Ann Hocking is a Glendhu Bay "local".
Each summer for nearly six decades, she and her husband Lindsay packed up their three children and lived on the shore of Lake Wanaka for weeks at a time.
"I have lost my husband now sadly, and I think this would have been our 56th year at Glendhu."
Their first trip was in 1966 when their daughter Kirstin was an infant.
They chose a small corner spot in the camping ground established by the McRae family of Alpha Burn Station (now a Queenstown Lakes District Council reserve).
"Gosh, there was just Linds and I and our baby, a new baby, and we heard the neighbours say ‘they’ve got a baby!’.
"We thought ‘oh my goodness, this dear wee girl? She has hardly cried’.
"But in the end, I said I quite like the look of that other spot down in the other corner.
"So he [Lindsay] dug a hole under the road for the power cord and we came down and we’ve stayed here ever since.
"It was [site] number 1 but it is now 75."
Site renumbering had occurred several times, but the campers — like returning albatrosses — always found their nests.
"We had heard about it and visited friends here.
"When we first came here in [19]70-whenever, we used to come up around Labour Weekend ’cause you couldn’t book sites and it was heaps busy.
"It was all trees. It was the ram paddock for the station, all barley grass, lawnmowers and hoses.
"It was a bit like the Wild West — you staked your claim and you put your caravan on your site and that was it.
"There was one year when we arrived and there was a caravan on this site, just a little one, and the people who had put it there had taken a wheel off.
"So we all got together and picked it up and moved it to another site.
"That was the sort of thing that happened back in those days. It was a very, very wild camp."
Generations of the Hocking and Clark families regularly returned, developing a great feel for the spot near the mouth of the Matukituki River and in view of Mount Aspiring.
They could not think of anything more special to do at Christmas to remain connected.
None of them could remember the last time they had Christmas in their own homes, although Lesley Clark thought that might have been when one of her grandchildren was born.
"I return because of the fact we have all been together, all this time," she said.
"When the children were little ... there was a wee storage hut at the corner and they used to open it at 3pm and the kids could go and get a Moggy Man or an ice block," Mrs Hocking said.
"The kids would just about drive us demented, ’cause they came to us saying ‘can we have money for the Moggy Man?’.
"In the end we all ran out of cash and would say to each other ‘can you get them today?’
"In the end, one day I think we had to buy 32."
Their advice to people who had just discovered camping was to accept it would become "the biggest thing".
"And just accept people, because everybody is not the same," Mrs Hocking said.
"If you don’t like a bit of noise, don’t go camping. That’s part and parcel of New Year," Mr Clark said.
The "oldies", as they called themselves, loved seeing their "youngies" venture forth in careers and family life, and adored time with their "littlies".
"When I look back at lovely photos of the wee wee kids down on the beach, it is so special," Mrs Hocking said
"It is a place where memories are made. That’s a real good way to say it," Mrs Clark agreed.
When January 1, 2023 dawns, they intended to sit outside their caravans sharing a bacon, eggs and hash brown breakfast.
