The Anzac spirit underwent another resurgence in 2010 and 2011, the qualities of mateship, solidarity and family bonds enshrined in legend reinforced by a sequence of calamities. It was as if the four horsemen of the apocalypse were seeking vengeance. Deadly bushfires in Victoria; a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in Christchurch on 4 September in which, miraculously, no one died; an explosion at the Pike River Mine on the South Island's West Coast that killed 29 miners in November; followed by massive floods in the Australian eastern states ended 2010 on a sombre note. An even more devastating earthquake in Christchurch on 22 February 2011, measuring less – 6.3 – on the Richter scale, but far more extreme in its ground acceleration and destructive fury, ripped and shook the land, buildings and people apart, killing about 200 and destroying 10,000 homes. Australians and New Zealanders helped one another, forging deeper mutual regard, while specialist search and rescue teams, police, firefighters and medical personnel raced from one disaster zone to the next.

Across the stretches of geological time, the brief span of New Zealand's history seemed insignificant to people standing on that shaky ground. Beneath the sediments of the Canterbury plains, two hitherto unknown faults ruptured into life after, perhaps, 10,000 years of inactivity. The people of Christchurch and its hinterland found they were living in a momentous geological moment, through two major tremors – the second an aftershock from the first – plus swarms of aftershocks. In Canterbury the land had to be resurveyed because of ground displacement of between one and five m after the September earthquake, while the February shock beneath the Port Hills south of the city thrust the hills 40 cm higher; and in the eastern suburbs susceptible to liquefaction the ground sank.