so interested in what projects might be coming up, it was all about returning habitat. I joined that page, and by mid-2016 she called a meeting for members to come and make plans, so I joined in with that. 

 

By mid-2016 I was admin’ing the GtRZ page. Then in October of that year I started up the Red Zone Dark Sky page. That was motivated by a woman named Sharon Murphy, who just said, ‘Hey, what about star gazing in the red zone?’ That would be a great way to highlight nature but also to look at the sort of lighting you need not just for gazing at the stars but for regenerating nature, in general we’re plants and animals and we need night and day. So we started up that page, and it was really popular. Then also at the end of 2016 we started up the Waitākiri ecosanctuary page, and it was not long before that came under my watch too. 

 

I was managing those three pages, and obviously there was a lot of overlap, and sharing of information. They became quite well attended pages. Also in that year, we started another initiative called the Keyboard Warriors - this came out of the 2016 planning meeting too, because we’d noticed that a lot of the articles that were coming out on the red zone were getting hammered by a lot of negativity. We gathered some folk together so when an article came out, I’d email everyone and say ‘Hey this article has come out, have a read, and put a positive comment on it’. It was an email group, responding to articles in The Press but also posts shared generally online. Members could write letters to the editor, tweets, Facebook posts. It was to make sure that we were getting a positive view of the river corridor out there. 

 

GtRZ had sort of been wandering along, but by 2016 things were starting to happen, so Ashley wanted to mobilise. This was in relation to the initiation of Regenerate Christchurch [the Crown-council agency tasked with creating a regeneration plan for the red zone]. The mid-2016 planning meeting was called by Ashley to ask ‘what’s GtRZ going to do over the next 12 months?’ And that’s when we really got our heads down. We were doing all sorts of stuff in the lead up to the red zone futures exhibit [run by Regenerate Christchurch] in mid 2018. We were holding meetings, we had a film night, we were canvassing all of Council’s elected members and whenever there was an election or a submission due we would send out information to everybody. So it was a very active time, and then of course in 2019 the regeneration plan was accepted.

How did these activities build on your earlier interests?

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I live in Aranui, which is quite close to the river, so I was always interested in the river and when the earthquakes happened it just seemed to me a golden opportunity for the river to reclaim some of its land. I was by no means anything to do with ecology or anything like that, I was just interested in the environment. I think Ashley Campbell had just spotted me commenting on things, and said ‘hey, come along and join these groups’, which I did.

 

I was often out walking in that nature, and wanted to see it thriving. In Christchurch especially we didn’t have any of that native bush that most cities have, apart from Riccarton Bush, that little bit of kahikatea floodplain habitat left. Christchurch was just so exotic in its vegetation, and it just felt like the earthquakes and red zoning was an opportunity to address that. I’ve also always been interested in photography, and people like photographs of nature, so that was really good for the Facebook pages. I was also making short films, but unfortunately my editing software outgrew me. So up to that point I’d been active in making a lot of social media stuff. And then I got a better camera, so I could take better pictures of birds! 

 

How did you become involved with Avebury House, and what is your role there?

 

I started work at Avebury in mid-2018, and that’s when we started having GtRZ and all those red zone-related meetings here. And there was a real confluence of things here as I was suddenly right in the red zone working and connecting with these others groups, like the Richmond Community Garden. It was total coincidence that I ended up here, well sort of. The woman who was working here prior, Michelle Whittaker, had been involved with me in a project called Eastern Rising. We were making radio shows for Plains FM, and doing lots of interviews. One of my main reasons for being involved with that was so that I could focus on the red zone, and do lots of interviews about that, which we did, and it was lots of fun. 

 

The programmes for Plains FM: we were still in quake recovery mode, lots of amazing projects were happening, in New Brighton the Stitch-o-Mat was starting, and the community garden was starting here; Matariki in the Zone, we did a big show on that. Our first show was a source-to-sea river walk, from Millbrook reserve to South Brighton. Plains FM were reaching out for content, so they weren’t charging us to provide them with these shows. ‘Us’ was a group called Eastern Rising, and we specifically came together to highlight good news stories in the east - showing what people were doing in post-earthquake recovery.  And we also wanted to talk about climate change - still a very touchy subject in the East at that time. I was mainly working with Mark Gibson and Michelle Whittaker and a few others who came and went… We did all sorts of things, unfortunately the idea originally was for everyone to do one show a month, which was great but in reality I ended up making most of them. However when I got the job at Avebury I couldn’t carry on all those things. We did the monthly programmes for a couple of years. So anyway, Michelle was working at Avebury and I had mentioned to her that I was looking for work now my son was older, but I couldn’t find anything. She said she needed help here, but various political machinations I was unaware of meant that she left very suddenly - there was no handover or anything. I was left holding the baby: I fell into the job, and I love it. 

 

Here I’m really involved in the red zone, and always looking for good red zone stories for our newsletter. Things like the Green Lab’s new playground, Mother of all Clean Ups, heritage stories. It has connected me in with AvON and all those other groups, that have come here for their meetings. Avebury has become a bit of a focal point, although AvON now has its own hub nearby. The Richmond community had to fight for Avebury’s survival post quakes, as they were going to knock it down again. There are some pretty amazing people here, like Hayley Guglietta and Cathy Allden, who really pulled this community together after the quakes. The house was re-opened in September 2013. It was run by volunteers, until they got money for wages; then Michelle came, she handed it on to me, and I inherited Kristine. I do 25 hours a week, running the house. There’s not really anywhere else like Avebury in the red zone; we are just lucky that Richmond is still close to the river - a lot of the communities downstream are now quite far from it so it’s harder for them to engage. Avebury is probably the main community hub right on the red zone (alongside the Richmond Community Garden). 

 

What are your other current red zone roles?

 

My entry point was GtRZ. I took over as co-chair with Celia Hogan when Ashley stepped down at the end of 2017. The Facebook page is still incredibly active, with over 5000 members, so I still use that as a conduit to tell people what’s going on in the corridor. It has a wider reach than Avebury, which is up around 3500-4000 people, and is more localised. GtRZ takes in the wider view.

 

The Red Zone Dark Sky park page, I’m super excited about that project. We were really pushing the proverbial uphill with Council staff who were just flat no, no, no. And I found that my co-committee members, John Hearnshaw and Margaret Austin [prime movers in the Mackenzie Dark Sky project], lost of a bit of steam as they felt they weren’t being listened to. I felt I had to change focus, so I changed it to Urban Starwatch Christchurch after finding a couple of astronomers who were keen to do some red-zone star-gazing - which we did mostly at or around Avebury House. We got quite a lot of press, including a visit from Seven Sharp in June 2020. I still felt I could not make any inroads with Council, but then somehow it must have got in as they’ve just announced they’re going to have dark sky lighting on the new city to sea pathway. Super excited about that, so it goes to show the power of hammering away slowly! I still manage the page, but the group is quite defunct; there’s no committee behind it anymore. It’s just me keeping an eye on what Council’s doing and sharing information.

 

The Waitākiri ecosanctuary: I also took over that page in the middle of 2017. And of course we do now have a committee around that and that is a project we are hoping to move forward. I just heard yesterday that the co-governance committee [which came into existence early in 2022] are not meeting again until August, and Dave Little said to me it’s probably not going to be receiving submissions till next year. This is a little bit disappointing as it’s hard to get momentum round these things when you don’t know if it can go ahead. The ecosanctuary is the one that’s on my mind the most. I’m active in that group, and as the co-chair since late 2023. 

 

What have been the positive aspects of your red zone experiences? How do you feel about where things are going? 

 

Oh, so many. I have learned so much - about what Christchurch used to look like, what birds we should or should not be expecting to have here. It’s been a massive learning curve, and I’ve met so many amazing people, like yourself, like Ashley, Colin Meurk the ecologist, people who just bolster you up and make you want to keep going. The regeneration plan when it came out was a bit nebulous, and it was not really written into anything, so when it came out it was, ok we have to keep going, keep going. It was still feeling very up in the air till last year [2023] when the land finally got passed to council, and we knew it was there. And then the co-governance committee was formed, and they were seeing submissions - it felt like we were moving forward. Now, as co-governance tries to define its long-term iteration it feels like we’re in a little bit of limbo again. But at least it does feel as if the red zone is going to be used for the right purpose. I feel ok about that. 

 

GtRZ was never a project, it was about advocacy, and I do believe we made a significant impact on what people felt about the red zone and what it should be. And a significant impact on the regeneration plan, and on lots of the councillors too as we did so much outreach. And they were excited about the dark sky project too, until it went to staff and they came back saying it’s too dangerous, people will jump out from behind bushes and all that. So it’s exciting that they’ve come round on that. I switched it to Urban Starwatch Christchurch as I do still want people to go outside and look up, and I figured the red zone would follow as a natural place to do it. My two astronomers are no longer available but one is going to be doing the Matariki star walk with us for example. Then with the ecosanctuary we can’t keep waiting for co-governance; we have to start the ball rolling anyway; build the love in the community.

 

What have been the difficulties in your experience?

 

Sometimes it’s just trying to get through the barriers, getting through to the people you need to talk to. We have found this with council; we’d do a presentation, they’d be positive, but you hadn’t touched the staff at all. Only if you could get a really good advocate in Council who could persuade them would you start to make some headway. So relationship building is absolutely key to getting anything done from a community perspective. It’s time consuming, you just need to keep at it. You get knocked back, but you just keep going, keep going. There was a lot of burn out, Ashley included, although she was quite good at always trying to gather fresh blood in. I’ve taken a couple of breaks, I dropped a couple of things, then came back to them, conserving energy. 

 

It has got easier over time: this is partly down to Dave Little, who’s now Council’s red zone manager. Ivan Iafeta [the CE of Regenerate Christchurch] was a lovely chap but he wasn’t super approachable. But when Dave came in, he was an outreach guy, he was coming to us. He was very forward in saying, ‘Look I’ve just arrived here, so I don’t know what’s going on here, inform me’. He took the information on board; he was listening. He listened about the dark sky proposal. Someone who listens is very helpful in those roles, not everyone is a listener. It’s really made it easier to find the right people to talk to, and of course we’ve now got those red zone rangers under him, now too, who are brilliant as well. He’s a great conduit, he does know who to talk to and can answer most questions. Things now work 100 percent better than they used to. 

 

What advice would I give to groups in analogous situations elsewhere? 

 

The first thing was that we had to know what we wanted. There was a lot of research involved in that. If you think back to originally when CERA’s plan [Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority] was just scorched earth, sweep off the top layer, and regenerate. You just have to really think about things, as that could easily have gone that way. You’ve got to bring in people with the knowledge, ecologists, hydrologists, all those people who actually know what the land can and can’t do. And then go from there. Because then you’ve got knowledge, you are standing on something solid, and you can argue your case. And you’re going to have to argue your case over and over again. It takes a long time: we had no idea it was going take this long when we started, no idea. Knowing what you want, and building relationships: those two things are very simpatico. You’re going to have to answer so many questions: when they say you can’t do this because of this, you need to know what you’re talking about. But it’s going to be uphill anyway. 

 

Having support around you is important, doing it on your own is just soul destroying. You do need to take a step back sometimes or you’ll exhaust yourself. Honestly, that’s been a major issue. You have to acknowledge that you can’t do it alone or all the time. And just keeping people interested. We’re still here, and still doing it. I think now we’ve got the land, now people can see things happening, the posts I’ve done recently, people are piling onto and asking lots of questions. I think people are starting to see, after all this time, the incredible potential of the red zone. We’re just starting the city to sea pathway: the first leg will go through to Snells Bridge and the plan is to start the last leg, Wainoni to New Brighton, next summer, 2025. It’s going to be transformative.

 

Interview at Avebury House with Eric Pawson, 18 June 2024