Cyclone Gabrielle part of study journey for university graduates
In the midst of Cyclone Gabrielle’s aftermath, one Lincoln University student studied by candlelight to complete her Masters degree, while another helped to clear the silt and debris.
That never stood in the way of both students graduating from Lincoln University this month.
When the Mangaone Stream bridge was taken out by the cyclone, Shelley King was cut off from the rest of her Rissington community and its emergency hub.
But really, she didn’t mind. “We were isolated, but we liked being isolated.”
King was used to living a self-sufficient life with her husband and triplets aged 9. So when the cyclone tore through the East Coast, her family had enough food in the pantry and meat in the freezer, and the triplets had designed a system to direct water from a spring to their water tank, which her husband built.
While they were cut off from all of civilisation, the inconvenience was the lack of power and cellphone coverage to study online and communicate with her course co-ordinators. “My husband found a place up the hill behind us. And we trucked up there to find my plan of attack and send emails out to the lecturers.”
While the power was down for four weeks, King studied by candlelight and charged her laptop from a generator.
King said her perspective on the cyclone was different to most, which had made her understand that different levels of resilience had been built in the community, causing different reactions. “Sometimes, you have to sit back and work out where they’re coming from, rather than just listening to the words of what they’re saying and how they’re reacting.”
One of her daughters had a similar mindset. “Everyone is blaming the cyclone. But the cyclone was only doing what a cyclone does, and the rivers were only doing what rivers do during a cyclone – but people can build wherever they like,” King’s daughter said to her during the cyclone.
King now applies her daughter’s wisdom to her environmental policy planning work, reinforcing that we can’t control natural systems, but we can control how we react to them. King graduated with a Masters of Environmental Policy and Planning.
After Lincoln graduate Fergus Lee and his student volunteer team Handy Landy’s got funding from the university and Rural Support Trust in July last year, they flew to Te-Matau-a-Māui, Hawke’s Bay to lend a hand in the cyclone-stricken community.
Lee’s experience on previous holiday farm jobs meant he could put up an average fence and strip others down, along with the help of a local retired farmer and fencer who taught him the ropes.
The extent of the damage meant there was a large backlog of jobs to do on orchards, stations and wineries. The volunteers’ trip to Hawke’s Bay was a part of Lee’s final year of undergraduate studies.
Days after he returned from Te-Mataua-Māui, Lee jumped into a project he was running with other scholarship recipients called Agri-ventures, which showcased career opportunities to high school students. Then a week or so later, he was off to Ireland to finish his studies on exchange at the the University College of Dublin
“I kind of just improvised on the go, I had a good bit of time management. There were a few sleepless nights leading up to packing, but it’s all fun looking back on it.”
Lee graduated with a Bachelor of Agriculture and started a Masters of Agribusiness Management this year.