I seldom need much of an excuse to slip back through the years to the time of my childhood when the yard went on forever and hitting a window while playing cricket was one of the few fears held.

So on the weekend, when I entered the yawning mouth of a gigantic water park thrill ride and took the first heart-pounding speed run through its steep, serpentine chambers, it was clear to me where I would be going, even though I had my eyes closed most of the time.

Water thrills might have moved up in the world, however the thrill of water has always been constant.

We started small. I have hazy memories of kindergarten.

Rows of little toilets with no doors.

Canvas stretchers and flannelette sheets for nap time.

The fruit trolley.

Having my painting hung up with clothes pegs.

My grandmother arriving on the Greyhound bus.

Outside there was concrete pipe set under a grassy mound to crawl through.

But best of all was the water trough.

Before the reverberations of Mum’s disappearing Volkswagen was swallowed by other suburban sounds, I would have rushed to see what colour the water was.

The teachers would use different dyes each day – blue, yellow, green, red – to make the water even more appealing than it already was.

We stood at the trough splashing each other and pouring the liquid into various jugs and cups.

It was like looking at life through coloured cellophane.

Later, when we learned to swim, the canal at the back of our Nan’s house at Miami Keys was where the action was.

My brother, sister and I would play all holiday long.

We’d somersault off the jetty, swim underneath the moored cabin cruisers and race the dog, Pal, around the sand.

One of us kids would hold the hound back while the others dashed off around the velodrome-like contour of the canal’s semi-circular end at low tide.

Once we reached the halfway point – leaping the storm water outlet like a steeplechase hurdle – it was the signal to unleash Pal.

Then it was a mad dash to beat the beloved bitsa to the finishing line dug into the sand across from Nan’s place. We’d all swim back over – dog included – to do it again and again until we were called for lunch.

On one occasion we were sitting in the shallows, trying to scoop small fish into a plywood canoe, when the serenity was shattered by an almighty crash from behind the houses, up on the main road.

We couldn’t see it from where we were but a semi-trailer had overturned, spilling an odd cargo of thousands of silver discs.

We later discovered them to be the ends of tin cans.

We guessed they were bound for a baked beans factory or something.

Down they rolled in metallic migration, through the side passages of homes and en masse across a vacant lot.

Like lid lemmings in shiny streams they spilled down the embankment from various tributaries to the canal, leaving a lasting impression on wide-eyed witnesses.

Even at six years of age, I was convinced I had already seen it all.

Other water-based thrills flowed on through life.

Jumping through the sprinkler – which in our case was the brass hose nozzle sticking up through a hole in a house brick – was always a constant.

The advent of the Slip ’n’ Slid took things up a notch, for childhood fun and emergency wards alike.

Whether blasting down the real McCoy or a home-made version created from a sheet of plastic, the garden hose and some Trix washing-up liquid, it was always fabulous fun until somebody flew off and hit the barbecue or the clothesline.

And there were many other outrageous aquatic adventures to make a parent wince if they ever knew what you were up to.

There was jumping from the railway bridge into the creek, swimming in the concrete reservoir up on Simpson’s Road, exploring the abandoned sea baths near Snapper Rocks, taking shelter in the ocean rock pool at Fingal while thunderous waves climbed the causeway below spewing salt and sea mist into the air.

These were but a few.

I will tap into more of these thoughts next week, if you bear with me while I explore further how I found my fountain of youth at Whitewater World.

to be continued…