In early December, Wiltshire put in a huge brick gateway out at the road, complete with large wrought-iron gates. Mum said it was all part of presenting Pacific Keys as an exclusive development; it showed that we intended to keep out the riff-raff. It worked. We hardly had any people bringing their vehicles onto the beach that summer. However, the main thing that made it a great season was the weather. It rained all summer long. For week after week, large anticyclones would park to the northeast of New Zealand. Their winds dragged warm, moist air from the tropics onto New Zealand where it was dumped as rain. Almost every night the news would have some expert trying to explain what was happening and why. We heard of La Niña, El Niño, Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, global warming, even sunspots. Yet none of it made much sense, and it didn’t stop the rain from falling. Summer holidays were a washout. People just stopped going to beaches, especially on the Coromandel Peninsula. And no people meant no annoying visitors to the sand spit in Mansfield Bay.
