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The temporary premises of ONE News in Christchurch - Source: ONE News -
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It's an odd life at TVNZ in Christchurch at the moment.
We used to work from a big old concrete building on Gloucester Street in the CBD. For the last fortnight we've worked in three portacoms and a marquee in an old car yard on Carlton Mill corner. We sit on plastic deck chairs and stick photos on the walls with masking tape to make it feel a bit more homely. There's a portaloo out back.
Our old office was home for TVNZ in Christchurch for several decades. It was in a prime position, just around the corner from the Bicycle Thief cafe, and right next door to Winnie Bagoes' pizzeria. Good food is life's great motivator.
As a little kid, I can remember queuing up with my dad outside TVNZ's big gates on crisp Sunday mornings to sit in the audience for What Now. The studios seemed so big. TV seemed so glamorous. It was wonderful.
Inside that old concrete building was a newsroom, a sales department and a heap of other interesting nooks and crannies. The old What Now studio was out the back - that hasn't been used in ages - but the little news studio downstairs we used all the time. The building had whole wings with rooms filled with wires and flashing lights and whirring fans and technical stuff I didn't really understand. The tea room had a manky fridge and a flat grill toastie maker where one of the cameramen used to fry up bacon and eggs when he was rostered to work the early shift.
My early shifts in Christchurch used to be pretty rough. 4.30am starts. I'd drive past the questionably-gendered girls working the corner at Latimer Square then drag my heels into the lift. The close-door button never worked so even when you were the only person in the whole building you had to wait those few extra seconds for the door to close. I'd go to the tea room with the flat grill toastie maker and have a short strong coffee. The girls would still be going at 7am when I walked down the road to replenish the office milk supply.
Sometimes, when it was moderately appropriate, we'd skylark in that building. I can remember a wonderful (quiet) summer, a few of us founded a ferocious newsroom cricket series. Other things happened too that I'm not game enough to publish. But there are many great people who worked in that building a great deal longer than I did, who have a great deal more happy memories.
Lots of those people were in that old building on February 22. It was terrifying for them. Really terrifying. They just had to get out as fast as they could, and they ran down the concrete stairs as plaster came down around them and the walls cracked. Screw waiting for a faulty close-door button.
Remarkably, and thankfully, everyone got out alive after the earthquake, but TVNZ Christchurch was badly damaged. She'd survived earlier quakes, but like so many buildings in the CBD she was too dangerous to enter and we were all forced to relocate.
It's remarkable how organised some of my TVNZ colleagues are. They found this carpark in a matter of hours and did an incredible job of transforming it. They set up internet and landline phones. They bought boxes of muesli bars and baked slabs of fudge. After all, good food is life's great motivator. Sure, we don't have a manky fridge or a flat grill toastie maker but there's a jug of hot water and a guy with a mobile coffee van who drops by twice a day. I reckon we've put his kids through uni this last week.
It's home for now but not home for good. Soon we'll move to an office in another part of town. There might not be big studios and there certainly won't be games of newsroom cricket. But like everyone and every office, TVNZ Christchurch will start again.
Read more of Jack Tame's articles.
