If someone had told me when I woke up, overcooked and covered in tubes and bandages, at the hospital, “one day, in the distant future, you would be curled up on a two-seater couch facing a glistening Lake Rotorua with a glass of ginger ale and rum”. I’d think they had snuck some of my painkillers when the nurses weren’t watching. Yet, three years later, I am in a New Zealand lake house, half reflecting on the crazy ride we had healing from White Island trying to baptise us and half watching the water to ensure my kayaking friends aren’t drowning.
The visuals of the eruption, the haunting wall of black smoke wrapping its searing claws around us, and the seemingly endless rain of hot rocks are still crystal clear in my mind. Luckily, the putrid smell of the island and the stomach-churning screams have slowly faded with time. But somewhere in my mind, the nagging fear of the trauma constantly flashes at me like an unwelcome streaker at the most unexpected moments threatening to undo all my therapy sessions. So, somewhere between a few-too-many glasses of wine and taking on mum’s philosophy of “always get up from where you’ve fallen”, I decided it was now or never to face my fear head-on.
Apart from facing my fears, I had always wanted to say ‘thank you’ in person to the first responders, locals and medical teams who helped us post-accident. So when Jesse approached me about returning to New Zealand for the third anniversary, I immediately said “yes” and even full-paid my plane ticket so I wouldn’t chicken out. Of course, having my best friend volunteering to be my unwavering rock on this emotional rollercoaster made things easier. She’s been in my life for 17 years and was there to see me in my crispiest mummified state, so she had a solid handbook on what to do if I crumbled into a million sobbing pieces.
KICK-STARTING NEW ZEALAND TRIP 1.5
We always joked that my unique sampling of New Zealand could only be considered half a trip. This time will be my first proper tour of our lush-green Aussie neighbour. Even though some of me wanted to be there for the shortest time possible, I had purposely planned for us to arrive a few days earlier and leave a few more days to explore after the anniversary. This way, I could enjoy being on Kiwi land before the heavy, emotional things start and hopefully have happy travel memories to cushion any negative experience.
The few days leading up to our departure were a stomach-churning mixture of excitement, dread, anxiety and anticipation. It’s my first trip out of Australia since they returned me action-blockbuster style on one of those cargo planes (without Tom Cruise waving to me on the outside, bummer).
As we sat on the little-too-intimate seats of our Air New Zealand flight, watching a bizarre-yet-mesmerising safety video with flying canoes, my stomach couldn’t stop churning. The usually-excited travel bug in me was still trying to shake off its covid-era hibernation. My mind was constantly buzzing between “how did they manage to make such a creative-in-a-you-have-to-be-high-way safety video” and “oh my god, we are going back to ground zero, Annie, you are stupid and crazy.” But it all stopped the moment I walked off the plane in Auckland. There was a peaceful calm that washed over me. At that moment, I knew this visit would sign off an old chapter and write new stories.
THE FIRST OF MANY MISSING PIECES – MIDDLEMORE HOSPITAL VISIT
While I can still see the eruption and the boat ride back as if it happened yesterday, my memory of the rest of my stay is hazy after the emergency team removed my jewellery. Having gaps in my memory was like having a toothache from a cavity. It won’t kill you, but it will drive you mad and eat you up from the inside.
Over the past three years, I’ve slowly collected dustings of lost memory as we reconnected with other survivors and received updates from the New Zealand police team. But regardless of how much information I have gained, there are still missing gaps. Questions like who helped me on the ambulance, at Whakatane hospital emergency, at Middlemore and what happened while I was out? This trip was going to get me answers.
My first memory collection point was Middlemore Hospital. All I remember was waking up at a hospital to the face of my blubbering mess of my best friend. The room they placed me in was big and slightly cold and gave me a strange craving for apple juice. There was some fuzzy recollection of getting swamped with love from my cousins and friends. At this point, I made a quick call to my freaking-out dad to reassure him I was ok (not really, but he didn’t need to know that). Then in a panic to know where mum was, I made someone call my Aunt, who flew over from Sydney to see mum at another hospital. It was somewhere between trying to convince someone to pull the feeding tube out my nose and asking for juice that I vaguely remember being told I was going home.
Stepping through the rainbow arches of the Middlemore hospital entrance was a foreign yet familiar experience. It smelt like any other hospital foyer; a slightly off-putting cocktail of disinfectant and coffee smell blended with chatting people in scrubs, doctor outfits and worried visitors. In this sea of strangers stood a familiar figure of our lovely New Zealand police liaison, Leanne. With her stood a lady introduced to us as Tracey. It didn’t take long for us to find out that she was the one who had organised our return flight to Sydney.
To start, Tracey took us on a tour of the burns unit ward that housed me for a short few days post-eruption. As we went down the slightly creamy-walled corridor to the heavy double doors of the ward, I couldn’t help but look up at the ceiling and the neatly lined row of square lights. There was a scattering of deja vu moments, like retracing a path I dreamt of but have lived through—just this time on foot. Images of being pushed out of the ward and into a stuffy, hot ambulance, ready to be sent back home, flash in my head, trying to compete with Tracey’s introduction of the ward.
As the first layer of the double doors opened, one of the burns and plastics surgeons who looked after me greeted us with the warmest smile in his eyes. It was a surreal moment to meet the first of many medical angels who helped me in my Frankenstein-ish patch-up healing post-accident. Under my covid-prevention mask, I wanted to cry and laugh simultaneously.
The emotions built as we walked up to the room I stayed in. From the outside, it looked like any other big hospital room. Only when I walked closer did inklings of cold discomfort creep over me. My legs drew me closer to the dimly lit room on autopilot while my heartbeat started to scream warnings in my ear, “don’t get any closer”.
Externally I kept calm and collected, feeling all eyes on me trying to read my reactions. Internally, every part was a shaking emotional mess. Standing just inside the room door, I could feel a phantom tube blocking my nose and chained to something heavy weighing down my stomach. Funnily enough, the apple juice craving also returned. Images of my friends’ tearful faces played in the room’s shadows, flickering like a dying flame. Just as goosebumps were starting to make themselves known, soap opera sounds from the in-room tv sharply pulled me back to reality.
While the memory of my stay was clouded, the emotions of fear and uncertainty it brought back were more explicit than one expected to get from a dull hospital room. Walking away from that room felt like turning a new page in my list of milestones. The rest of the tour was pretty uneventful; apart from a few tears of excitement while meeting some ward staff and hearing about their experience with us, there were no more surprise flashbacks.
The highlight of our Middlemore Hospital visit was sitting down at the foyer cafe corner and hearing everyone’s story on how they were involved in my recovery. From being surprised by the arrival of unknown crispy charred individuals to finding out there were more of us, from a cruise to deciding to send us home. We finally got to hear the perspectives of someone on the receiving end of the madness caused by our arrival and were able to have burning questions answered.
There were people all around us in that cafeteria. Still, it felt like we were in a bubble, sitting through a crazy storytelling session replaying an action-packed novel told by the best storytellers. A part of me was like the energetic child who refused to go to sleep at night and wanted to hear another bedtime story. I couldn’t get enough of the action that filled in so many gaps in my memory. We discovered while I was retelling my recollection of me greeting the shocked officers who came to fly me home, conscious that Jesse was my flight buddy that day. It was serendipitous that we ended up as rehab buddies and have become good friends.
The reality of how big an impact we survivors have on the medical staff became apparent when I showed Tracey a set of replacement bracelets on my wrist. Unbeknownst to me, my journey to find my missing bracelets have become a famed tale at the burns unit. Not finding my milestone bracelets heavily impacted the staff sent on this needle-in-a-haystack mission and me.
Long story short, I’d lost a set of handcrafted bracelets given to me by my parents on my 18th birthday post-eruption at the emergency theatre. The unfortunate New Zealand police and hospital staff were sent on a hunt and had no luck. Seeing Tracey’s eyes glisten with happy tears and how excited she was to share the news and images of me with a new set of bracelets with the rest of the team made me feel overwhelmed with love. Simultaneously, a part of me felt guilty about how much trouble I’d added to their plate on top of fixing up a burnt Annie.
Our visit concluded with a special last-minute hello from another burns and plastics surgeon that operated on me during my stay. It was heart-warming to see how determined he was to fit in a quick chat between his jampacked theatre sessions. One of my biggest takeaways from him was how healing for the medical staff was to see us in our unbandaged-close-to-our-old-self form. While the eruption and our burn injuries were traumatic in a physical way, the people who were involved in our recovery and treatment had trauma mentally. For them, it’s the question of what happened to us after we have left their care and flown back home. Having experienced first-hand the mental trauma unknowns can cause, I have even more gratitude for all the people who were there for us on our journey. I can only hope that meeting us now was as healing for them as it was for me to see the generous people who’ve helped mum and me.
SAMPLING A TASTE OF THE TRUE KIWI LAND
With an assortment of emotions running on a high and lots of answered questions, we left Auckland to get a sample of the picturesque “100% pure” New Zealand that always seems to invade my screen when trying to watch a youtube video. As a well-seasoned travelling foodie, I wasn’t going to pass up recommendations for some juicy oysters and muscles. All I knew was that the best was up in the Coromandel Peninsula, so I booked a holiday hut in Tairua for a bit of downtime before we ventured into the big emotional rollercoaster – Whakatane. Little did we know the Oysters were on the other side of the peninsula.
For anyone unfamiliar with New Zealand roads, the drive for oysters is not for the faint-hearted or a city driver who has never driven out of the concrete jungle. The peninsula roads are paved with rubble and wind up and down the mountainous landscape with hairy bends like an anorexic-yet-drunk snake. Minus the adrenaline-pumping drive at neck-breaking average speeds, the lush green forest landscape and crashing sea waves against ancient volcanic rocks gave a magical aura.
After countless photo stops, we eventually found a little seaside place called Coromandel Oyster Company. We inhaled the best oysters I’ve ever had to the howling choir of the gale force sea wind and discovered a possible shortcut to where we were staying on Google maps. Let’s just say this “shortcut” showed us a more in-depth look at New Zealand forest roads than we asked for and leave it at that. Some running-wild pigs, a couple of flapping chickens and trying not to let the car slip off the edge of a muddy cliff while avoiding piles of mini-landslides later, we made it back in one piece. The action-packed drive proved that once one has experienced an erupting volcano first-hand, nothing else is traumatic enough to phase a person because mum and I were laughing about how we got into this crazy situation the whole drive back.
RETURNING TO WHAKATANE
The night before we drove down to Whakatane, I sat in bed with my lavender bear and had a long mental pep talk. My last image of this coastal town is of a concrete pier surrounded by dark green mountains with rows of ambulances and police cars lined up at the ready. Leanne helped coordinate an itinerary of the meetups and memorial events planned for us returning survivors and families. To me, setting foot back onto Whakatane was like continuously spinning one of those Japanese toy capsule machines. You have a rough idea of what is inside but don’t control what pops out as you turn the dial. It could be a treat, or something triggering could fly out and slap you hard in the face.
Ever the stubborn optimist, I placed my bets on everything being trigger free and it will be a healing trip down a shady side of my memory lane. Unlike 9th December 2019, the sun and blue sky had gone into hiding. The dusting of persistent rain blurred the distant horizon into not quite 50 shades of vanilla grey, making for low visibility out to sea as we drove along the coastal highway. The flat grassy road between the sea and mountains was vaguely similar to the ones I saw on the tour coach three years ago.
Suddenly the rain stopped to reveal a silhouette of an island, and my stomach dropped. “Is that White Island?” My best friend’s echoing question breaks my internal panic attack long enough for me to look at the twin mounds emerging in the distance. With a sigh of relief, “it’s only Whale Island”. It wasn’t until that moment, with my aching hands slowly relaxing my grip on the steering wheel, it hit me how much I subconsciously dreaded seeing the island upon entering Whakatane.
THE FIRST OF MANY MEETINGS
Having seen the impact of the Whakaari eruption on the medical team in Middlemore, we were prepared for a very emotional afternoon tea at Whakatane Hospital with our fellow survivors and the first responders who helped us three years ago. A part of me was excited to finally meet everyone who contributed to saving our lives, especially the New Zealand survivors Kelsey and Jake, who were originally our tour guides.
During these last three years of our recovery adventure, I have been lucky to have met up in person and kept in touch with all the Australian survivors. Everyone has a different coping strategy through tough times, but their enduring positivity inspired me to keep pushing through the hard times. While Jesse is the one who egged me into coming back for the anniversary, Kelsey was the one who helped me execute our travel plans. Our mutual love of travel, wine, cheese and dogs never fails to put a smile on my face when we chat. I was super giddy that we would finally catch up in person.
As a natural introvert, I’ve never really been good with being in a room surrounded by strangers. I can be an extrovert, a skill I’ve developed from work over the years, but it does not come naturally. Being in isolation for so long meant that skill is now so rusty it’s almost disintegrated. Not even deep breaths and trying to recite the alphabet backwards help my nerves walking into the big open room at Whakatane Hospital Clinical School. What greeted us were some of the biggest, most welcoming grins I’ve ever seen.
I was immediately enveloped in the biggest of hugs by our fellow survivor Lisa. She gives the best hugs with the most infectious of smiles. A quick round-the-room introduction led us to Jake and Kelsey, who I was ecstatic to meet, and I finally gave them a long-awaited hug. Time ran away as we exchanged the highlights of our recovery experiences. The atmosphere sparkled with a new liveliness that turned on everyone’s smiles. That is until a Maori elder signalled the beginning of the Karanga (the welcoming call).
The light atmosphere is abruptly torn away to pour a bucket of sombre heaviness over everyone. As we ladies ambled one foot in front of another behind our kaikaranga (a Maori lady who leads visitors towards the caller in front of the entrance of a meeting place), the wailing chants of the caller drew us closer. The calling had an emotional and extreme sadness that hung tears in our eyes. Whether it was the reality of being in Whakatane and facing everything that represented the day my life flipped upside-down or the way the caller spun the Maori words in the calling, a part of me felt like a tsunami of sorrow was twisting my soul.
We arrived in a room with two groups of opposing chairs facing each other in neat rows. This time, groups of sombre-faced Maori elders, inquisitive first responders and medical staff greeted us, standing at their seats facing us. Things were eerily silent for the number of people that awaited us in the room. There is a complicated mix of discomfort, nervousness and sorrow that cautioned what was coming next will be hard to sit through. And it was. Everything became heavier and heavier from the welcoming speech in Maori and the open discussion format of people standing up to volunteer their recollections of the day.
Everything reached a breaking point when an emergency medical staff shared a short story she had written recounting her traumatic experience on 9th December when we were all wheeled into Whakatane hospital one by one. It was heartbreaking to hear her recount the chaos caused by us. Hearing the raw trauma in her voice and her uncontrollable sobs brought a wave of guilt that I would never be able to wash off. At the same time, it made me incredibly grateful that we had been looked after so well by such a kind-hearted, loving person. Even now, her pixie-like features, tainted with teary eyes and a red nose, come to mind whenever I think of us being in that meeting place.
The rest of the meetings and speeches are blurry at best. My brain was grappling with how much trauma we have put these innocent first responders through. It wasn’t just our lives that got flipped around that day. In a way, we, as patients and survivors, will heal faster and easier because we have physical wounds that we can see closing up and fade over the last few years. For the first responders, the invisible damage they experience has never really closed. It was comforting to know that seeing us standing there being just us can kick start the healing process.
The official meeting ended with a few light-hearted jokes in an attempt to make things less serious. We had the opportunity to finally talk one-on-one with some of the people who helped us on the day. Funnily enough, we discovered that mum and the paramedic who helped her had the same first name. We met one of the medical engineers who worked his magic in improvising on the day to produce unique medical equipment for each survivor. I was most grateful that I had the honour of finally meeting the paramedic who helped me in the ambulance that day and finally got to say a thank you in person.
ANNIVERSARY DAWN SERVICE
Our phone alarms went off at an ungodly hour the following day so we could make it to the 5 am dawn karakia (spiritual acknowledgement/prayer) at Te au Tutua Park. Over the years, I’ve struggled past my not-a-morning-person fog at crazy hours to be awarded stunning sunrises in different countries. This one, in its unique way, has made it on my top 10 list.
We arrived with some first responders, New Zealand police, other survivors and family in the cloak of darkness, wrapped in our warmest weatherproof coats. Three rows of plastic chairs were set up on a grass lawn by the water facing a slightly raised grass area. Many of us were still half asleep despite the frosty wind. Jesse and I were messing around to keep ourselves warm and occupied while others chattered and yawned.
As the time approached 5 am, everyone huddled around like penguins, with the survivors and families invited to sit in the chairs. I opted to stand within the crowd as the thought of sitting on the white chairs made me eerily uncomfortable. Then the chants started drawing a few curious seagulls. As the prayer picked up, the few seagulls joined in as they circled the Maori people. The first glimpse of dim light slowly illuminates the heavily clouded soft skies as if the words sung were the incantations to switch on the daylight.
There’s a buzz of energy in the morning air as the karakia continues. Each time the words climbed to the peak of their crescendo, one or two more seagulls circled in, calling to the pattern of the now somewhat rhythmic sea breeze. For a moment, it was as if the seagulls were the visiting spirits of our fellow tour mates that never made it, and the wind was the whispered greeting they carried. With the day drawing brighter, the ceremony circled back to the brave who wanted to share their stories and gratitude.
It was a very emotional experience to hear the tearfully whispered words of a deceased tour mate’s loved ones officially saying goodbye. Watching the distraught couple walk down to the rocky cove with determination, a reef in their hand, made my eyes tear up uncontrollably. The Maori people often talk about mother earth being a living spirit; that morning, as I watched rough, choppy waves calm to gently lifting the flowers from the dark sand and then slowly carrying them out to sea, I believed them.
NOON WHAKAARI MEMORIAL
While our experiences in Whakatane were emotional, everyone has been kind, respectful and welcoming to us. Going to the noon memorial at Te Manuka Tutahi Marae was slightly jarring, with a media presence on site despite the rain. Once again, we started with a Karanga (welcoming call), only this time, we walked to one of the two opposing white tents. Lined up in one tent, we had the Maori elders and people. On the other were seats for us visitors.
With a practice run of what to expect from yesterday, the proceedings did not leave me as shaken emotionally as the previous day. The rain insistently floated down to greet us while the wind seemed to howl a response every time an elder paused in their speech or chants. Despite the discomfort of having cameras trained on us, it was a unique experience to sit through.
We came to learn through the hongi (Maori greeting with the motion of pressing noses together) at the end; the Maori women gave the best hugs. The tight embrace conveyed all their feelings and love without words. In those couple of seconds, whatever upset we might have had subconsciously was all comforted and ironed out by a blanket of peacefulness that shut off everything around us. There were tears of apologies, sympathy and gratitude as these all-encompassing hugs swallowed us and led us to a hall with afternoon tea.
The high point of the memorial took place inside the wharenui (meeting house). The atmosphere inside the warm wooden structure offered a haven for feelings to be expressed and mourned. The speeches leading up to the minute of silence at 2:11 pm had sprinkles of warm humour to take the sharp edges off reflecting on such a harrowing event. But nervousness and unease fell over the room when the warning bells rang to signify the imminent approach of the minute.
Then came the ring of the minute. The silence was a roar that brought the echoes of the searing wind and howls of pain that day. The muffled sobs from my fellow survivors aggressively threw me back into a whirlpool of flashbacks. I remember trying to take slow, deep breaths silently like my therapist has told me while watching drops of my tears plop one after another onto the carpet below. The only thing stopping me from having a meltdown was the determined grip my best friend had over my hand. Like always, she knew I was being soundlessly dragged back to that dark abyss in my memory, and she would never let it happen. If there were a list of the longest minute in my life, this would almost take the crown.
After what seemed like forever, the bell rang again to signal the end of the minute and the beginning of another session of volunteering personal reflections. Being the rock she always is, my best friend bravely put her hand up to express the “thank you”s I wanted to say in her cute fumbling way. She knew with one look that, as much as I wanted to stand up, I didn’t have it in me to do public speaking after that minute of silence. While we laughed at how cheesy and goofy her stumbling speech was later that night, it meant the world to me to have her convey our thanks to everyone involved in helping us. She promised to catch me if I fall years ago, and she’s never let me down.
TRAVELLING TO HEAL
With the passing of 9th December 2022, internally, I’d turned a new page. As hard as those 24 hours were to live through, they helped me sign off a lousy chapter in my life, which floated in limbo due to covid and rounds of surgeries/treatments. While it is hard to admit that mum is always right, it does feel good to stand back up from where I fell more than face flat. My shoulders felt lighter, and the future seemed to fill with endless possibilities. The adventurous travel bug Annie has reemerged from her cocoon, a little battered and bruised, ready to get back into trekking the globe.
This time around, I have two newly minted travel buddies, Jesse and Kelsey, and we are starting small by hitting up Rotorua. Together we stood at the foot of Tarawera Falls, listening to Kelsey’s fond recounts of Hayden and her taking friends for a swim there as Jesse took on the challenge of viewing the waterfall from the top. We rolled down a grassy hill inside a water-filled Zorb ball, trying not to inhale water up our noses. Then we accidentally tore holes in Jesse’s shorts as we bent too fast on the Luges. To sign off the first of our adventures together, we drank too much of the deceptively innocent spiced rums next to an at-times smokey campfire and hit up Hobbiton the next day with some of us hung over.
This trip has been full of see-sawing emotions, rolling tears and roaring laughter. What started as a semi-desperate attempt to sign off an unforeseen chapter in my life that dragged on a little too long for the impatient me has turned into a healing trip filled with inspiring individuals, incredible stories and new friendships. If someone threw me the cliched line that “everything happens for a reason.” three years ago, as I woke up in the hospital, I’d slap them. Now, I’d agree. Will I go back to New Zealand again? You bet I would; I still have to see the South Island!
