MONTHLY CHALLENGE

I’m a Water Baby

I’m addicted to it…

The beach at Gladstone

When I was six, my parents split up and my younger sister and I were sent to live with our grandparents — on the beach! Well, not on the beach exactly but across the street from the beach. The street was a dead-end so we were allowed to go down to the beach every day with the kids next door. We played on the beach, ate oysters from the rocks, and played in the waves — not surf — the beach is protected by the Great Barrier Reef. I don’t remember actually being able to swim but I must have been confident in the water.

The bottomless pool

When I was ten, my dad remarried and my sister and I went to live with our new stepmother and two stepbrothers. On our first family holiday, Dad drove to the Snowy Mountains — a long drive with four of us kids in the back seat of our Holden sedan. Somewhere in this vicinity was a “bottomless pool”. My brother, one year younger than me, my sister three years younger, and I all jumped in the water. We could either swim or were just terrified of our father. My new brother, only 5 at the time, refused to jump in — probably the only sensible one of the four of us — and Dad picked him up and threw him in! And guess what? He swam all the way to the other side of the pool — well, dog paddled — but he didn’t drown. (He wound up being a state backstroke champion.)

Friday night swim club

Dad decided we would all join the local swimming club and go to the club night on Friday nights. Luckily the races were handicapped. My time for the 50 metres freestyle was 77 seconds but by the end of the season I was the club’s most improved swimmer and I received a trophy for it. I could hardly have gotten any slower, but that was all the encouragement I needed.

I learned to breaststroke, butterfly, and backstroke and was pretty average at them all. My brothers and sister were all faster freestylers than I was, but my best race wound up being the medley. Most kids specialised in one stroke, but not me! I had to be different.

Shark!

Swimming became a part of all of our lives as well as other Saturday sports. The following year, Dad was transferred to Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast and we went in the surf every morning before school and every afternoon after school. The most exciting thing that happened here was one afternoon, we were swimming a few feet away from a shark. We were the only ones in the water. Mum raised the alarm. In my memory, we all calmly walked out of the water. The poor thing was caught on a sandbar so wasn’t particularly interested in eating us.

Swimming with cane toads!

When I was 13, we moved to Townsville and swimming training started in earnest. We would be at the pool at 5.30 every morning except Saturday to train. Dad became our coach. I didn’t mind the swimming but the pool would be full of cane toads when we first started swimming and I would refuse to get in until they had all been removed. I’ll swim with sharks but I won’t swim with cane toads!

Some other parents asked could he train their kids too and Dad wound up being the official Club Coach. The Club parents all got together with their various skills and built a training pool 20 yards long and 4 lanes wide in our backyard. It went from one side of the yard to the other with just enough room for 4 starting blocks on one end. I think we were the first people in Townsville to have a full-sized swimming pool in their backyard.

Every morning and every afternoon, kids came to train. Mum took over until dad got home from work so our house was always a hive of activity. I gave up training and Club nights when I started University.

Swimming in the ocean

My uncle had a half cabin cruiser and when he’d visit we’d go over to Magnetic Island and dive off the boat and swim in the shark-infested waters. Just joking — we never actually saw a shark while we were swimming — but in the annual Townsville-Magnetic Island race, all the swimmers swam in cages pulled behind boats so they wouldn’t be shark bait.

So, even though I wasn’t a champion swimmer, I was a strong swimmer and loved swimming in the ocean. I never learned to surf but would accompany guys to the Sunshine Coast or Gold Coast when I came to University in Brisbane. In those days, my flatmate and I would hitchhike to the Coast just to get to the beach!

Friday night swim club for my kids

When I got married and had kids, Dad taught them all to swim in our backyard pool and they all became good swimmers. When we moved to Brisbane, their school had a pool and they joined the Friday night swimming club. When I remarried and bought a house across the road from the school, they all took themselves off to training every morning. It kept them fit and healthy and I was happy I didn’t have to drive them there and pick them up as other parents did.

My first backyard pool as an adult

We had our first backyard pool at that house — a 4-foot-deep above-ground pool. When we moved to a larger house, we put in a beautiful black saltwater pool that took up most of our backyard. You could actually swim in it all year round. I loved that pool. When we had to move again to a smaller house, we chose one with a pool and a waterfall. The kids loved jumping off those rocks and into the deep end of the pool. “Geronimo!”

Another move to a house closer to school and the first thing we did was put in another pool — this time a pebble pool with a spa bench. No room for a waterfall. It took up all of the backyard!

Back to the beach

When the kids and I moved to Port Macquarie, it was to live in a house a stone’s throw from the beach. We’d take Sally our black labrador swimming most mornings. The beaches in Port Macquarie are the best beaches I’ve ever swum in. I’d swim far out and my new partner would be frightened for me. I can’t say I’ve ever been frightened in the ocean. I’m still not scared of sharks.

When I moved back to Brisbane and met another man, after a couple of years, we decided to buy a house — my one stipulation was it must have a pool. He wasn’t a swimmer and wasn’t able to put his ears underwater so most days I’d have to pool to myself. After spending time gardening or mowing, I’d head straight into the pool to cool off.

So when he decided he no longer enjoyed my company, I had to find a house with a pool. The hard part was I only had 11 days to move out. As luck would have it, I found one just around the corner from my daughters’. The only problem was it was the “murder house”, but it’s got a pool — and it takes up the whole front yard!

This is just the swimming part of my association with water. Would you like to hear about my snorkelling adventures, sailing, whitewater rafting, tunnel diving or hot thermal spa adventures, or swimming in a volcano? As you can see, I love water — I’m a real water baby.