One of the factors responsible for the drift in my memory that occurred in the 34 years I didn’t visit New Zealand was that I had been training for cadetship in Surf Life Saving in 1974/75 and was swimming up to 1200 m a session in times that were acceptable for the exam (400 m/8 min), and had subsequently reverted over the years to being little more than a hobby swimmer. Of course, for anyone (particularly someone young) who can regularly swim distances like those, a distance of several hundred metres simply becomes a distance that can be crossed.

My parents did not allow me to swim across the Bay of Islands to the island that, thanks now to GoogleEarth, I know is only 400 m from the shore; not because they thought I might not make it, but because there were speed boats flitting about; in any case, I made it up the Waitangi River to the Haruru Falls from the jetty at the motorcamp, which was about 200 m. That would have been a trivial distance. Read more…