Karyn Henger reflects on the magic of her annual holidays at the Mount and why this year's felt different from the beginning.
“Hey, it’s lucky you went to the hot pools yesterday because there’s a campervan in there now.”
That was my first clue to the terrible landslide that took six lives at the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park on January 22 – despite the fact I was there, less than 100m away.
My son Mikey and I have holidayed at the campground with a group of my old schoolfriends every January since 2021. We loved it because it was so central. You could wander into town to look around the shops, try out the cafés or spend the day swimming at the beach. There was always something to do, and every morning started with a walk up Mauao.
This year we arrived on Saturday January 17, excited for our five days ahead. But right from the start, things felt off. A rahui had been placed at Pilot Bay for a swimmer who’d died during a triathlon that day. The forecast for the week was cooler temperatures and rain – we’d always had great weather before. And for the first time since purchasing it four years ago, our friends’ gazebo succumbed to high winds and collapsed, beyond repair.
We remained optimistic, painting by numbers and solving sudoku puzzles in the afternoons when we’d normally be swimming. But by Tuesday gloomy skies had set in and on Wednesday January 21, we woke to rain so heavy, Mikey and I decided the only thing for it was to spend the day eating.
Dumplings, salt and pepper squid, cauliflower bites and sticky chicken wings at Rice Rice Baby were followed by a relaxing soak in the rain at the hot pools then burgers at the Mount Ocean Sports Club. We received a red heavy rain warning for the Bay of Plenty at lunchtime, but no notifications or warnings from our hosts at the campground, so had no reason to believe we were in danger.
Awaking to the sound of a waterfall
Thursday morning, we woke to the sound of what we thought was more rain, but it turned out to be a waterfall coming off the Mount, just a metre behind our cabin. Still no word from our hosts, though, other than barriers to stop people using the walking tracks. We walked along the surf beach, got back around 9am, had showers and packed to go home. We were due to leave that day anyway.
Sometime between 9.30am and 10am my friends came running up through the campground from Adams Ave and told us there’d been a landslide on the Pilot Bay side of the campground. They said a campervan was in one of the hot pools and that they’d seen mud still flowing down the slope. Out of nowhere, a rescue helicopter appeared, police began combing the grounds and holiday makers streamed down onto the street.
The atmosphere was charged. Feeling confused and unsafe, we threw the last of our gear in the car and got out of there. A police officer took our names at the gate.
Driving past the hot pools we saw brown water pouring out onto the street. The hillside behind looked messy, and everything felt skewed, like the world had tipped sideways. It wasn’t till I heard the news reports on our three-hour drive back to Auckland that I realised the magnitude of what had happened. I couldn’t believe that we might have just escaped with our lives. I couldn’t believe that people might be dead.
One week on, I can’t stop thinking about the people who died. Two best friends who’d camped at the Mount together for years. They would have looked forward to those holidays just as my old friends and I did. Two beautiful teens with their whole lives ahead of them. Just a few months younger than my son, their smiles and poses in their pictures just like his. The young Swedish tourist made me think of my oldest daughter, in the Netherlands right now, discovering the world, just as he had been. A well-loved teacher who saved the lives of many by waking them and warning them of the dangers, only to be taken by the landslide herself.
These people should never have died, and I don’t know how you get over that – as a parent, a friend, a sibling, as their child. It seems to me that there were opportunities to prevent this tragedy, dating back years but also right up until the hours and minutes beforehand.
When you put a family campground at the base of a mountain, you have a duty of care to the families who stay there. Was that duty of care adequate? The families of those who lost their lives deserve answers and hopefully council and government inquiries will provide them.
As to whether my friends and I return to the Mount, I'm undecided. We have such happy memories of the place, but now they're tinged with tragedy.
SHARE ME