Daily Photo: Auckland’s St Matthew-in-the-City

Having spent the last half-an hour navigating the Auckland streets in a continuous downpour, I came to a large, busy intersection. On the opposite corner, diagonally across from me, stood St Matthew’s Church, which just happened to be open. I dashed across and ducked inside, not for any religious purpose, but simply because it was open, it was free, and it gave me a chance to dry off before continuing my slow assault up the street.

It was here I quite surprisingly found a stained-glass window commemorating the 1979 Air New Zealand Mount Erebus disaster. The Erebus disaster is a story that is easily told. On 28 November 1979, an Air New Zealand sightseeing flight departed Auckland for what promised to be a rather spectacular day out. The flight carried 257 passengers and crew to Antarctica, where they hoped to enjoy a bird’s-eye view of one of the world’s most extraordinary landscapes. Unfortunately, the sightseeing trip ended rather less spectacularly when the aircraft flew into the slopes of Mount Erebus in poor visibility. Nobody survived. To this day, it remains New Zealand’s worst aviation disaster, and what followed was almost as troubling as the tragedy itself, with a bitter investigation, accusations and controversy that lingered for years. 

Ten years after the disaster, in 1989, St Matthew-in-the-City dedicated stained-glass windows commemorating the disaster where it has quietly remained for decades. So, there I stood, rain dripping off me, creating puddles of water on the church floor, contemplating a tragedy that had never really left the public gaze. It was an unexpected discovery, and a rather sobering reminder that sometimes the most interesting things you stumble across are the ones you weren’t looking for in the first place.