With a massive earthquake, devastating snowstorms, the collapse of a treasured financial institution and now a mining accident, Mainlanders could not be blamed for thinking the year was jinxed.
Usually an adventure playground, a food basket and a supplier of wool, the South Island has turned disaster central.
Again the world has turned to look, as it did in September when Christchurch was hit by the fifth-most-expensive earthquake in history.
Now it is the turn of Greymouth, where families of 29 men trapped in the Pike River Coal mine wait and hope for good news in the wake of a large explosion on Friday afternoon.
On the West Coast, mining is a way of life.
Most of the 15,000 inhabitants of Grey District have a link to the mines, and know those affected by events at Pike River.
And few of the one million people in the South Island will have emerged unharmed financially or emotionally by damaging events across almost every region.
Canterbury had its 7.1-magnitude earthquake on September 4.
Private insurance and individual costs have been put as high as $4 billion.
Two weeks later, Southland was lashed by a snowstorm that killed lambs and collapsed the roof of Invercargill's Stadium Southland.
Many thousands of lambs were killed by the snow, icy rain and chilling winds, and farmers lost pregnant or lactating ewes as they ran short of feed.
Those hammerings came a month after South Canterbury Finance (SCF) was put into receivership, stunning Timaru, where company founder Allan Hubbard is a revered figure.
Mr Hubbard, wife Jean, his companies Aorangi Securities and Hubbard Management Funds and seven charitable trusts were placed in statutory management by the Government on June 20, prompting people to march in the streets of Timaru in support of him.
Analysts say medium-sized South Island businesses are worth much less given the earthquake and the failure of SCF, while the snow slashed income for farmers.
Less measurable is the psychological toll.
In the United States, mental-health professionals reported an increase in the number of Gulf Coast residents seeking help after the massive BP oil spill this year.
There was a rise in depression, stress, worry and sadness in the 15 weeks after the spill, with counties bordering the Gulf reporting a 25.6% increase in cases of clinical depression.
Domestic violence incidents soared nearly 47% in the three weeks after the Canterbury earthquake, with police saying there could be more problems in the next six months.
Now more of the same faces the West Coast, unless Pike River turns out to be more about miracles than about misery.
