Eyewitness

In 1993 Tony Gardner was just another Kiwi on his OE when a friend talked him into a dangerous plan - transporting medical supplies into the besieged city of Sarajevo.

"Everywhere you looked (there was) mortar damage, RPG damage, many bullet holes. Sarajevo was beaten up, and sore, and ugly."

In 1993 Tony Gardner was just another Kiwi on his OE when a friend talked him into a dangerous plan - transporting medical supplies into the besieged city of Sarajevo. The Bosnian War was raging and the sustained encirclement and bombardment of the historic city appalled the watching world.

Tony was living in Munich and at a dinner party one night an American friend named John Ashton asked him what he thought about the war. Tony had to admit that he didn't know very much about it. But a seed had been planted.

"From somewhere came the idea that we should travel down into Croatia to refugee camps there and take people some winter clothes. And just that relatively simple experience, I suppose, was the beginning of it."

Tony had no medical, charity or NGO experience, while John Ashton had worked as a journalist in Beirut and was in Munich recovering from a gunshot wound he had received in Sarajevo. After that first short Croatian trip Tony, John Ashton and another Kiwi, John Coghill, began to talk about going instead to Bosnia and taking medical supplies instead of clothes. Tony readily admits that they had very little in the way of a plan and even less of an idea of what they were doing. But the naivety of their approach was also its virtue.

"It's a simple idea to think that you can help people. And if you keep it simple, then your chances of having an effect are greater."

The three men formed the Emergency Medical Response Agency, or EMRA. They hustled hard for publicity, support, money and medicine. Soon they were ready and after loading up their Land Rover - known, not entirely affectionately, as The Beast due to its size (and its personality) - they began their first trip into the Bosnian war zone. Taking a series of back roads, they hoped to avoid as many military checkpoints, manned by ill-disciplined and dangerous militia forces, as possible.

Their first stop was a ruined church south of the city of Mostar: one of the first indications of the true nature of the conflict. To Tony's eyes, it was obvious that the damage was not just the accidental result of battle.

Diary Entry 30.05.94

"The three bells in the peak of the roof were shot almost completely to pieces, the target of intense gunfire. It was a completely shocking sight, piercingly vivid against the clean blue sky. Testimony to the wanton destruction and tribal hatred…

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In 1973, at just 19 years of age, Anna Horne sailed with three others to Mururoa to oppose nuclear testing by France. But rather than witnessing a bomb being detonated, she watched the skipper being beaten and detained by French commandos. Anna observed the events through the lens of a camera and the pictures she took were smuggled out to the world, causing international outrage. Anna's experience became part of the case that New Zealand and Australia took to the International Court of Justice challenging the legality of the French testing programme. On 27 January 1996, 23 years since the Vega's protest, the last nuclear test explosion by France was conducted at the Mururoa and Fangataufa Atoll test site. It's believed at least 175 explosions took place in all, over 40 of them atmospheric.

In 1973, at just 19 years of age, Anna Horne sailed with three others to Mururoa to oppose nuclear testing by France.  But rather than witnessing a bomb being detonated, she watched the skipper being beaten and detained by French commandos.

Anna observed the events through the lens of a camera and the pictures she took were smuggled out to the world, causing international outrage.

"I was up forward with David's Nikon 35mm camera. I could hear Mary screaming as I watched her through the view-finder of the camera. I was afraid of David's rage if I missed the shots of the French soldiers."  As Mary Lornie's video camera had been thrown overboard by a commando, Anna's film was the only other record of what happened that afternoon on-board the Vega.  She says there anxious moments waiting to discover whether she had in fact captured any images.  When they were released, she felt relief that the violence had indeed been captured.  "It certainly turned the whole thing on its head and I think that was the beginning of the end really for the atmospheric testing and of course this violence hit home to people...the French were mighty pissed off with us."

2600112 "It felt quite good as a little Kiwi chick to get one over them"

A priest blesses the Vega in Whangarei, before it sets sail for Mururoa. Image courtesy of Anna Horne

The 11.5 metre ketch Vega (Greenpeace III) was built and launched in Whangarei in 1949 and is said to have been made from a single large Kauri log by one of New Zealand's finest boat builders, Alan Orams.  Her history with Greenpeace began in the late 1960s when she was purchased by Canadian David McTaggart, a former chairman of Greenpeace International. …

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Willy Bennett and Roger Delamere Dansey recall the horrifying night of 10 June 1886, when the eruption of Mount Tarawera killed up to 150 people and destroyed many settlements.

Willy Bennett and Roger Delamere Dansey recall the horrifying night of 10 June 1886, when the eruption of Mount Tarawera killed up to 150 people, mostly Māori, and destroyed many settlements.

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"The time was winter, and the 10th of June to be exact. The year 1886."

The place was the village of Te Wairoa, just west of Lake Tarawera and under the shadow of the massive, three-domed volcano that gave the lake its name. Willy Bennett was 12 years old.

2597606 "I felt the call of Wairoa"

Sixty-eight years later, on the anniversary of the eruption, Willy Bennett sat down with a New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation presenter to recall his memories of that night and of the mountain.

2597607 "Mt Tarawera was never thickly bush-clad"

A few kilometres away to the north in Rotorua, Postmaster and Telegraph Operator Roger Delamere Dansey was at home with his wife and children.

His written account is read here by Bill Beavis of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation and was recorded in the 1960s.

2597608 "I've since been told that was what's been called an electric cold"

Timeline

12:30am - a series of tremors being to shake the region

2597609 "And so on they came, getting stronger and stronger until the windows of the house rattled"

Dansey ran outside to see what he thought was an electrical storm over the volcano.

Willy Bennett was asleep when the tremors began, but he didn't stay that way for long.

2597610 "It was rumbling like long-distance cannons going off"

After the tremors subsided, Dansey went to bed to read.

In his own words, he had not the slightest idea what was to happen.

A little later his reading was disturbed by a "terrific roar".

Running outside, he saw "an immense column of fire, miles in height" coming from the mountain.

1:45am - The main eruption begins at the north-eastern end of Mt Tarawera

The mountain explodes upwards into an enormous column of black smoke and boiling hot rock.

2597622 "An immense column of fire"

2:30am - A second and a third eruption occur

The final southern eruption bursts with an immense roar which is heard as far away as Auckland.

The smoke cloud reaches a height of approximately 10km and is visible in Gisborne, nearly 150 kilometres away to the south west.

Mount Tarawera is split into a rift running for 17 kilometres…

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Tim Howard recalls the violence and the hope that surrounded the 1999 East Timor referendum on independence from Indonesia

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Wellington-based Beth Houston shares her views on apartheid and recalls her experience as an election observer at the 1994 General Elections.

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