Rainfall
In the past six million years all, or most, of New Zealand has been under sea twice and every piece of our earth between our hilly tops has eroded away, and that’s where our flat coastal plains come from .
Dry conditions. Photo: Simon Waititu, pexels.com
Erosion, that has been a natural process since the actual birth of our country, is also still ongoing. It has never stopped. We have collectively occupied this land for less than a thousand years, yet we beat ourselves up over land degradation, slipping , slumping, while in fact 99.99 per cent of this erosion occurred millions of years before we got here.
And we have the audacity to be surprised when it floods or falls over, when we build on the top of cliffs to get a better view, or under the bottom of a hill to be closer to the beach. Or when our houses flood after we’ve built them on a flood plain, Papamoa, or on the side of a volcano, Auckland, or on the side of a steep harbour, Wellington, or on an earthquake fault, Christchurch.
I’m not a wise person, I’m a failure of the education system, yet I have enough nous to regard some of the things we do with a sad or cynical eye, because we don’t learn. The people making the rules and the decisions don’t learn, and so we are bound to stagger forward, ignoring the mistakes we made in the past.
I’ve been recording the rainfall, as a farmer interested in what’s going on around me, most of my working life, and I suppose, one day my records would be of some use to me as a person who relies on the weather for his wellbeing.
Not so. I’ve proved three things. The first is, memories are no good, including my own. Most of us can’t remember what happened last week, let alone last month or last year. So I don’t trust anecdotal history anymore.
The second proof is that the wettest month, and the driest month are the same month. The wettest month and the driest month I’ve ever recorded is this one – February.
The third point is that there is no pattern. I thought, after collecting daily records on this property, that I would see a pattern that would be some use to me on the land. After 33 years, there is no discernible pattern at all, it’s all over the place, and proves nothing. Fascinating in itself.
So it’s a tragedy that we have lost lovely people under a slip, or that hills are eroding to the sea, but remember this: they always have, and even if we slow them down. They always will.
Wet conditions. Photo: pexels.com
