“I Feel a Hell of a Lot Better”: Kelsey Waghorn Tells Her Story Six Years After Whakaari Eruption

Six years on from the Whakaari White Island eruption, survivor Kelsey Waghorn has shared her story in a new memoir, Surviving White Island and Everything That Came After, describing not only the day that changed her life but the long road to recovery that followed.

Waghorn said the experience of writing the memoir was “a lot more overwhelming” than she expected.

“I jammed it into less than a year,” she said.

“I didn’t really anticipate how much information I had to pull from other sources, because obviously, for a few weeks there, I was not a reliable source of information.”

Following the eruption, Waghorn spent weeks in hospital.

Piecing together those early days of recovery required her to look back on medical records, message threads, and conversations with family members.

“It was everywhere, so pulling it all together, having all those main points together was really good to have them, committed forever,” Waghorn said.

Waghorn said she held off writing the book until it felt right.

In recent years, it felt “safer” with court proceedings having concluded, except for the coronial process, and the publics instrest had eased.

“There was a lot of intensity in those first couple years,” she said.

“It definitely didn’t feel like the right time to be trying to do anything like that.”

She also spent the recent years healing her mental health, recounting the event and the months afterwards.

“It wasn’t new information,” she said.

“I’d sort of done the work the year before. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it may be,” she explained.

Now, six years on, Waghorn says she feels “a hell of a lot better”.

“I feel a lot more free and light from all the work that I’ve done and the distance between now and then.”

Waghorn expressed her fear of being misquoted or having her words taken out of context, something that was an issue throughout her recovery.

“In those early days, the media were pretty nasty to all of us,” she said, describing attempts by journalists to break into the hospital and the pressures survivors faced to speak out.

The memoir reflects her own personal recollection of the event; she said it was tedious reviewing drafts, “making sure it was right."

Waghorn said she read the book over 3,000 times.

“I had to be a bit careful about what I said,” she said, explaining that the book is about how it was for her.

Despite the meticulous processes, she enjoyed bringing her own flair to the book, embracing extensive footnotes, somewhat inspired by the experimental style of novels like House of Leaves.

Surviving White Island and Everything That Came After is released today, Tuesday February 24. (EILISH BURT PHOTOGRAPHY)

At its core, Waghorn hopes the book offers encouragement to others facing their own struggles.

“I didn’t think I would make it through any of that, and I did, so I hope people can get through their thing that they don’t think they can make it through,” she said.

These days, Waghorn is focused less on long-term plans and more on taking opportunities as they arise. She is enjoying her work with dogs at Canine and Co Whakatāne, a role she describes as “as fun and chaotic as it sounds.” Her own dog, River, even features on the book’s cover.

While she occasionally still gets recognised as “the one from White Island,” she says the public attention has largely subsided.

“I wasn’t born there, but sure,” she joked.

Surviving White Island and Everything That Came After is officially released today.

Waghorn said she is excited, although there are some pre-release nerves.

“It’s just that sort of pre-jitters sort of thing,” she said.

“It's like, okay, this is like really happening, and so I think once that's all died down and we're through that, I think I'll be okay.”