For me, the power and scale of the tectonic forces at play in the depths of the Canterbury Plains and Banks Peninsula over the past year or more are best summed up by one word: awe. I'll admit that I may have overused that word in the past – my editor would rap me over the knuckles with a ruler every time I used it when writing my essay for the Van der Velden: Otira catalogue – but in three simple letters it encapsulates the feeling of reverential fear combined with wonder that I feel every time a large shockwave comes rumbling through this town.

This is an unquiet earth. Below us the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates wrestle it out with each other, leaving us insignificant and powerless in the midst of all the upheaval. One of the most fascinating moments is that split second just before a quake strikes, the fraction of a second when you can hear the subterranean seismic waves racing across the plains towards the city, occasionally accompanied by what appears to be a sonic boom. It's a moment of flight, fight or fright as the old ticker begins working overtime and the adrenalin starts pumping.

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