Annique Goldenberg

We had that big drop [of rain] in January, and then it repeated itself. As a really big drop in February. I think it was a month to the day. Which was quite extraordinary. I could still get out. One of the few places, which was why I was able to do counselling, and you know, go around the back way to the Civic Hall, ‘cause we’re not far from the highway. And we’d go to the beach out on the Breakwater and watch the amazing tides and everything. It was a torrent going down where we walked here, as well as the waterfall, and so everything was just going. And I’d go down fairly regularly and just make sure everything was clear so it could keep on going. Yeah. But it’s so exciting, I mean, we were talking before, you know. I’d just feel a real excitement with the power of it all. At Brunswick Heads, I’d go out on the…well, I call it the boardwalk. You know…and just the power of the waves…it’s very…it’s the adrenalin for me. It is for a lot of people, I think.

​

Actually, when you think about it, yeah, my brother, my younger brother is on the Hawks Bay ... no on the northern tip of the South Island on that peninsula at Golden Bay. My sister has a …there’s a walk that goes through it, the top or so of the South Island ... and she has a hostel at the end of that, and they have boats and everything. I hadn’t thought about this!  Yes …and Jenny, they’ve got a boat. They’ve all Yeah [laughs] Boats!  Cara lives on Māori indigenous land, and she’s about the only non-indigenous person there and there’s a beautiful big lake, and she has a boat. [laughs] Yeah…they’ve all got boats. You need to get a boat. [laughs]I’ve got a waterfall and a beach. I guess I love sharing the place with people too, ‘cause I don’t necessarily get that  opportunity to sit and talk about it’s nature, and yeah…just how special it is for me. It’d be very hard to leave this place                    ​

It’s kind of a rush really. When I was young I had a small motorbike, and I used to like, to go…yeah ... we’re all a bit adventurous! And I used to like to go to the water’s edge and just sit on these rocks and watch the waves…the power of the waves, yeah, and when I was very little I used to imagine I could talk to the waves as well, and I’d test it out by saying, “Don’t you get my feet wet”, and I’d walk out a bit further. No doubt it was an outgoing tide …or I had some magic. I don’t know! My older brother has spent most of his life, on the seas. He sent us a marvellous letter where he was talking about talking to the waves of the ocean. They’d become alive, you know? It was almost mythological. So, you know, the winds and the storm and the waves became actually real. They became actual entities?  Yes. He was in partnership with them, yeah, very much so. He knew that, don’t quite how  he said it, but you know, they had the law, and he had to obey that law, otherwise he wouldn’t come out of it alive. 

​

So, my mother couldn’t swim, but she’d always be singing shanties to us about, you know, about ‘Speed Bonny Boat’, or ‘O’er the sea to Skye’…all this sort of thing. A lot of those. This made me stop and think and recognise how much water always has been in my life, and how much joy it’s brought, and how I’m not threatened by it. Or, definitely not water as far as rain and those sorts of things, and I love listening to the rain and water, so that was really, really good. I am disappointed the waterfall is not going at the moment, to be able to show it to you in full flood, and I’d love you to see it some stage. But it’s just nice to sit and contemplate and see the interconnections you know, and how my childhood has come through to this and, yeah. And, you know, my mother who’s deceased, I remember her when she did this, and my dad building yachts and how I’d forgotten about that. And all my siblings have boats, and are near the ocean or waterways. Cara being by a big lake. It’s been a powerful influence that’s for sure… in our lives and I’ve never really stopped to think of it.