Having lived in the Canterbury area for many years whilst a member of the New Zealand Army, I too have wonderful memories of Christchurch and of the old Rangatera docking in Lyttleton. Seeing the devastation there now is totally gut wrenching.
I still have friends in the area and all are well, my family there though passed many years ago.

Tomorrow morning, some very good friends of mine from The New South Wales Police are deploying to Christchurch to assist with the Search and Rescue and local policing.

Those carrying out SAR in Christchurch all deserve medals, some of the heroic stories coming out of there defy imagination. They say that the window of opportunity to find those that are still trapped in the rubble is near an end. This is not so, the weather conditions in Christchurch are not extreme, and there is still a good chance that some of those missing will be found alive. One of my friends from here is leading one of the SAR teams and his hopes are still high that if there still are survivors in pockets of the rubble the news should be good. But it will still take time as searches of this nature are of a necessity very slow.

My thoughts are with all involved in this tragedy of nature.