The Gap Water Hole Before the boat in the water hole met the sad disintegrating end, that David described in his story � The Rowing Boat & The Flood�, it represented hours & hours of afternoon fun for all us boys and our friends. Yet, it was just one of the activities that were available in that wonderful place. David had also erected a swing off a branch overhanging the water. This eventually became a trapeze rope with gymnastic feats being performed almost daily. Everything worked out fine provided you let go and landed in the deep part of the pond. Some times you would let go a little too late and end up in the reeds lining the sides. Still it was all great fun! One time, a pumped up car tube became the target landing point in a one game we played. The object was to fly high off the end of the rope, spin in the air and land bum first in the tube. (A word of warning to ensure minimal pain � make sure the tube value is pointing down at all times) I vividly remember one day, as we were cooling off with just our necks sticking out of the water, watching a snake swim between us as it crossed the water hole. There was no time to panic but rather just the frozen stance of �David Attenbrough� type amazement. For some time, after some heavy rains, the water in the pond became very muddy. Untroubled, David simply invented a new game. He came up with an adaptation on that old school ground game called �Red Rover�. The object was to swim underwater across the length of the pond without being caught by the person defending in the middle. You could not see through the water so you had to rely on touch and looking for bubbles or any other evidence of underwater movement. Various schemes were created to avoid capture. One scheme involved heading off in one direction but changing course for the other. Another was not to swim off but to sit on the bottom until enough time to elapse for the captor to believe you had passed and gave up the search. David improved on this idea by swimming underwater and surfacing in the long reeds on the bank. He would wait there until the person in the middle gave up looking (assuming drowning), and then he would calmly proceed to the other end without any of the normal frenzied searching being performed. Still, by far the best scheme us young�uns had, for beating our older brother, was for one of us to go while the other watched for David�s movement. The brother left watching would hold two river bed rocks. If David went to the right then the instructions were to swim to the left (one hit), or, if left then (two hits) = swim to the right. We had him beaten on this scheme for quite a while until one time when I was underwater I got the instruction left (one hit). I headed off in that direction but then I got the instruction right (two hits) followed by another (one hit) left. In the confusion of swimming round in circles I ran out of breath. Unfortunately I surfaced right beside David who was standing there with a big grin on his face and also holding two rocks.
