Rites and wrongs of wharf jumping
For countless New Zealanders the very notion of jumping for joy isn’t a metaphor. It’s a vivid memory. It means wa-heying off a wharf, bridge or rope swing then disporting yourself in all manner of mid-air poses before either slipping softly into the untroubled water with Olympian grace or (just a tiny bit more likely) bombing the surface with an exultant, almighty splash.
This, people say, has become a rite of passage.
Youthful rites of passage are often a good thing but you don’t want them to be followed, too closely, by funeral rites.
Here’s where the rosy-eyed nostalgists will show up. Harbour wharf diving and its inland lake and river variants never did them any great harm, they’ll say, and anyway, young people need to learn how to manage risks and take a bit of personal responsibility for their own safety.
And they’re right. By and large. But their own experiences don’t tell the whole story.
The country’s been averaging a couple of deaths a year. Tragic, but the numbers themselves aren’t especially scary. Which is more than can be said for the number of injuries to which water safety and hospital authorities attest. Consider the rise in claims lodged with ACC – in 2002 it was 17, in 2016 it was 230.
Small price to pay for all that fun? Don’t answer. Because that’s not the point. The point is whether it’s a necessary price.
It isn’t, but you’d hardly think so from some of the misplaced online whining followed an entirely sensible Bluff Community Board decision to call a public meeting in search of public feedback on how to keep kids safe, following concerns that some were jumping in front of oncoming boats at the boat ramp.
They aren’t planning an across-the-board ban – such attempts having proven futile on the rare occasions they were tried in port towns further north. The community board is just trying to figure out the best way to minimise risk.
Spare us the argument that this is conjuring up a problem where none exists – as if it’s only sensible to talk about preventing any tragedy from happening again, rather than in the first place.
To this end, the agenda is finding or creating a wharf diving area that’s as safe as it can reasonably be made. This is a task that needs doing because the present situation is asking for trouble. The old South Port jetty has been touted but its structural integrity is a potentially expensive issue. But any town with a survival instinct needs to look after its kids in terms of fun as well as safety, and put a realistic value on doing so.
The locals certainly did so when the Bluff swimming pool’s future was imperilled in 2010 – and even then, one of the stronger points for its retention was that the port town needed to teach its kids how to swim because in time significant numbers of them would be lured off the town wharfs. Bluff needs to let its kids be kids, but that requires its adults to be adults, and look hard at what needs to be done.
Any town with a survival instinct needs to look after its kids in terms of fun as well as safety, and put a realistic value on doing so.