A lifetime of beachside memories
Holiday time. The words welcome you as you drive into Tahuna Beach Holiday Park, the largest campground in the Southern Hemisphere. Even on a recent winter’s day, the sun is shining.
But there is snow on the Western Ranges. The trees are bare and the ducks have taken up residence on the grounds near the sea of empty caravans, ready for the ‘‘busy period’’.
A few children backflip on the trampoline and bounce around the giant jumping pillow. Fair-like flags flutter in the breeze and, despite it being quiet, everyone stops to say ‘‘hello’’.
During summer up to 3000 campers dot every inch of the park’s tidy 54 acres. They sit along the banks of the Tahunanui Beach estuary, the edge of the grassed amphitheatre, fill picnic tables and soak up the sun.
The park village is made up of 120 permanent residents who have opted for a simplistic ‘‘lifestyle choice’’ in the region.
New Zealanders have been making holiday memories at Tahuna Beach since 1926, so from now until summer 2016-17, Tahuna Beach Holiday Park is celebrating.
A key focus of the celebrations is a national photo and short story competition called ‘‘Collective Holiday Memories’’.
Everybody is invited to share their memories of staying at the holiday park over the past nine decades by submitting photographs and short stories.
Karen Wilkinson, who has
As the largest campground in the Southern Hemisphere turns 90-yearsold Jessica Long looks back at the long history of Tahuna Beach Holiday Park.
worked at Tahuna Beach Holiday Park for more than 20 years, says it is that tradition that still draws people even now.
But the park has come a long way since its early beginnings.
THEN
It was 1910. Nelson City Council has just bought a stretch of land along Tahunanui Beach for £305, 12 shillings and six pence – today that is about NZD$44,000.
The block will become the site for today’s Tahuna Beach Holiday Park.
Settlers, mainly British, have established the Nelson township which housed sporting clubs, schools, churches and even the Trafalgar Hotel. Hop and apple harvests are the region’s livelihood and the start of Nelson’s major tobacco-growing industry is about to kick off.
Eight years later the township celebrates a Gala Day. Hundreds flock to the shoreline to set up canvas marquees and tents.
A roadway leads elegant coach cars, horses and carts directly onto the sand. Well-dressed men don hats and suits to the beach, women wear mostly white and shield themselves from the sun with umbrellas.
In an old photograph, taken about 1918, bicycles can be seen learning against fence railings alongside tethered horses. A family sits among the tussock. The mother rocks a baby in a hooded pram as four children nestle beside her. Beyond them afternoon tea is advertised on a painted banner, a lone boat on the water in the distance. It is a day out for the town. By 1921 Frederick Nelson (Pompy) Jones, acknowledged as one of New Zealand’s first photojournalists, has opened Coney Park in Haven Rd. It has music organs, merry-go-rounds and miniature train rides.
In 1926 the council leases the Tahunanui acreage – which was named the ‘‘Sands Association’’. Dressing sheds, playgrounds and a kiosk are soon erected.
The motor camp opens in the 1930s and marks the first generation of 700 summer holidaymakers who camp on site. Men wear singlet styled, one-piece bathing suits to surf large, wooden boards in the 1940s.
Bronzed shirtless bodies strewn across the sands and campervans mark the 1950s. Family-friendly holidays of the 1960s are remembered as the times of makeshift podiums propped on steel barrels for the Miss Nelson Competition. For another 10 years hippies mixed within the regulars, drawn by the cheap living.
In another 10 years tourists are dropped by the busload at the doorstep of Tahuna Beach Holiday Park.
The park’s name, transport, fashions and camping equipment changed over generations but the sense of community, say the stalwarts, has not.
NOW
In the 21st century the destination pumps about $20 million a year into the regional economy.
Campers haul jetskis, stand-up paddle boards, caravans, electronic devices and everyone asks about WiFi.
Planes fly overhead carrying potential international visitors but, the spirit of a family-friendly holiday has not changed as the Tahunanui beachside continues to attract people to its shores.
Tahuna Beach Holiday Park general manager Marcel Fekkes says about 160,000 guests visit each year, mainly from Canterbury but also Wellington, Auckland and Marlborough.
‘‘It’s a small township in the town.’’
Since his move from the West Coast one-and-a-half years ago, Fekkes and staff have set down plans to revitalise the park to make it more ‘‘resort style’’ and to continue its long-lineage of appeal to holidaymakers.
The four-stage, 20-year project will add boardwalks, new buildings and landscaping.
With a background in hospitality and a keen ‘‘camper from way back’’, Karen Wilkinson jumped at the opportunity to work at the park. She says it is the people ‘‘from all walks of life’’ that kept her there.
She has welcomed young, old, foreigners, families, singles, executives and first-time visitors.
Those who had stayed each year for the last 50 years and the ‘‘permanents’’ became part of the family, Wilkinson says. ‘‘It’s never boring,’’ she says. ‘‘It’s tradition ... they’ve been coming for generations in some cases.
‘‘They can almost hand the site off, down through the generations. When the grandparents are too old to come, the parents and the grandchildren are coming.’’
She says the grounds built a community where people arrived as strangers and left great friends.
Wilkinson says she knows of families who live in the same Christchurch suburb but had ‘‘nothing to do with each other’’ until they arrive in Nelson for the summer as camping neighbours.
‘‘They go out to dinners together and they celebrate New Year’s Eve together.’’
Wilkinson says it is also about familiarity, a low staff turn-over, well-known camping buddies and only necessary ‘‘tweaks here and there’’ to the facilities that give customers a sense of ownership of the grounds.
‘‘They like everything to be exactly as it was.’’
There have been some changes and additions like the cafe/shop installed last year, upgrades to keep up with greater customer expectations, and camp equipment, that Wilkinson says make the park experience ‘‘more like glamping’’.
The biggest modification has been technological with a move to online reservations and minimising cash-payments.
But even with those changes it is still the same, says Wilkinson.
On that recent winter’s day, two children run by with bare feet. One is wearing a Batman T-shirt.
There are no tents pitched but a tiny green caravan with an extension on the side has a glass sunroom at the front. It’s nestled within a cul-de-sac of 16 other