Dickon on Waikiki Beach

I was asked the favourite place question again the other day.  Rain drops were chasing each other down the window in a race to the sill, the boys were sniffing and nose blowing, and we were all shivering slightly in a not put quite enough clothes on for the weather sort of way.  I gave my it’s hard to choose answer.  Then I looked out of the window, and it came to me.

We spent last winter on the beach.  From November to March we were in Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia.  We swam every week, usually every day.  Sometimes we swam in pools, sometimes rivers or lakes, but mostly we swam in the sea.  Clear, tropical, saltiness, as warm as bathwater.   Sometimes there were big waves to duck under and make us scream, sometimes there were little spotty fish and coral to marvel at through leaky masks, sometimes there were surfers wearing Santa hats.  Always it was warm.  I couldn’t choose just one, but my favourite place was the beach*.

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* Disclaimer: I reserve the right to have a different favourite place next week. And the week after that.  And so on.

Everywhere we go, we keep an eye out for local books to read the children.  Often they’re really helpful to explain the new things we see around us, whether it’s bush tucker or volcanoes, and the adults usually learn something too.  So when we discovered that there was a famous Pilbara dog, who’d had a book written about him by Louis de Bernieres, we had to get it.

Red Dog, so called because of the local red dust in his fur, belonged to no one and everyone in Karratha, at a time when the North West Australian mining town was little more than a collection of caravans.  He’d turn up at people’s front doors expecting to be fed and watered, and they’d always oblige.  He got the best seat on the mine buses and travelled the length and breadth of Western Australia, hitching lifts with his friends.  In this impossibly remote, rocky, arid, place, largely populated by men far far away from their families, the lovely dog found it easy to make friends.

Although Red Dog is not a strictly a children’s book, there’s plenty in it to keep them interested.  Red Dog’s famously stinky farts feature heavily, as do stories of his battles with local cats, and gun wielding caravan park caretakers.  Like all the best books, it’s funny and sad in equal measure, with beautifully drawn characters and atmospheric descriptions of the otherworldly landscape of the Pilbara.  Apparently it’s being made into a film, I hope they do it justice.

Our book, with its own covering of red dust, is now in an Australia Post box on a cargo ship, making it’s slow way home to London.  One day, we’ll be able to read it again and remember our big adventure in the ancient red desert on the edge of nowhere.

We ate them on the beach of course.  And they were sweet az.

One of a group of children sings the above.  They point at another child who has to sing “and I one it”, the next child sings “and I two it”, and so on until you reach “and I eight it” (ate it, geddit) and they all fall about laughing hysterically.

And that’s it.  Simple but effective.

It’s a far cry from the timid boy who sat on the top step of the swimming pool in California, arm bands firmly in place, not daring to go out of his depth without his arms firmly clamped around an adult’s neck.

All three have made huge improvements in the water.  The elder two are now swimming properly, not very stylishly, but they can get from one side of the pool to the other and they are expert snorkellers.  Dickon wouldn’t go in the water at all the first few weeks for fear of drowning, now he’ll happily bob about, out of his depth with armbands on, and yells “I’m a surf dude” as he ducks enthusiastically under waves at the beach.

There’s no doubt that the amount of time we’ve spent in the water helps.  Some weeks we’ve swum every day and I don’t think a whole week has gone by since we left home when we haven’t swum at all.  The fact that it’s always warm and sunny must also help.  It’s a far cry from Eve’s school swimming lessons of last winter, when they’d return shivering and bedraggled, after spending all of ten minutes actually in the pool.

I hope over the next six months they’ll continue to improve and become really confident swimmers.  I also hope that their emerging love of the water will continue to grow and remain with them for the rest of their lives.

Rotorua is the tourist capital of New Zealand.  Everyone goes there.  When you mention it, people say one of two things: it’s stinky, it’s heaps of fun.  It’s heaps of fun because you can zorb, bungy, jet boat, luge and do all manner of silly things in the name of entertainment.  It’s stinky because of the volcanic activity in the area.  When my ex-geologist husband learnt about the latter, of course he wanted to go.  I can take or leave this geology stuff, I really can’t get excited about why a hill is stripy, or how this cliff is different to that cliff, but I like to keep him happy, so agreed to go along for the ride.

I was a little surprised when I discovered that Rotorua is actually pretty amazing.  The whole town is on top of a volcano, in places the ground is only about half a metre thick.  And you don’t have to go anywhere special to experience it.  Evidence of the volcano is all around you.  Steam pours out of roadside gratings, bubbling mud pools blip blup mesmerisingly in people’s gardens, geysers spout metres of water in the air on an hourly basis and scalding hot tubs are a way of life.  People round here don’t have combi boilers.  They don’t really need them.

Teaching the children about volcanic activity has been a hands on experience, no text books necessary.  First came a demonstration in the kitchen with diagrams and a pan of boiling water and gravel.  Then we wandered around the corner to the playground to watch the resident bubbling mud, like a giant saucepan of chocolate custard, that’s been allowed to boil over.  We made a jam roly poly of sorts and cooked it in volcanic steam, renaming it lava pudding.  And we wandered down to the lake with a spade, dug a hole in the sand and cooked a fresh water oyster in the boiling water.  Sorry oyster, but your demise was in the noble cause of education.

It’s quite a strange experience walking on scalding ground, knowing that less than a metre under your feet is a cavern full of boiling water.  I have no idea why people choose to live in such a dangerous place but there is something magical about it.  The wisps of steam rising in the most unexpected places, the deep respect the local Maori have for their land and it’s toasty resources, and being able to lie in bed and listen to the boiling mud gently blip, blop, blip as you drift off to sleep.  It’s hard not to be enchanted.