Ngarunui Beach: Surf and sisterhood
Put your phones away, sit down, relax to the sounds of the ocean while feeling the sand under your feet and the smell of salt in the air.
Just a 10-minute drive away from Whāingaroa Raglan town centre, Ngarunui Beach is the place to relax or be active in many ways. One local who has a particular connection to Ngurunui is Nina Dunyach-Ramos, who came to Raglan 10 years ago and discovered her love for surfing.
Recognising that surfing was a male-dominated sport led her to founding a woman’s surf club called The Dames, to help women feel more confident. Now woman not only from around Raglan but all around the North Island come to Ngarunui Beach to surf together and make friends.
The beach is a quiet place completely surrounded by nature, on one side the ocean, on the other the hill with bush tracks through Wainui Reserve. It’s a place where The Dames come to not think about their lives at home, and just slow down for a while and relax.
Dunyach-Ramos said Ngarunui Beach used to be overloaded when the surf school and lifeguard tower were still at the bottom of the hill, but due to sever erosion 4 years ago they had to move up to the top. Since then, the beach has become bare again which is one of Nina’s favourite things about it.
“There’s no concrete, no buildings, no cars, no noises, no music, nothing. You can just like hear the waves, sound of nature.”
Nina Dunyach-Ramos
Since founding The Dames, women in surfing have caught more attention at Ngarunui Beach, with a lot more female surfers joining and a sense of community when they see each other. Dunyach-Ramos said it makes her really proud to see them greet one another and chat while watching the waves.
The Dames is something really unique to Ngarunui Beach, around Aotearoa New Zealand and other popular surf areas such as Europe there are often not many female surfers, and they usually keep to themselves.
Despite that, at Ngarunui Beach everyone smiles when they see them shouting and cheering each other on as they surf.
Until this year, Nina said mainly foreigners came to the meetups, but since the beginning of this year more and more kiwis have joined from around the Island, many saying that they wished a community like The Dames existed at their local beaches.
In the future Nina wants to see more women surf at the beach and learn how to surf at a beach break. Sitting at the beach, reading the ocean is a very important part of surfing.
To know and understand how the ocean feels that day is something that can only be learned at the beach. It takes time and patience to learn but, by sitting at Ngarunui beach together chatting, The Dames make learning really special.
If you want to know more about the club, their website has all the details.
Emma Willecke is a Year 1 Bachelor of Communication student. This is her first story for the Waikato Independent
