LOCATION: St Clair Beach, South Island, New Zealand
Off the beach at St Clair lies the tiny formation known as White Island.
It lies about 2,500 metres off the coast, is 80 metres in length & 30 metres wide. Hardly an island of much significance.
As a lad living in the Otago district, I was made aware of the fact that my father would regularly swim around this island. To me at that time, that ranked in the ‘superman’ category, but I later came to learn that this is a regular occurrence for the members of the St Clair Life Saving Club. Indeed, I now believe that they stage a ‘round the island race’ each year to mark the start of the club’s annual event calendar.
Looking at it sitting on the horizon, framed by the rapidly diminishing number of poles, took my mind back several decades. Memories that I had not entertained for some time.