This post began life on the noise channel https://noise.cash/c/sun-sea-and-sand-qmlwv791
The images ended up on twitter and facebook, so thought I would also share on read.cash
Why the hell not?
Mount Maunganui Beach
I used to collect surf memorabilia, anything with a surfboard on it. Most of the collection was sold off when I moved to Australia.
This is an old postcard from the 1960's of Mount Manuganui beach. A popular tourist destination and surf break. This is where we settled in the 1980's and became my surf break.
MarineLand, Mount Maunganui
This is MarineLand at Mount Maunganui. It was built on an island (at full tide). The island in the back ground is Rabbit (Motuotau) Island.
To the right was a surf break called Shark Alley. Never really thought much about it until one day my flatmate was fishing off the rocks. He asked me did I "see the sharks?" "No where where they?" He replied "swimming under you." That explained the name.
Feeding Time
Dolphin feeding was popular with the tourists. I was lucky to be able to see and touch a dolphin before it became unfashionable to keep wild animals in captivity. Now I just enjoy swimming and surfing with the dolphins in the wild.
MarineLand was exposed to the large swell generated by the Pacific Ocean and regularly got wrecked. It became uneconomic to keep cleaning up the mess and replacing the marine life.
In the early 80's it became a music venue for a brief time. Before it got removed and the island was restored to it's original natural state. There are still traces of MarineLand visible today.
Our family visited MarineLand on at least one occasion. I remember wading back to shore and mum dropped the car keys in the sea. That incident went down into family folklore. Mum never got to live that one down.
Early Mount Maunganui Beach
This is another early Mount Maunganui beach scene, that I found online and started this whole journey back into the past
To the right was MarineLand. The island was later reclaimed by placing large rocks and causing a sand bridge. At the seaward end was the Blow Hole. It was spectacular in large swell.
To the left of the island was the surf break called The Blow Hole. This could hold very large swell as well as the smaller waves. There was a rip along the rocks that pulled the surfer out the back to the line up. It was here that I caught my biggest wave, more by accident than design. That moment in time is burned into my being. The realisation that I had caught it and still standing, the speed of skimming down the surface of the wave, looking down and seeing a top local longboarder giving the double thumbs up, finally reaching the bottom of the wave and nearly on the beach. I got out and went home and didn't get back in the water for a couple of weeks. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.
The END
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