Erin Fogarty : Auckland NZ : 1960s

Here's a simple way to get a story together for Boomoirs.

Start With A Photograph Caption

That's it ... take a favourite photo and write a caption for it.

CAPTION: Me dressed as a fantasy native on summer holidays at Matauri Bay, Northland, NZ c1966. Note the alarming beast emerging from the sea onto the rock behind me.

... THEN EXPAND THE STORY

Brave and kind neighbours took my sister and me on a summer camping holiday one year, probably about 1966.

I recall five children and two adults being packed into their fabulous Morris Minor van but looking now at a photo of the van I can't imagine this to be possible.

We went for three weeks. We took tents and food and bedding and clothes. We must have towed a trailer.

The Mighty Morris carried five children, two adults and a labrador-cross to their northland holiday destination.

About 10 miles from home I started to get homesick and I could have saved a lot of misery if I'd just blurted out my need for my mother right then. But I kept quiet and decided I'd probably be able to walk home once we reached our destination (at least a five-hour drive in those days).

I remember little about that holiday beyond an intense need for my mother, eating a healthy amount of freshly speared fish, and the horror of a toilet tent with long-drop.

There was, however, a highlight beyond the initial joy five children felt when they realised there were no showering facilities at the camping ground. One morning my oldest sister and her husband drove into camp. Again my memory is vague here because the date suggests they possibly weren't yet married and I promise you, free love had yet to enter my mother's vocabulary. I struggle to imagine her allowing my sister to "go off" with her boyfriend on a holiday, unchaperoned.

To celebrate their arrival we walked over a hill to a little bay and my brother-in-law, in an effort to get my mind off begging them to take me with them for the remainder of their holiday, suggested I might like to dress up as anything I wanted, so long as the costume called for only flax, shells and a pair of sunglasses.

So here I am pictured, Erin, Fantasy South Sea Island Girl, homesick, hating the toilet tent, and never to go camping again.