Mt Maunganui Underwater Club

About

To book on a dive to the Rena.
http://www.mmuc.co.nz/p/calendar.html
For info on the Rena http://www.astrolabereef.co.nz/

Story

Short History of Mount Maunganui Underwater

The club was originally called the Mount Maunganui Spearfishing Club in 1956 with an average of twelve members. Scuba gear was virtually unknown or in its very infancy.
Obviously all were free divers and around the Mount itself there were many very large Paua and if you wanted a feed of crays ,mussels and paua you just needed to go along the Rabbit Island side of the “blowhole” (Moturiki Island)
And there were plenty of everything for all.
Many of the spearguns were handmade out of rimu with all the fittings coming from “Sportsworld” in Auckland.
Some of the big double rubber guns had five inch Academy reels screwed underneath the trigger area of the gun with thirty meters of heavy cord wound on for those real big kingies !!
Today (2012) we still have many trophies awarded annually and donated from those very early club members like .
The John Simms cup for heaviest Kingfish
John Rawlinson Cup for most species speared
The Graham Barnett Cup for most meritorious catch.
In these very early days you could go to Rabbit Island and easily get a sack of large crays and then sell some to the Domain Motor Campers for two shillings or maybe a big one for half a crown (25cents) !!
Of course very frowned on now and in fact totally illegal but in those days
No one worried as everything was so plentiful !!
When I joined the club in 1970 we used to have cray and mussel dives once a year and put on a seafood dinner at the Mount Sports Centre and from memory the tickets were about $15.00 per head.
Also in those early days you could get mussels on scuba and there were literally millions of huge and hairy mussels right near Stoney point on the edge of the main shipping entrance channel.
We also got scallops and Paua but not a great deal around in the Paua species even in those days .
This annual event became so popular that some people would come up from Wellington each year as they said the food and great value for money was too much to miss out on.
We used to sell around 150 tickets to this dinner and a live band to help wear off the gout and calories !!
In the 70’s we always met at the Tauranga Aero Club once a month for a social get together and a short committee meeting with a turnout of about thirty members.
Dare I admit it but we ran our own bar small that it was but totally illegal in a real “tiny” way.
The Aero Club was quite “out of the way” in those days and we had many a great social evening with themes like” Champagne and Rags” where if you came along dressed you went home with very little on that hadn’t been Ripped off”……huge fun and sometimes nearly embarrassing !!
Steve Penn our current patron who took me very “kindly” ?? under his wing when I first joined the club would say let’s go out on the runway and chase rabbits !!! This was in his little green Morrie Minor usually near the midnight hour.
Yes we did chase some too , more going slightly sideways than straight ahead on the wet grass.
Imagine today there would be armed offenders out there to get us !!
No real harm was ever done so no complaints !
We used the Aero Club for the next 22 years until we had the great opportunity to join with the Mount Sportfishing Club and Mount Yacht Club to try and build a combined clubrooms which of course you now all know as the Mount Ocean Sports Club and we would be the envy of any dive club in Australasia having such wonderful facilities as this and in such a great location.
We moved into the building in 1993 and continue to enjoy this wonderful asset right up to the present day

Russ Hawkins