While we wallow in the depths of winter, it's time to start dreaming about summer camping getaways, writes Ian Hughes
Every New Year, for the past 13 years, we have taken the family camping at the DoC camp at Waikawau Bay on the Pacific coast of the Coromandel. We go with a couple of other families and set up our tents. Every year we ask the same question - why? We spend all year working like dogs to pay our mortgages for our overvalued Auckland homes and as soon as we have time off, we leave town and sleep in a paddock.
No power, no cellphone coverage, just cold showers and long drops. We have been rained out, blown over, evacuated, flooded, sunburnt. We have suffered broken limbs, splinters, mouth ulcers, cuts, bruises, falls from bikes. There was the time my partner drove back to town in a storm with an eye infection. She nearly went blind and was almost washed off the road into the sea.
Actor Ian Hughes has many happy memories camping at Waikawau Bay in the Coromandel. Photo / Supplied
But on the other hand, there is the utterly breath-taking New Year's firework display at Little Bay (last year it included a pod of dolphins right at sunset). The daily morning race into the waves. Frisbee tag until it is too dark to see. An incredible gourmet meal every evening (always have a cooking roster). Nights drinking wine and laughing and playing Rummikub by lantern light. The stars. Oh My Gosh, the stars! That swim that time, when the water was like champagne and the sun was setting and the full moon rising at the same time and no one else was there. The secret water hole. The seven trees, the Russian comet, and - of course - the Sandcastle Competition.
Waikawau is the largest DoC camp in the country and when we first started going, had something like 3000 campers. Things are a lot tamer now and, since last year, fancy new toilet blocks too, but I digress.
Back to the sandcastle comp. In our first year there, when our kids were young - Joe was 3, Frankie 6 - my mate Nathan suggested we organise a sandcastle competition. "Can we do that? Are we allowed? Do we need to ask someone?" Nathan smiled, "It's just sand. Entry is something for the prize pool - pack of biscuits or whatever and everyone wins a prize". The kids made signs and stuck them to the back of all the longdrop doors (we figured everyone would see them that way). Nathan asked Travis, who ran the camp, to be the judge and it was done.
Sandcastle-building competitions are a fixture of summer holidays at Waikawau Bay in the Coromandel. Photo / Supplied
I will never forget that first year. We came over the dune, to see hundreds of people on the beach, everywhere, digging like maniacs. There were sand-cars, sand-couches, sand-Jandals, sand-kiwi, pineapples, mermaids, fish, whales, crabs, sea monsters, houses, airplanes, sharks and of course, castles.
The first year, I just dug. I said to my kids "you decide what we will make". It was a disaster. After four hours we just had a big hole beside a big pile of sand.
So, I abandoned my children to their bickering. Life is too short to make bad sandcastles. The next year I struck out on my own and made a sculpture of the Earth being consumed by a large Kraken. It was called "I'm-a-gettin'-out-of-here" and my first win. I was hooked. The sand madness had taken me! From there my castles got bigger and more ambitious. I have made a taniwha, a giant working compass, a huge angler fish, a raven-haired maiden, a working pinball machine. One of my favourites was a hand, 5m long, palm open, holding a big mountain of sand with a tiny castle at the top. It was called "Handcastle".
The key to building a good sandcastle is to make as big a pile of sand as you can. Impress people with scale. Dig and dig some more, dig until you think you can't, and then dig again. Pack it tight and then start carving away to reveal the masterpiece beneath. Leave the detail to the end. If something collapses, go with it. Make it entertaining, tell a story.
Actor Ian Hughes on holiday at Waikawau Bay, Coromandel. Photo / Supplied
I am almost unbeatable - except the time I just dug big holes. They were huge footprints like a giant had walked across the beach, but no one got it. I now realize I was being too clever for my own good and was deservedly beaten by some Westies who made tombstones, half-buried themselves in the sand, and pretended to be zombies.
I have won biscuits, salt and vinegar chips, a pack of fruit bursts, a box of chocolates (but they melted in the sun), and one year, a portable barbecue from Repco - but really it is about the glory. I have made children weep and adults curse my name as I make my way up the beach to collect my prize, but I don't care. I feel my ruthless dominance of the Waikawau Bay sandcastle comp ultimately teaches them a lesson; That greatness, true greatness, is hard-won with work, and sweat, and sand.
Why not come this summer and try to beat me … you can try.
Ian Hughes stars in Auckland Theatre Company's world premiere season of Things That Matter by Gary Henderson, based on the memoir of Dr David Galler. Things That Matter plays at ASB Waterfront Theatre, August 17-29. atc.co.nz
For more New Zealand travel ideas and inspiration, go to newzealand.com
