Canterbury tales
in an old two-storey wooden farmhouse in Culverden, North Canterbury, children’s author Hannah Davison and her family soundly slept, unaware their lives were about to change. Surrounded by paddocks and cows needing to be milked at sunrise, the mum of two suddenly woke to the sound of an approaching freight train – well, so she thought. It was actually the roaring of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake, ripping through the earth just 10km from their home.
“I woke up my husband and said, ‘Earthquake, get the kids!’” recalls Hannah, reflecting on the devastating Kaikōura quake in November 2016, which has since inspired themes behind her writing project for children, My Big Moments.
“We ended up holding a child each as we went through this overwhelming sensory experience, which was like being in a
