Muriwai Beach

This guide to Muriwai Beach in Auckland returns to ten twenty-nine on a February night in twenty twenty-three, as Cyclone Gabrielle tore into the coast and two volunteer firefighters dug a trench above Motutara Road to divert floodwater from a house that had called for help. It names the crew, Dave van Zwanenberg and Craig Stevens, and the saturated hillside above them. The guide also traces the black volcanic sand itself, ground down from a twenty-million-year-old volcano, toward the gannet colony wheeling above the cliffs.