Pauanui Wharf

 Savoring simple daily pleasures

The Leopard Jandal

It was one of those perfect summer nights—the kind that hum quietly in your memory long after the season has passed. Dinner had been simple: sausages and corn on the BBQ, charred just right, eaten with sandy fingers and sun-warmed skin still dusted with salt. None of us had changed yet—bathing suits, threadbare coverups, the occasional hoodie pulled on as the breeze picked up. The sand clung to our feet, nestled between our toes, and we could taste the sea on our lips, feel the warmth of the day still lingering on our skin like a second sunburn.

This walk to the wharf had become our evening ritual. A gentle end to sun-soaked days. We moved in a lazy procession along the footpath that wound through the dunes, familiar silhouettes ahead and behind. Teenagers weaved around us on scooters and bikes, laughter echoing off the sandbanks, headlights flickering like fireflies in the fading dusk.

The moon played peek-a-boo through skudding clouds, casting silver streaks across the estuary. It was high tide. The water surged beneath the jetty as we stepped onto its sun-bleached planks, warm still from the day's heat. The current was swift, rushing out of the channel and past the dark outline of Slipper Island, where we knew it would go on and on, out into the wide Pacific, perhaps one day licking the coast of Chile.

We lingered on the wharf, chatting easily, the kind of conversation that meandered as aimlessly as we did. The children dared each other, shrieking and splashing, some brave enough to leap from the edge into the dark depths below, their courage bolstered by the presence of friends and fading sunlight. Someone pointed out silver flashes of fish dancing at the surface, and we all paused to look.

A small fishing boat chugged past, heading out with its green light glowing faintly in the twilight. Onshore, couples strolled, barefoot in the damp sand, their silhouettes softened by distance and memory. The cries of oyster catchers wheeled overhead, and the scent of the ocean seemed to grow stronger with the rising wind.

I shifted, laughing at some comment, and propped my foot casually on the lower rail of the wharf. As I stepped forward to rejoin the group, I felt the unmistakable tug and twist—then a soft plop. I looked down in time to see it: my right jandal, the leopard print one, spinning sunny-side-up just before it hit the water.

I let out a yell, half-shocked, half-laughing.

“My shoe!”

Without hesitation, our friend bolted—bounding down the side of the jetty and across the sand where it dipped steeply into the estuary. The dunes were soft, sucking his feet down to mid-calf with each step, but he pushed on, eyes locked on the drifting jandal as it bobbed away. We cheered him on from above, clapping and hollering as though it were an Olympic sprint.

But the current was too fast, the shoe too small, and within moments it was gone—swept into the deeper channel, heading out on its own mysterious journey beyond the headland and out to sea.

We made jokes all the way back, imagining it washing up somewhere, maybe on a foreign beach or found by a bemused traveller. I walked barefoot along the cooling footpath, grains of sand sticking to my heel, the sky above now a wash of indigo and scattered stars.

Back at the bach, someone pulled out a deck of cards, someone else put the kettle on for tea. We didn’t talk much more about the jandal that night. But I kept the left one.

It hangs now in our garage, tucked near the peg where we keep the secateurs and our old beach hats and deflated lilo. Every time I see it, that lone leopard-print flip-flop, it makes me smile. It reminds me of a summer full of salt and sun and slow evenings. Of friends and laughter. Of barefoot walks and moonlit swims.

And maybe—just maybe—this summer, its pair will wash back up onto our shore.

Probably not.

But who knows?

The ocean has its own strange ways.