The Peninsula

Out on the eastern tip of the Kaikōura Peninsula, I can almost see South America. Almost. There is nothing between me and it except the Pacific Ocean and several thousand kilometres of curvature. The sun is slipping down behind the mountains, but its warmth remains on my back. Ahead of me the sea extends beyond comprehension, changing colour as the light changes upon it: blue becoming darker blue, green appearing over the shallows and reefs, white water breaking against rock. Blue, green and white, layered to infinity.

It is one of those evenings when I know perfectly well that I should turn around. The light is going. I am by myself. The track back would become more difficult to follow once darkness settled across the headland. But there is something about this time of day that makes turning around almost impossible. I want to see what lies beyond the next headland. I want to stand for another minute and watch the light alter upon the water. I want to look out towards that enormous empty horizon and wonder what was out there. So I keep walking.

Behind me, my shadow stretches absurdly long across the grass. A few other people wander across the rocky beach below, reduced by distance and evening light to silhouettes against the sea. Somewhere among the hummocks a bellbird calls and another answer. A Tūī clicks and gurgles somewhere in the distance. 

Closer to the ground, the smells are agricultural rather than maritime. The damp earth of green-feed paddock gives off the smell of mud and crushed brassica. It is a strangely familiar smell to encounter there, at the edge of the Pacific: sheep country carried almost to the edge of the sea. Below me, the ocean is roaring. And that is where the landscape becomes strange.

I am walking across ground that existed before the earthquake, but looking down upon ground that did not: at least, not as land. Just after midnight on 14 November 2016, the Kaikōura earthquake lifted sections of this coastline out of the Pacific. Reefs that had spent their existence beneath the tide were suddenly exposed to air and sunlight. Pools formed in hollows where seawater had once moved freely. The boundary between land and ocean shifted seawards.

Now seals lie across the newly claimed landscape in their hundreds. Adults sleep among the rocks while pups play in pools left behind by the retreating tide, apparently indifferent to the fact that their nursery was, geologically speaking, almost brand new. I descend towards it through a forest of wind-combed coastal scrub, flax and tussock flattened and brushed by the weather, low shrubs crouching against the persistent attentions of the Pacific.

Dusk lends the place an atmosphere I can not quite define. It is not forbidding. That is too strong a word. But there is something slightly unsettling about walking across what was, until very recently, seabed. The sea smashes against the new outer edge of the coast. The light drains from the sky. The rocks beneath my feet are coated and encrusted with the remains of their former existence underwater.

And there is a smell. Sulphurous. Marine. Organic. It hangs over the uplifted reef even now, almost a decade after the earthquake, as though the old seabed has retained some memory of the ocean that once covered it. That seems appropriate, because the Kaikōura Peninsula is a landscape built from memories. Some are human. Māori lived and travelled here for centuries. Later came whalers, farmers, fishermen, railwaymen, road builders and, eventually, tourists. Some memories are biological, preserved in shell and limestone. Others are tectonic, written into terraces raised above the sea by successive movements of the Earth.

The peninsula itself is a record of those movements. From a distance it appears almost incidental: a low green projection extending eastward from beneath mountains of vastly greater scale. Yet its shape tells a much longer story. Marine terraces step across the landscape, each one a former relationship between land and sea. The cliffs expose sedimentary layers accumulated in an ocean that existed long before anyone stood there to give the place a name. And beneath everything, two enormous pieces of the Earth’s crust continue their slow argument. 

The light on the peninsula changes again. The colour has almost gone from the grass. The Pacific remains luminous for a little longer, holding the last of the sky while the land surrenders to evening; blue, green, and white, layered to infinity. Soon even those distinctions begin to disappear and I finally turn around. There is something faintly ridiculous about my reluctance. I knew what was behind the next headland. More coastline. More ocean. More rocks. Eventually darkness. But knowing was not the point. Seeing was.

I climb back up to the top of the headland and begin walking back towards the car park. The few people I had seen earlier are disappearing too, their silhouettes moving towards the track and the lights of town. Bellbirds still call somewhere behind me. The smell of grazed brassica still rises from the damp paddock. Below, the newly exposed reefs remain alive with seals.

The Pacific continues to smash against reefs that had spent most of their existence underwater. The mountains darken behind me. I stopped once more and looked east. South America was out there somewhere. I still couldn’t see it. Between us lay nothing but ocean, curvature and darkness. Blue, green, and white, layered to infinity. And that was more than enough.