Section One:
Tapescript:
Task:In the Path of the Earthquake
Reporter:And now, Mrs Skinner, can you tell us your story? What happened at your farm when the earthquake passed?
Mrs Skinner: Oh, it was terrible. I'll never forget it to my dying day. I hope I never see anything like that again. It was terrible. Well, we always get up,Jack and me, at about quarter to five. He has to milk the cows early, you see, and while he's doing that I make his breakfast. I was in the kitchen when it came. Suddenly the whole house was moving. The noise was terrible. Well, I knew what I had to do. You have to get outside, you know, it's safer there. So I ran through the house and opened the front door. Then I stopped - I couldn't believe it - everything was different, everything had changed, nothing was in the right place any more. You know outside our house there is a path to the gate - there was I should say - well,the path wasn't there any more. In front of the front door was our rose-garden, not the path! And next to the rose-garden were the eucalyptus trees, and behind them the raspberry patch - just as before, but they had all moved, moved about five metres to the left, to the south that is. On each side
of the garden path we had a line of beautiful old cypress trees. Well these had now moved right down to the end of the house, to the left again that is. And the path had completely disappeared.
Reporter: But that's incredible, Mrs Skinner. Do you mean that everything in front of your house had moved--what? --five metres to the left, I mean to the south? The raspberry patch, the eucalyptus trees, the rose-garden, the two lines of cypress trees--all had moved?
Mrs Skinner: Yes, everything had moved into the place of the other!
Reporter: But your front path had completely disappeared?
Mrs Skinner: Yes, that's right. Oh it was terrible, terrible.
Reporter: And your husband Jack? Was he all right?
Mrs Skinner: ……