Santa Parade 2008
Sunday 7th December 2008
SANTA PARADE - SHARK
Each year in Nelson there is a Santa parade and for the last four years the Nelson Bays Dive
Club goes in the parade.
On the 14th of December at 1.00 pm the Nelson Santa parade made its way from the church
steps to Founders Park, past hundreds of spectators.
The Nelson Bays Dive Club boat ‘Downtime' was decorated with a large cardboard shark
face and fin that Pauline and Hanna had made.
The kids wore shark fins on their heads or were dressed as sharks. Stu Pope uses his bright
red Mike Pero car to tow the boat.
Everybody brings powerful water pistols and soaks everyone in the crowd. We aren't
allowed to wet babies, old people or people with cameras. Paul Newcombe brings a big
water container so we have heaps of water for the water pistols - it takes about 1 hour or
more to get from the start to Founders Park.
People in Wainui Street get buckets of water, hoses and water pistols and soak us. But this
time they weren't there. Other people in Wainui Street bring out sofas and set them up on
the footpath, to watch the parade go by. Our favourite part is at the end, we see all the floats
and some floats you get to go on, when you are at Founders Park.
At the end of the parade we had a barbeque at John Hornbys house. The kids had lots of
swims in John's pool.
By James Perham and Alex Crighton
