Eternal sunshine of the mind

In the summer of 1974, the world was Vivienne Reimman's oyster - and she shucked it open on the roasted sands of North Piha Beach.

It was the season the 17-year-old walked away from the security of school life and took the first real steps towards growing up and looking after herself.

She even got on the front page of the Herald.

It was her golden summer, the one she will remember when all else is a blur - and she will not be alone.

The summer of 1974 was one of the best on record in the upper half of the North Island - warm, dry and with more sun than you'd catch in 50 years of weather-watching.

It was one of six super-summers revealed when the Weekend Herald looked at data from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) to answer this question: were the summers back then as good as we remember them?

Viv Axon (nee Reimman) has no doubt. She has priceless memories of the summer of 74 when she was in her second season as a North Piha surf lifesaver and, on Saturday, January 5, made her first rescue.

As surf rescues go, it was pretty routine. Four people were struggling in a hole just off the beach and Vivienne, with fellow patrol members John Sullivan and Ronnie Roman, swam to help them.

The teenager shepherded her target back to shore and then discovered he was no ordinary capture - Joey Santos, a former New Zealand lightweight boxing champion.

The combination of first rescue and sporting hero was irresistible news and the Herald featured a picture story on its Monday front page.

Viv Axon had almost forgotten the episode when traced by the Weekend Herald, but her memory was very clear about that golden summer. And she wasn't just talking about the weather.

"I had left school [Henderson High] and didn't have any idea what I was going to do," she said. "But I had the surf club and its incredible camaraderie and there was this wonderful feeling.

"I remember the day the Herald took the picture and it was grey and overcast. But it was the only day like that in the whole summer, it seemed to me. It was a fantastic summer, sun, sun, sun and blue skies, and hot black sand."

North Piha was a progressive club, welcoming women members in discriminatory times, and provided separate bunk rooms for men and women.

Young Vivienne spent most of the summer savouring the simple freedom of growing up.

She enjoyed the company of people her own age and the nurturing of older club members. There were no boy friends as such - "I was much too shy for that."

But the love of a beach with a spiritual feel; the caves and bush waterfalls; the company of friends around the card and Monopoly table; the regular hangi put on by some of the dads at the local camping ground - all of it added to the brilliant weather to create an endless summer for a young woman on a stop-off to adulthood.

This was the January of the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, and the faces of Jaynie Parkhouse, Dick Tayler and a stack of other young athletic stars.

But if there's one enduring memory Viv Axon has, it's climbing, clutching sleeping bags, with surf club friends up Piha's Lion Rock and spending the night perched high above the beach with the seagulls and gannets.

"We did that a couple of times on wonderful clear nights in time to catch the sunset and then to see the sunrise. It was just beautiful."

Mrs Axon, now a primary school teacher after an early career as a psychiatric nurse, and her husband Barry have two children - 17-year-old Ben, who is heading for a communications degree but keen eventually to become a police officer, and Michaela, who has just turned 15.

Ben has heard all about that golden summer 30-odd years ago, but his mum hasn't found it easy to persuade him he should seize the chance of exploring his own as he leaves school and finds new freedom on the path to adulthood.

Not for want of trying, Ben has had trouble with the notion. When you're stuck in The Warehouse earning a dollar to get through the trials that lie ahead, and the weather outside is ranging from average to inhospitable, the concept of a golden summer seems very distant indeed. No matter what Mum says.

Joey Santos, now 56, is living in Huntly and commutes to South Auckland where he works as a bus driver for Stagecoach. He has a cutting of the 1974 Herald story in his scrapbook, but doesn't remember much of the surf rescue. It did make an impression though - he hasn't been back in the water at Piha since.