. 

I know when you wake up, you will wonder if you will ever draw, paint or play the piano again. Worry not, because you will be doing colouring in even before you leave the hospital. You will be churning out a few colourful pictures during your stay at RNSH. In regards to the piano, this will be hard to face, but your hands won’t be able to play like they use to. The first time you touch the keyboard during your therapy session, you will realise your fingers may never dance the way they use to on the black and white keys. You will make many, many attempts to play and have many, many crying sessions. But the thick scars on your fingers will mean you won’t reach an octave let alone the octave and one note that you use to master with ease. Please do not be disheartened as this may be something surgeries can fix next year. Worse comes to worst we will stick to playing pieces that have cords with under an octave.  

Making friends in the most unexpected places. 

As you recover in hospital and rehab, you will get to know the therapists, nurses, and doctors who will follow you throughout your recovery. You will connect with fellow survivors and form friendships and bonds that you can keep for life. On your last few days at RNSH you will meet Jesse, a fellow survivor. His story and optimistic attitude will motivate you to work harder in your therapies. You two will become rehab and dumpling buddies who support each other during the most challenging therapy sessions. When you are ready, fellow survivors will reach out to you through Instagram and Facebook. These people who share the same experience with you and mum will become your best support on a bad day. When everything is done and dusted, these people may become your life long friends. 

• 

There is and will always be light at the end of the tunnel.

The road to recovery is long after life-changing events like this; there is a visible end to all the pain, therapy and madness. In hindsight, I can tell you that what you gain from this experience will be far greater than what you have lost. You might not have the perfect, smooth skin like you use to, but you are now both physically and mentally thick-skinned. Through it all, you will have learnt your greatest asset isn’t your bank account but instead, it is the number of amazing friends and close-knit family you’ve accumulated throughout the years. Your enforced time-off from work has finally given you time to start your travel blog and do a bit of baking. While our recovery journey is far from over, you will come out the other end of this a new Annie. This new Annie will have patience, persistence, empathy and experience on the different kinds of selflessness and kindness this world offers. As for getting back on the road like we use to, don’t worry, we will get back to it in no time. 

My Sincere Thank You.

On this first anniversary of New Zealand’s White Island Eruption, my mother and I would like to give our most heartfelt thank you to all the people involved in your rescue and recovery. Thank you to the tourist and crew for turning back to get us off the island and for all the care/encouragement you gave us on the boat. Thank you to the first response personnel who helped transport us to the ER. Thank you to the New Zealand hospital nurses, doctors, surgeons, and admin for your efforts to save us and contacting our loved ones. Thank you to the fantastic officers that went above and beyond to make me comfortable on my flight home. Thank you to the Australian government for arranging our flight home. Thank you to all the fantastic staff at Royal North Shore Hospital ICU and Severe Burns Unit for taking such good care of mum and I. Thank you to Greythwaite Rehabilitation Nursing team, the OTs and Physiotherapy team, for helping us in our recovery and transition back home. Thank you to Royal Rehab Outpatient team for helping us with our therapies after we were discharged. Thank you to the Ryde community nurse team for coming to check on me weekly. And the biggest thank you to my amazing family and friends for never giving up on me and mum throughout this journey.