"Out of the Blue".

On Tuesday Nige and I snuck off to the movies. It is the cheapest day to go to them so we have been the last couple. Last week we saw "World Trade Center" which was a great movie and this week we saw "Out of the Blue".

Now I suspect that most of you have never heard of this movie. That's because it is a NZ movie based on a shooting tragedy in 1990. I remember it happenening.

Aramoana is on the peninsula near Dunedin (bottom of the South Island and my birth place). It is a very small, fishing community and as a family we used to drive there for picnics at the beach or on Sunday aftrnoons. In November 1990 this sleepy hollow hit NZ headline news because a man, named David Grey, took a gun and killed 13 people. Now this is unuual as you can only have a gun if you are a registered gun holder and requirememnts for that are pretty strict. Nothing like that had ever happened in NZ before (certainly not to that scale).

The movie was very well done and didn't focus on the blood and gore as much as the triumph of ordinary NZers. A 74 year old woman (who still lives) was a hero, dragging herself across gravel roads and bush to call for help. There were others who did remarkable things. It told the story of Grey himself, who was probably a paranoid Schizophrenic. It showed his struggles and delusions. A recluse in the community who had isolated himself totally from everyone else.

I have seen many news interviews with the makers of the film but was touched by one done with Stacey, the youngest survivor of this tragedy. She was just 3 and was shot in the stomach while her mother, father and 2 brothers were lying dead beside her. She has no living memory of the incident and the actors shared how they realised that, by doing this movie, they were actually creating some memories of her family and that terrible day, for her. It was moving to think about that as I watched.

So as much as NZ is the clean, green, safe country in the world bad things still do happen here and their memory lasts forever.