WAIMĀRAMA

photographs ever taken of me, I’m in a paddling pool with my chubby arms outstretched, grinning happily. My mother sits beside me, watching. It’s 1970 and we are at Waimārama Beach in Hawke’s Bay, at a bach owned by the Catholic Church — it was known as “the nuns’ house”. Over the years, my parents, sisters and I stay here frequently, sleeping in skinny single beds with candlewick bedspreads in dark rooms with crucifixes above our heads and pictures of Jesus on the walls. The nuns’ house always smells of dust and is a bit scary. In the 1970s, the Catholic Church was one of Waimārama Beach’s biggest landowners, with a portfolio of several baches and a