A Year at Pauatahanui Inlet

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Note: This is a journal entry from when I was an exchange student in 1994-1995. The photos have been scanned from the original prints.


Living around the Pauatahanui Inlet for a year was amazing. It is such a beautiful place, whether enshrouded in mist, or peppered with yachts for the Sunday Regatta. I loved to look at it by moonlight, when it was all silvery and peaceful.

The weekly Rotary meetings I attended were at the Paremata Boat Club, so I got to watch the last light of day on the Inlet once a week.

I was lucky enough to go out on the water one Sunday during the Regatta, not on a sailboat but on one of the zodiacs that 'patrols' during the regatta.

I got a sunburn after spending one sunny spring afternoon wading in Brown's Bay with some friends from school.

I spent one unlucky day studying crabs on the mudflats for a biology class--unlucky because it poured with rain, and all of my observations were washed right off the page, and I had nothing to turn in. My classmates and I were soaked to the skin, and it took a lot of convincing to get our teachers to let us go straight home to dry off and warm up, instead of back to school.

On my last morning in New Zealand, the inlet was like glass, reflecting a blue sky and fluffy clouds. It was so beautiful, and rather fitting, because I was doing a lot of reflecting myself that morning.

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