Kia ora,
Summer – the time to check out new swimming holes – this can be very very tricky – the water looks placid enough and its close to where you swam last summer but be careful you ones in the blue togs – rivers change … glad I visited Whanganui, especially the river. Loved going up the river then down again on the paddle steamer. Rivers attract me like the sea does other people. But I am not fooled. You need to know them well, and each summer you need to be very careful until you’ve sussed out where its safe to swim. Very deceptive, rivers…
I have nearly always lived near within walking distance of a river – Ko au te awa, ko awa te au. I am the river – the river is me.
When I was a kid, it was the Tukituki where me and my siblings and our friends walked to from our homes, where we swam totally unsupervised by adults, where each summer you had to re-learn the river all over again because the winter floods changed it and what had been a favourite swimming hole was now gone. So the first visit of each season was to find another one. There were never any adults around, I was the oldest, so I was the boss. Which meant I was a responsible. It was my business to see that no-one drowned, that every kid who went there came home. This began when I was nine and continued till I was about fourteen. Don’t feel alarmed or sorry for me – I don’t. All oldest children everywhere were in the same role. We just found a stick and poked about in the river and finally we found the new hole and said – okay swim here. Probably just the thought of such a scenario would send adults into outer space now.
Now, I understand, you can’t swim in the Tukituki river because it’s so polluted.
Then there was the Wairoa river, another lovely one. Wide and very deep in places. Bridge prone to collapse when it flooded which meant one half of the town was cut off from the other half. One end of this river goes out to the sea with The Bar – scene of many boat upheavals and tragedies. It marks the place where the river joins the sea over the dreaded bar – that bar has seen many ships founder and many a swimmer’s hopes dashed.
There’s at least one political party out at this moment looking for their new swimming hole – the old comfortable one has gone, their star swimmer’s looking a bit tarnished and worse – the contours of the river have changed, better look carefully you lot in the blue togs.
It’s summer and there be tricky rivers…
