Some beautiful stories are emerging of kindness, generosity and going the extra mile as the ‘she’ll be right’ Southland spirit has kicked in with rural pockets, some close to Invercargill, lasting more than five days without power, others still affected.

In Tuatapere, Central and Western Archive Community and Heritage Hub manager Suzie Best and her husband Grant were warm, cosy and well fed, among a number of those in Southland who already live “off the grid”.

Tuatapere was 35 hours – two days with no power, no water and no communications with the outside world.

“We use a wood stove for our heating and cooking, heating water and that all that on there,” she says. “We had more visitors in two days than we’d had in a year."

“We had others we knew on a farm who were off grid and came into Tuaptapere township and nobody was at the Four Square or shops, no one was at work."

"They were like, ‘Where is everyone?” she says.

The lack of communications was a big thing.

”No one knew that Four Square was giving free food, or that the local fire station was being manned for any emergencies,” Best says.

“There was no civil defence person on the ground. We couldn’t get internet or Facebook,” she says.

“I believe the community board has raised its hand to say something needs to be done about this.”

While it was a tough time for many, thankfully, Tuatapere’s lack of any water meant the township got priority to have power restored for health and safety reasons, she says.

“I know of people with medical conditions who didn’t have water, so it would’ve been very frightening and could’ve gotten very serious very quickly.”

Neighbours up the road who own a Jersey stud had to march their cows up the road to let the milk off, losing some $16,000.

“There was a big scramble for generators and milking sheds,” she says.

But even for the off-grid experts there have been still been lessons learned.

“Our two majors were not having enough stored water and fuel on hand."

"We couldn’t use solar as the bad weather went on for days and we nearly ran out of fuel for the generator we have here."

"Other friends had a generator but no fuel."

"You can’t store too much fuel as it’s an insurance ‘no no’ and it passes its use by date,” she says.

“If you have a generator keep as much fuel as you’re allowed under your insurance,” Best says.

They only had a couple of litres of fuel, their back-up generator chewing through two litres a day.

“We needed to fuel our freezer, so we had to be very careful."

“We all got a little bit lax as we didn’t expect it."

"People thought it wouldn’t happen here.”

No Eftpos or means to purchase anything was another biggie.

“We’re 100kms from the nearest banks – Invercargill and Te Anau, so people don’t keep cash here,” she says.

Suzie and Grant switched to solar power, living off the grid, after being caught out in Christchurch during the earthquakes, then cyclones living up the West Coast.

“We thought, never again."

“Make sure you’re prepared as it’s gonna happen – be prepared.”

Muneer Ahmed, who owns Tuatapere’s Hungry Hippo had to close throughout the power outage.

“My tills were gone completely and the day before I’d deposited all my cash in the bank,” he says.

However, rural Southland resilience kicked in.

The local Four Square owners put on a barbecue-sausage sizzle outside the store, contributing food, as did Muneer and other businesses, and the locals all helped out.

“People were sweet,” he says.

Tuatapere’s Tui Base Camp owner James Garthwaite, who has five arms to his tourism and hospitality business, says they had guests stuck there in their accommodation.

“We were having to get water in for them for the toilets using buckets and drench containers.”

While he couldn’t operate without water or power, some locals had cash and he kept a bit of a tab for them if they wanted to buy a few beers from the bottle store.

“We had a few stressed mums in wanting cigarettes,” he grins.

In true Tuatapere spirit they carried on with the local raffle night and Happy Hour on Thursday night using lanterns and other means with the fire cranked up.

“I found a big container of frozen stew that I heated on the fire and I boiled some instant mash and dished that up for people for $10 a feed.”

He says everyone was helping each other, sharing generators and he loaned his chiller trailer to another business.

In a repeat of this kind of emergency James says he’d make the decision earlier on to secure a generator and have a lot more bottled water on hand, handing out what spare he had to others.

Spare fuel would also be a must, he says.

“Next time I’d be sure at what point we should get generators and empty food into our bigger freezers.”

Tui lost several thousand dollars, but he says others would’ve lost so much more.

Fortunately, the busy Hump Ridge season was just opening now.