The sun always shines at the Mount

Mt Maunganui beach - in 1968 kids daydreamed all year about playing on it. Today's kids do, too. Photo / NZ Herald archives

There was a time before beach volleyball tournaments and big apartment blocks held sway over the Mt Maunganui summer. Ian Goodrick and his brother, Neil, ought to know: they've spent almost every summer since the 60s on Tauranga's beaches.

"We got a cricket bat and wickets for Christmas. Now you get computer games," Neil says. "We got the basics back then - but we probably had more fun. They were good days.

"There was a rock on the main beach right in front of the Mt Maunganui camping ground. Years and years before they used to tie donkeys up there. You can't even see the rock now. It's just covered up by sand. It's certainly got a lot more popular and a lot more commercialised - that whole thing with the high-rise buildings and cafes and everything."

Neil, now 49, remembers the day in 1968 when Santa joined their game of beach cricket - though the details are lost in the mists of distant memory. Neil was just 6 when he was pictured winding up to smack the ball into the water - looking more like a baseballer than a cricketer.

His brother Ian, then 5, pictured waiting for his brother to slip up, still returns to the Bay of Plenty most years. He is continuing a long family connection to the Mount.

"My grandparents were some of the first ones to start camping there," Ian says. "I camped there up until probably five years ago. There's probably only half-a-dozen Christmases in my life I haven't spent there."

Little Kaye Murray, standing behind Neil in the photo, has kept her connection to the Goodricks. Her cousin married Neil. "Her parents still actually camp there," Ian adds.

Donkey Rock is long gone and the brothers aren't quite the Mount regulars they used to be. But the Bay of Plenty is still their home most summers. "You used to be able to drive anywhere," says Neil. "Now, if you're at the Mount, especially over the Christmas period, you're better off just to walk."

Neil and his wife, Carol, will take their teenagers, Aaron, 19, and Britney, 16, back to the Bay this Christmas.

"The kids come with us to the beach. They come and go. They do their thing," he laughs.

john.weekes@hos.co.nz