Days 57-59, Jan 23-25 2010
The previous day’s motivation to make landfall at Castlepoint had been well founded. The southerly change’s effects were properly felt overnight when for the second time on my trip I found myself in the midst of extraordinary rains, only this time I’d not had to seek shelter in the ladies’ toilets!
My decision to forego the tent - it was still damp as a result of having been packed wet the morning before - in favour of a ‘cabin’ at the Castlepoint Holiday Park had been a wise choice. With 150mm (6”) falling overnight in less than twelve hours, the creeks were unable to cope with the massive deluge.
Dry in my cabin.
Although I was oblivious to it at the time, sandbagging had taken place in the campground and a number of campers in their tents had to be relocated. As I walked out to the ruggedly spectacular Castle Point the following day I could however, still see the effects of the downpour.
“Water Hazard” Although the level had dropped considerably by the time this picture was taken, the creek that ran through the centre of the campground had overflowed.
I ‘drowned’ once but it was some years ago. In fact I was just 2 ½ years of age. I don’t believe it was this event in a suburban swimming pool that has inspired the regard in which I view the ocean. Certainly I don’t recall the incident and I get the feeling that those who do would rather not.
The outflow up the road from the campground. At one point it was flowing over the road and one panicked resident triggered the town’s siren, an eerie wailing that makes me think of air raid sirens as seen in old war movies.
I have been informed that it took place at the home of the late, famous, pioneering, female aviatrix, Nancy Bird Walton. If I felt inspired and thought to replicate Nancy’s pioneering crossings with my own attempt on a backyard pool, the facts would seem to suggest that I did not soar like a bird, nor for that matter, swim like a fish.
Tsunami Evacuation Route signs have been common along the coast although the flooding here was of a different type.
Unaware that the house had a swimming pool - this was well before fencing became mandatory - I had been allowed outside with three other children to play whilst my own mother and her tennis friends proceeded to the kitchen to wash up after a post match lunch. Being a tea-towel short it was my mother who volunteered to check on the children.
Historic town cemetery.
A resting point for the early settlers.
Edwin Henry Burling aged just 14 years.
A tragic and premature death.
Stepping outside and seeing a pool located in the far corner of the large yard it may have been the small solitary gumboot on the pool’s edge that drew her attention. It was certainly not the other one, because it had sunk to the bottom. There is a theory that I’d been attempting to retrieve this one because I was found floating above it. Of course it may simply have fallen off whilst I was attempting the take-off?
A monument to Lost ‘Soles‘ (sic), located near the beginning of the walk up to the lighthouse.
Jumping into the pool in her whites, my mother seized me and carried my limp, lifeless body to the house and placed me unconscious on the floor with her friends. She was obviously frantic. I suggest this because she ran to the car and drove immediately to the nearby surgery whilst meanwhile I was still lying on the floor back at the house! It was for this reason that doctor had to excuse himself from his patient and race back to me.
The impressive boardwalk up to the lighthouse.
It was ‘lighthouse’ weather.
The view north.
I’ve been informed that by the time they returned, I was conscious and gasping for breath having ‘exhaled’ a large amount of water. We think one of the other women had possibly thumped me a couple of times. My full recovery was then completed by the good Dr. John Dowsett. It was a apparently a very close call and one which still haunts my beautiful mother.
Built in 1913 for ships travelling from Panama to Wellington.
Ruggedly spectacular.
I find it extremely difficult to believe, but apparently my speech was still “very limited” so the truth of how I came to be in the swimming pool was never ascertained. Being 2 ½ I suspect that it was more a case of simply not having the vocabulary to explain how my velocity at the point of take-off point was impaired by the imbalance caused by an undercarriage issue i.e. a loose gumboot that would not fully retract.
Young, unaffected children delighting in the joys of the sea.
