Hope Springs

It hurts Janet Dearlove to recall the morning a cyclone hurled the ocean into her home. Her voice catches as she describes doors shredded into splinters, taps ripped from a bathroom wall, a twenty-metre concrete wall flung over the house. Husband Neil’s childhood photographs were swept away and thousands of hours of labour were shattered or buried beneath metres of sand. The garden is now a two-metre drop to the beach.

 

This is not the story NZ House & Garden had hoped to tell when we visited the Dearloves several months before Cyclone Nancy battered Rarotonga on 15 February. But the devastated couple wanted to see a record of their dream home in print. “It’s almost like a memorial really,” Janet says. “It’s proof to us that we did it so we can do it again. Because some days it’s just too hard to think of the enormity of what’s ahead.”

 

The Dearloves are adamant they will rebuild on the Matavera beachfront facing the sunrise and the Pacific Ocean. Most of the roof and the shell of their house remain remarkably unscathed despite the freak, once-in-several-lifetimes violence of the storm. And though the couple went to great lengths to weatherproof the original house – marine ply in the kitchen, cement floors, hefty rock wave barriers, an inbuilt cement bed – they have already discussed some storm-foiling improvements for its replacement.

Janet’s ideas for the original house managed to confound local builders who had never struck orders for a fish pond abutting the front wall or a glorious outdoor bathtub with adjoining tiled en suite. The couple’s visiting grandchildren considered the bathtub a miniature swimming pool while Janet loved cooling after-work soaks on summer evenings and winter nights spent stargazing with a glass of wine.

After the storm she was amazed to discover every tile in the bathroom had escaped damage and the tub had survived, albeit beneath a small mountain of sand. Now she swears newest grandson Oliver, who arrived two months before the cyclone, will one day enjoy outdoor bathing in the same spot.

The couple continues to count small miracles that afford a measure of hope – such as the pair of century-old church windows in the kitchen that survived with every pane of coloured glass intact. Neil found the windows languishing behind a joinery factory and he and Janet spent an estimated 500 hours stripping back layers of paint and repairing the coloured panes. He also did all the electrical work in the house, built kitchen cabinets, fitted oversized Indonesian doors, acted as builder’s labourer and glazed windows.

Neil first envisaged an island home in 1985 after visiting Rarotonga on business. He had been working long stressful hours as an audio-visual consultant in Auckland and the burned-out former electrician was instantly drawn to the pace, climate and beauty of island living. Janet was equally smitten when she joined him for a holiday.
In January 1987 they farewelled Pakuranga in Auckland and moved children Anouchka, Reuben and nine-year-old Tamsyn nearer the equator. They rented a house, enrolled the children in local schools and launched a new business. Even when the business failed they resolved to stay on and try again.
Their next commercial venture, an electrical goods store, blossomed into a gift shop that eventually gave way to The Café, a café in the main town of Avarua.

They signed the lease on their dream property eleven years ago – Cook Island laws deem land cannot be purchased outright. More than a decade later the Dearloves are grateful they managed to stow many of their most precious belongings on the purpose-built mezzanine floor before fleeing the house on the morning of the cyclone. They saved the vibrant Cook Island art and Janet’s father’s paintings from the walls, a favourite piece of New Zealand-made glass, anything they were able to carry in the panicked, pre-dawn hours.

That same month they had finished building an adjacent family apartment where chef son Reuben, his wife Victoria and baby Oliver were to stay.

Now the ground floor of the apartment is largely destroyed – furious waves propelled a tree into it – but the undamaged upper storey is the logical starting point for Neil and Reuben to begin rebuilding a home they will all share. Construction of the main house will follow as battered finances allow.

In the meantime friends have offered the use of a house while extended family and friends have pledged to fly to the island to help rebuild.

“People have been very supportive and helpful,” Janet says. “It’s very humbling. But it’s all still pretty hard to believe. It is quite phenomenal that life can change in a brief moment.”