The best day in my life.
There’s a subject guaranteed to send one wandering down nostalgic paths for an hour or two, not to mention a much nicer way to spend any wakeful wee hours!
I narrowed mine down to about 847 options but one that sparkles particularly brightly is a birthday spent on a riverbank.
It was about four or five years ago, one of many luxurious holidays in the small Waitaki town of Kurow and it began as many other birthdays have begun up there, listening to my sons, niece and nephew scuffling and whispering on the kitchen side of the bedroom wall.
Our holidays tend to revolve around mooching, picnics on a riverbank, baking bread, exploratory drives to find a new river spot, coffee, and eating.
This particular day, we drove to the Ahuriri River, near the Clay Cliffs beyond Omarama through a new (for me) stretch of that wide open beautiful country.
This particular day, we wandered over some flat, clayish sand, pausing to investigate sparkly drops of something and to test whether the sinking patches were really going to disappear the children forever (I’m not actually very intrepid).
Fording the river a couple of times, we found the perfect stretch and spread ourselves out.
The afternoon that followed was idyllic.
We basked, we swam, my sister and I had mud facials, we floated gently down the (quite rapid) river, we tussled, we ate, we read and we chatted and napped in a very desultory manner.
After quite a few hours, we wandered back and walked up the road to the Clay Cliffs, pausing often to take in the view while the children gamboled and scrabbled and raced.
I think we stopped in Omarama for ice cream and arrived home for a late dinner and a birthday cake that had been whipped up during the early scuffling period, dishevelled and peaceful in a visceral way that I seem to find comes readily on a riverbank with my family.
- Hannah Molloy is a Dunedin-based marketing and communications manager.
