Dudley Benson grew up around Christchurch and spent many hours in the Christchurch Cathedral as a choirboy. Based in Dunedin now, he lost a friend in the CTV building, but his family in Governors Bay are all alright.
Here he reflects on his love of the city, and explains the background to a song he wrote some years ago - 'It's Akaroa's Fault'. Music 101 with Kirsten Johnstone.
The song was written when Dudley was 22, after he'd moved away from Christchurch to live in Auckland for a couple of years. He'd started to pine for his time in the south.
"The song describes the rupture of that feeling - that need - for being from your place, and not being able to be there. I suppose also I've been interested in natural history, geological formations and that sort of thing, and of course Aotearoa has a very rich history in that sense, and the image of the fault line that does run across the South Island is, for me, a way of expressing the duel cruelty and beauty that exists within nature. I think, a lot like people, nature is indiscriminately cruel and unpredictable, but also beautiful, so much so that the two elements can exist together simultaneously and very naturally. So though we have situations like the earthquake in Christchurch, the song also recognises that without the fault line we may not have the Southern Alps, and without the volcano in Canterbury we wouldn't have Bank's Peninsular, so there a recognition of that personality of the landscape.”
