In 1957 I joined the Riversdale Surf Lifesaving Club. Your image of a lifeguard is someone who is tall, muscular, bronzed and handsome. I was, of course, none of these though after a few weekends in the sun, I did go a sort of a reddy brown. Back then I was incredibly thin. In the 1959 National Surf Lifesaving Championships held at Oakura Beach, just out of New Plymouth, I was judged the skinniest lifesaver in the thousand man march past at the conclusion of the competition. I was so thin I could have put on a red tie and gone to a fancy dress ball as a thermometer.
Riversdale was no Piha. It was a blessing that few bathers, if any, ever got into difficulties at the popular Wairarapa beach resort. We did attempt to rescue bikini-clad young women about our own age from time to time; often mistaking their waving to acquaintances back on dry land as a signal that they were in distress. We inevitably had to let them go after their protestations attracted the attention of friends and family. Theirs, not ours. Ours disowned us.
We set off to attend the Oakura championships on a Thursday afternoon. We had a scheduled stop at Hawera where one of our team members, John Oakly, who a few months earlier had shifted to Taranaki to work on a dairy farm, was competing in the final night of the local swimming club championships. His father was the manager of the WFCA department store in Masterton at the time. John had amassed enough points over the season to be in the running to win the senior championship, so we agreed to stay on and give him moral support, and then take him on to New Plymouth to take part with us at the National Lifesaving competitions.
We had a few ales at a Hawera hostelry before presenting ourselves at the local baths. We were warmly met and the arrival of the “Riversdale Surf Lifesaving Team, from the Wairarapa” was announced over the loudspeaker. The swimming club president came up to us offer his personal greetings, and he inquired if there was anyone among us who knew how to judge diving. I found myself being shoved forward from my colleagues behind, two of whom said in remarkable unison “Yes, Rick’s a diving judge” and went on to extol, and of course entirely fabricate, my experiences in this field, even to the extent that I had judged the diving at the previous year’s Empire Games in Cardiff.
This was a spontaneous action and was born in an environment where we were always attempting one-upmanship in pranks we played on each other. It was, I think, the forerunner to theatre sports. The two mostly responsible, for want of better names I will call Brian Bodle and Wayne Snowsill. Our club president who was a sober, decent upright citizen Stan Lane, and who was chaperoning us to ensure this sort of thing didn’t happen, was momentarily speechless, as I was. Before he or I could regain our composure I was being whisked to the best seat in the house and the event commentator was telling the impressed spectators that they had in attendance an Empire Games diving judge, who would be officiating later on in the evening.
It was remarkable that they accepted this claim. I must have been the youngest international diving judge in the world. I was barely nineteen at the time. Meanwhile Stan Lane, a deeply religious man, had the faraway look of a man not believing what he is seeing.
John Oakly had only one serious rival in his quest to win the Senior Hawera Swimming Championships of 1959, and by the time they came to the last item on the programme, the diving, they were equal first.
I was ushered to a prominent position in the complex, given a diving scorecard, something I had never seen before in my life, and placed between two local judges who gave the distinct impression that they were honoured to sit beside me. John and his rival were to complete three dives each: standing, running and a free choice. John was as portly as I was skinny, and his first dive created such a splash that there was a real risk that he might empty the pool.
I gave him nine out of ten.
My two fellow judges, seeing my card, were startled. They had given him a four and a five, respectively. I explained that at the Empire Games we took more cognisance of the flight in the air rather than the entry into the water. They were impressed with this explanation and changed their score. John got three nines. I marked his rival down a little, even though his flight was every bit as good as John’s and his entry, near perfect. In the final wash-up John won the diving and subsequently the senior championship.
While he was being presented with the cup, in front of a stunned, disbelieving audience, I gave an interview to a representative of the local newspaper, contriving experiences I’d never had. I was warming to my new status. Stan Lane had still not recovered his full speech as we all set off for New Plymouth hoping to continue on our winning way. We did make an impression at Oakura, but not always for the right reasons.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Taranaki today, there quite likely sits a man in his early-seventies staring at an empty trophy cabinet, dreaming of what might have been. How on earth, he will be thinking, after all that dedication and preparation, and a near faultless performance, could he have been pipped at the post on that fateful summers evening in 1959. I just hope it hasn’t scarred him for life.
They say that today you couldn’t do the things that we got away with in our day.
Perhaps it’s just as well.
