Life | Winter Creek Swimming

Last updated on 1 June 2017

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In my 26 years of life I’ve lived in 13 houses, but the place that I spent the longest time, and still over half my life, was the town I now call home.

I lived in that house for 12 years, and for nearly all those 12 years, Jessie from Nailed It NZ was my neighbour. We both lived on lifestyle blocks, which means that we have a couple of acres of property surrounding our houses. We had sheep, chickens, a rabbit, numerous guinea pigs, Jessie and her family had goats, and a pony, and a pig later (funny story about that pig one day), and it was like living on a small farm.

Growing up next to a kid of the same age as you (and going to the same school too), meant we spent a lot of time at each other’s houses.Running through their property, and into the front of ours, was a creek, about a metre wide, and only about ¾ of a metre deep – barely past our knees now I should think.

This creek was brilliant – it was our very own swimming pool, and though we both had paddling pools (and later, Jessie and her family had a huge pool that they set up in summer), we did spend a good lot of time in that creek when we were young. There were, however, several things about that creek that we should have probably thought twice about.

The time we seemed to swim in the creek the most was in the middle of winter. We thought it was a fantastic time for swimming, so were often found jumping across the creek and inevitably falling in, cracking up laughing, and then spending the next few days in bed because we had heavy colds. Cold creek.

The creek was also basically just thin mud. It was in a constant state of blergh with mud and murky water gently flowing (or sometimes not even flowing) through it from the paddocks behind our properties. These paddocks had cows and sheep in them, so most of the time the creek was filled with you-know-what. Cold and dirty creek.

The other thing about this creek was that, being a typical country lifestyle block in rural New Zealand, it was full of eels.Often they would hiding in the muddy walls of the water, and sometimes we wouldn’t know they were there and we’d step on them. It was a cold, dirty, eel-infested creek…and we used to swim in it.

Eventually we grew out of it, in favour of our paddling pools and school pool…and also just simply growing up and having other interests…but it’s still a fond childhood memory. But I always wonder…this is very normal for a New Zealand kid in the late 90’s…but is it normal for you? Did you swim in eel-infested creeks when you were 8?