Camping in New Zealand in the 1960s

A near-death drowning experience at Lake Pukaki

This song wasn’t on my list and I never saw the clip on TV, but I did hear the song on the radio. I was 6, we lived in Christchurch and we were on a camping trip around the beautiful lakes in Southland, New Zealand. This song came out in 1963 by Allan Sherman and I think I might have heard it on the Sunday morning kids show on Radio 3ZB. Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.

So we were camped at a motor camp on the shores of Lake Pukaki. That’s not where this photo was taken, it might be Lake Ohau, but this is from one of our camping trips. The camp at Lake Pukaki was a bit more sophisticated.

Camping at Lake Ohau in the 1960s

My father had taught me to swim and to be self-reliant on entertainment. I used to have a blow-up boat and he would tether a long rope to a tree. I would go out in the water and have adventures. Looks like this time I was in a boat without a paddle, but I could pull myself back in with the rope.

My first boat

I was ‘water-wise’ but I was a 6-year-old kid, and loved an adventure. So while my parents were listening to Peter, Paul, and Mary Blowing in the Wind on the transistor radio, warming themselves and boiling a billy over the campfire by the tent.

I went down to the water’s edge. The morning air was pretty cold and I was dressed in shorts (always in shorts), a shirt, a woollen jersey, and gumboots.

I saw the kayaks and looked back up towards where a little smoke was rising around the boiling billy and thought that I should probably ask for permission to go out on the water, but it was farther than I wanted to go and then have to walk back to the lake’s edge again. Surely they wouldn’t mind.

I didn’t see anyone else on the water and got my pick of the kayaks. I picked up one of the paddles and went out on the water. I got out quite a long way and was heading towards the dam, having a wonderful adventure. I remember it like it was yesterday.

This is a photo from Google’s aerial photography. It probably didn’t look much different back then. Picture me, 6 years old, warm in my clothes, other than the icy breeze on my hands, numbing my face, having a marvellous adventure, paddling for a look at the dam, which was constructed to feed an early hydro-electic power station in the 1940s.

It was a great adventure until I leaned over one side of the kayak and canned out. Next thing I was in the freezing water, thrashing to get my head above the surface, using my paddle as the only lifeline offering any buoyancy.

I felt the icy water enter my gumboots and let go of the paddle, knowing I had to get the gumboots off, as the water was going to drag me down. If you have ever been silly enough to try swimming in gumboots, you will know that getting them off underwater is not an easy task. I got one half-off before I needed to get my head above water for a breath. Now it was harder to kick because the gumboot sort of flopped with my foot halfway out.

There was a slight current pulling me towards the dam, and I was thrashing for my life. I would gulp a little water, then would get to the surface and gulp some air then down again.

I was panicking. I was in trouble. I was alone in the lake. Before long I was worn out. I went into a blissful peaceful state. I was done for and stopped fighting.

Nek minit (words yet to be added to the Kiwi vernacular) I felt something prodding at me. A paddle! I started panicking and thrashing around again.

It prodded again and I grabbed it. On the other end was a man who had also been on the lake. Perhaps he had seen me on my own and gone after me to make sure I was ok.

As I pulled hard on his paddle, my head breached the surface of the lake. My peace disturbed, I was back in panic mode.

I came pretty close to pulling him in with me. He managed to calm me down, got me to hold on to the back of the kayak and dragged me to shore, where a bedraggled Gino (that’s what my parents called me) caught my breath on the ground at the lake’s edge. He turned back on the lake to recover the kayak and paddle as someone who had seen what was happening, checked in on me and asked someone else to go get my parents.

I was close to hyperthermia as my parents arrived and I was pulled into a ring of fire.

Well, first I got dried off and changed out of my soaking clothes by the fire. Then it was time for a lesson, which came in the form of enough hard whacks on my backside to show me how lucky I was and to teach me not to go out on the water again without a life jacket.

The experience of nearly drowning never left my memory, the peaceful feeling that overcame me when I gave up, thinking my short life was over. It’s not one I want to feel again, but in some ways it made me feel that it would not be the worst way to die.

Surprisingly, they let me out again the next day, but this time with my life jacket and a limit of how far I could go.

After that experience I was too young for a coffee, but if you enjoyed the story, maybe you would like to shout me one?