These fissures in a country road near Murchison show some of the damage wrought on transport routes by the 1929 Murchison quake. Len Hutchins experienced the quake, and his recollections were recorded by Jim Henderson in this 1964 interview.
Transcript
The most awe-inspiring piece of the whole thing was a slip that came out across the valley from where we were working - we were working on a terrace. And this slip came out of the standing bush and it looked exactly like someone pouring a huge sack of sugar down the hill, with it boiling over and over. It took the trees in as they went and they'd disappear and farther down the hill they would come out just naked limbs or naked trunks, the limbs was broken off, the bark skinned off, and the whole thing just ground more or less to pulp.
Using this item
Alexander Turnbull Library, Frederick Nelson Jones Collection (PAColl-3051)
Reference: PAColl-3051-1-01
by Frederick Nelson Jones
Sound file: Len Hutchings, interview by Jim Henderson for 'Open country no. 82,' 1964 (2'50"–4'34"). Alexander Turnbull Library, OHT5-0684
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.