What's in a name? Plenty if it's Ning Nong Bay

From Egypt to the South Pacific, from Lake Ferry to Martinborough, the story of how Ning Nong Bay got its name has become something of an urban or not so urban myth.
Longtime South Wairarapa fisherman Darcy Christiansen contacted the Wairarapa Times-Age last month with a story of a day back in 1951.
He said it was too wet to fish, and a bystander commented on the "Ning Nongs" standing in the rain, looking longingly out to sea.
The comment led to a handmade sign, which led to official recognition on the map.
Reports from the Evening Post of 30 years ago, however, give three more possible origins of the Ning Nong nomenclature.
The most exotic came from a writer to the Post calling himself Ning.
It seems Ning met a truck driver who claimed Ning Nong was a beer bar near Cairo, Egypt, where he and his mates had met.
Finding themselves in a Cape Palliser village, these same friends the truck driver claimed decided to name it in the beer bar's honour.
Ning also said the name could also have come from a prominent insurance executive passing through and noting the unusual names of the baches there.
Inspired perhaps by the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific and its song Bali Hai, the baches were termed everything from Bali Hi and Bali Lo to Bali Hoo and Bally Ache.
The insurance man, hearing the explanation, referred to the bach owners as "a lot of Ning Nongs".
A third explanation, which may work in tandem with Mr Christiansen's memory, came from Lin Price, of Martinborough, who wrote to the same publication attributing the name to Lake Ferry publican Bob Ford.
"On a Saturday afternoon we used to arrive all in one car and he called us the Ning Nongs from a book he had been reading," Mr Price wrote.
"Some smart fellow had a signpost properly done and it stood for many years."
The three theories come from a scrapbook compiled by the late Bob Gray, of Martinborough, who wrote in the margins that the signpost was first erected by the late Ian Chapman, of Martinborough, who had a bach there.
However, a phonecall to Mrs Thora Chapman, Mr Chapman's widow, casts doubt on the story.
"No, he wouldn't have done that," she said. "We just turned up one weekend and there it was.
"It was all in fun."
Mrs Chapman said the sign apparently replaced an earlier, less well-received sign, calling the place Flagon Bay.
Mrs Chapman, like Mr Christiansen last month, recalls what she says was the first mention of the name, a fateful wet day when those unable to fish were termed Ning Nongs.
Like Mr Christiansen, Mrs Chapman recalls that the late Barry Brough was there, and she believes he was the man who coined the term.
"It was all in fun," she said.