Humour.
Reading much of the Web site it becomes evident of the negative opposition, the family interference and hardship with Basil trying to develop his dream. There was however a positive humour side to the resort and here are some of those stories. Basil Bodle was known for his great sense of humour and he had great repertoire of jokes. He had the philosophy that he should try and make all of his guests and friends when leaving his presents to be laughing or smiling by telling them a joke or funny saying.This sense of humour extended out into the wider public an example of this was in the early development of the resort.
FRUIT TREES
Basil planted several fruit trees in a bare sand hollow alongside his newly built beach house, he had Barbara (his daughter) and Gary ( his youngest son) to tie fruit onto the spindly looking plants. The fruit included oranges, grapefruit, lemons. Because the fruit trees were just off the main road on Bodle Drive it was seen by hundreds of people as they walked to and from the shop. At any one time there would be 10 or more pointing their finger showing others what they saw. Many photos were taken in disbelief.
PHOENIX PALMS
Basil planted hundreds of phoenix palms all over the development with several on the store corner and outside his own house. The palms grew many massive bunches of green berry size seeds all around and high up on the palms. Basil instructed Gary to take an extension ladder and climb a good fifteen feet and spray paint all these berry size seeds with bright red and pink florescent paint. At a distance these painted berry seeds looked like flowers and gave a great colorful effect adding to the atmosphere of coloured flags and umbrellas. One day Basil had a knock at the door, a very well over dressed Englishman addressed Basil and asked him who owned the palms. Basil said he had planted them. The Englishman explained he was a professor of Botany at an English university and wanted to know what sort variety of phoenix palms these were as he had never seen nor heard of phoenix Palms flowering with such amazing colours. The poor professor was taken aback when Basil burst out laughing, but joined in the humour when Basil explained about the florescent paint.
CHURCH SERVICES
Basil’s house was used for Surf Club meetings, Progressive Association meetings, police lookout and many other activities including Sunday Church services in the early days at the resort. When the Vicar Ted Dashfield arrived Basil would rally everyone he could and would send Gary over to the surf club and gather the members. Gary often did not tell the surf club members what it was for other than to say Basil wanted to see them, so most of them came over in their swimmers. Shock and horror when they realised it was a church service and couldn’t escape, their embarrassment became obvious with their very red faces awkward body language. To make their embarrassment worse Gary was given the job of taking the purse around to gather the donations and would purposely stand in front of the coin less half naked club members, waving the collection purse in front of them. There were many pranks between the senior and junior surf club members.
BRIAN BODLE'S EMBARRASSMENT
Brian Bodle was very tall but very fair and his good friend Wayne Snowsill were both standing on the beach chatting up a couple of good looking girls in bikinis. Brian was wearing his usual yellow Speedo swimmers. They could be seen very clearly from Basil’s house, as in those days there were no sand hills out front. It was observed by those watching in Basil’s house that the boys seemed to be making an impression on the two girls until Brian felt something wrong with his swimmers. He felt the back of his swimmers and to his horror felt bare skin, the seam in his swimmers had failed. His embarrassment was instantly realised and his red blushing face/neck could be seen from Basil’s house, there was an immediate retreat walking backwards away from the two girls. Poor Wayne couldn’t understand why his mate Brian was giving up on their conquest and backing off so soon.
CARAVAN DEBACLE
There was friendly conflict between the senior and junior surf club members. Even though most of the juniors looked up to the seniors as their heroes and some of them were older brothers. The juniors often annoyed the seniors pestering them for smokes, alcohol and spying on them when the seniors had girl friends. Basil had an old round shaped caravan parked next door to his house, this was to accommodate a jockey , Noel McFarlane who trained Basil's race horses the beach. When Noel was away from the beach the senior surf club members used the caravan to take their girlfriends . One day four seniors and their girl friends headed for the caravan with crates of beer and spirits, unfortunately for them they were spotted by a junior who quickly informed the other juniors. To the Seniors horror they were surrounded by juniors wanting beer and smokes, seniors told them to bugger off and quickly closed the door and shuts the windows pulled the blinds with much giggling going on inside. Juniors banged on the windows and door only to hear much abuse coming from inside. Then a cunning plan was hatched, hammer and nails were produced and the juniors nailed the windows and door fast. The hammering was drowned out with the thumping on the windows and door. Four juniors stood on the front draw bar of the caravan while others wound up the back stabilizer legs at the rear of the caravan. When the word was given the boys on the draw bar jumped off and the caravan quickly fell back on its rear with screams from the girls inside and smashing of bottles. The Seniors were yelling out all sorts of threats and tried to get the windows and door open, but to no avail.Meanwhile boys climbed onto the draw bar making the caravan crash down into its original position with more screams and much abuse. This seesaw effect when on quiet a few time until one very angry senior unfastened a window and got out. The juniors scattered very quickly with Seniors in hot pursuit.
SIREN PRANK
The Basil Bodle family and the Jim Longs family had a lot of history together with many pranks and hilarity. A good example of this was Basil's April fools joke on Jim Longs Butchery in Queen St Masterton. Basil organised a number of professional prepared signs which he had erected on lamp posts on main streets leading into Masterton. They read " free pet meat this morning at Longs Butchery" Poor staff at Longs butchery were inundated with keen customers. No doubt there was a scramble by Long's staff to find and take down the signs. When realising who was the obvious culprit retaliation was imminent. Jim's son Ricky who knew Riversdale Beach well and a surf club member hatched his own plan of retaliation. Ricky and his mates drove 54 klms out to the beach in the dark very early one morning to surprise the Bodle family. Ricky took the Surf Clubs electric siren and quietly placed it in the Bodle's basement, made sure all the windows and doors were locked, at the last moment Rick plugged the siren in, flicked the switch, with the screaming siren Rick padlocked the basement garage door and took off back to Masterton , Payback was initiated.
MASTERTON IS PUT ON HIGH ALERT
In 1956, Basil purchased a number of large second world war search lights from an Army surplus auction at Waiouru military camp. He kept this purchase a secret and had his staff at Reliance Tyre & Rubber Co. in Dixon St. assemble the search lights in the open concrete service area of the building one quiet evening. When they started the generators and the lights lit up the sky with huge beams of light over the town, absolute mayhem broke out with hundreds of cars, bicycles and excited people running down the footpaths looking for the source of these war time lights. The search lights could be seen as far away as from Greytown which added to the traffic congestion.The Police in a panic had to call out reservists (Legion of frontiersmen) to help with the traffic jams all over the town. Basil allowed the public to operate the lights making the beams move all over the sky illuminating the clouds over Masterton.
Next, Basil moved the search light to Riversdale Beach for a new year’s party celebration. Again, the lights in the sky created much excitement with the locals, campers and farmers. However after running them for and hour or two an emergency call from the Wellington Harbour Master explaining that the search lights were confusing ship captains not knowing what to take notice of - Castlepoint light house or the search lights, Basil had to turn the lights off. The search light generators were very powerful so Basil installed them at the Riversdale Beach Store to supply electricity for the shops refrigerators as at that time there was no electricity supplied to the resort. He also ran wires underground to his own house opposite the shop continuing the wiring to the neighbour’s houses being John & Barbara Bunny and John & Githlian Maunsell.
Basil one evening came back to his house after a hard day’s work and decided to make himself a tomato sandwich for dinner. It was getting dark, but he was too hungry to be bothered walking across the road to the shop and starting the search light generators for light. On making his sandwich in the dark he found the salt and sprinkled it onto the tomatoes in his sandwich. On eating the sandwich he felt there was not enough salt so sprinkled a lot more. After eating his sandwich he went across the road and got the generators started. Returning to his house and turning on the lights he was shocked to find he had sprinkled Ajax Cleaning powder on his sandwich and in a moment of panic rang Trish Taylor the district nurse and after telling her of his dilemma she just laughed and said it would not hurt him, but he will have the cleanest guts in New Zealand.
If you have stories of humour at Riversdale Beach let me know address below.
Would appreciate feed back too on any of the pages of this Web Site.