Flashback

I visited Janelle's blog to catch up, reading this post bought a whole lot of memories flooding back about Masterton where I grew up. Castlepoint especially as it was where our family use to rent a beach bach for holidays. I remember huge sand dunes with wind blowing so had it felt like we'd blow away and the sound of the waves at night was like nowhere I've ever been since. Dad use to go diving for paua and crayfish nearby and we'd sit on the lawn gutting them surrounded by seagulls waiting for their share. It seemed like such a long trip to us, in those days I don't remember seat belts in the back of the car and my brothers and I would fight alot and stand on the seats. Probably why Dad gave a reward to "the first to see the sea". Being a farming family I think we used to go at really odd times of year. Christmas was shearing and hay baling and August holidays were lambing so I think it must have been in Autumn because I don't ever remember the weather being beautiful and the beach was pretty much deserted. I do remember Dad encouraging the farm shepherd to eat kina and us thinking it hilarious when he couldn't keep it down. Other places I remember were: the "crying onion" fish n chip shop, golden shears (shearing and wool classing competition). The horseshoe pub/restaurant where Dad use to take us to try and get us to use our table manners though I'm sure we thought we went there to play pac man and use the warm air hand dryers in the bathrooms. I remember the vet clinic near the train station, playcentre where mum took me a few times until I stuck a bead up my nose and refused to go back. I remember sitting in the car outside the pub with my brothers. Dad would bring us a packet of chips and a raspberry drink and we'd call out rude names to people walking past then we'd send our youngest brother in to tell Dad we needed another raspberry drink. We left when I was 11 but I remember going back as a teenager and working in a shearing gang going from Kaituna to Ekatahuna, I'd say it was my favorite job ever probably because I was young, fit and having a ball.