Shark Bait!

THE POOL AND THE BILLIONAIRES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let me introduce you to the wealthiest people in Wollongong. They don’t have extravagant houses, own fancy cars or go on exotic holidays.

In fact, most of them live on a pension.

But they have a pool, a pair of goggles and a daily sunrise.

They believe they are billionaires.

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I’m the shark bait.

The newest members always swim the furthest out. Or so they tell me.

Its 6.25 a.m., and I’m all set for my maiden voyage, with the fabled Wollongong Shark Baiters.

They’re a formidable lot, mirrored goggles and latex caps hiding all hope of recognising anyone in the real world. I can’t help but wish they called themselves something else- the Wollongong Ocean Swimmers sounds perfectly okay to me.

“We give first-timers a little scratch before they dive in- just so there’s a little blood trickle- they don’t need much.” 72-year-old Rob’s voice is dim, barely audible over my thumping heart.

There’s a slightly awkward pause. They swap knowing looks, before splitting the dawn with the rumble of raucous and familiar laughter, multiplied over and over by echoes across the water.

These gags still pull the big laughs, even after being recycled for 25 years. A tiny, golden crest on the horizon provides a little comfort. There’s a reassuring tap on my shoulder.

“Don’t worry love, I always swim the furthest out.”

Rob has been swimming with this motley crew for as long as he can remember. He’s always the first one in, and the last one out.

“Shame for you they don’t go for us old codgers!”

More laughter. They’re laughing so hard I’m convinced someone will slip on the slimy moss, and draw blood on a spiky sea urchin. We clamber awkwardly across the rock ledge; past the safety of the lane ropes, and security of the I-can-see-the-bottom pool.

Kevin gazes longingly at us, as we clumsily hurdle the sea wall.

At 87, he is as big a part of this pool as the saltwater. He was one of the founding Shark Baiters of early 1988.

The pool was closed for painting, so the regulars moved to the pint-sized old rock pool for their daily dip. Kevin, then a sprightly 63-year-old, grew bored. He dove over the edge, and swam around in a big loop toward the back of the harbour.

“You’re mad! You’ll be shark bait out there you will!”, screeched his wife, and there it all began. Two more swam the next day; a week later there was an official club, complete with logo and designated administrators; and by Christmas morning there were 30 swimmers out there, singing Jingle Bells as the sun came up.

Kevin’s face is creased with memories, and bright with sun and salt.

“I made a timber floaty one year, and swum a birthday cake out there for Jack- but when he takes his glasses off he’s blind as a bat- he couldn’t even see the bloody cake we’d made him!”

The memory continues behind his glistening eyes. The laughter fades.

“I’ve taken two of ‘em out and I’ve buried ‘em. Two of the older ones, I took them out.”

He breathes deeply and gazes to sea.

“I scattered them. Burt and Norm from up the coast. Cancer. We use to be a big mob.”

He’d still swim out there, he tells me, but Jack’s leg is no good. And he swims with Jack. They are Wollongong’s over 80’s synchronised swimming champions. Every morning they push off the step at a quarter past six, arms splashing and heads turning in time.

“Me and Jack. We’re the originals. We use to do a mile a day- I suppose 50 years ago. Maybe 60.

I reckon salt is better than medicine- that’s what I’ve always said. Better than any medication.”

Kevin is one big story.

First-grade rugby; featherweight boxing; competition foxtrot with his wife of 65 years; delivering meat in Port Kembla by horse and cart. Buying his first motorbike with wooden brakes for five pounds.

Any close calls?

“Well people use to say ‘do you ever see any sharks?’ And I use to tell them ‘I never looked for them!’

Besides, sharks won’t eat boilers.”

He pauses. Waits.

I’m confused.

“Boilers?”

“Boilers. Oldies. Crikey, aren’t you up with that?!”

It’s my turn to laugh.

Kevin never swam too early, always waiting for the husky dawn light to uncover his wrinkles.

“Wouldn’t want them to mistake me for someone younger…they only like the young ones. They don’t take boilers.”

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Darren has watched them leave every morning for 7 years.

Officially once they leave the pool his lifeguard duties end, but he still counts them as they tumble off the rocks, and again as they awkwardly climb back in.

“They’re totally mad.”

He shakes his head, but there’s a tiny flicker of admiration.

“Its only a matter of time. Dawn and dusk are feeding time; they come in close to shore…

Every year everyone says, ‘someone’ll get taken’…and every year everyone says the same thing… so when it does happen there’ll be a whole lot of ‘I told you so’.”

He trails off. Darren was a City Beach Lifeguard for 16 years, seeing way too many tiger and bull sharks to think ocean swimming is a good idea.

He finds it hard to believe nothing serious has happened out there. Hungry ocean dwellers aside, this isn’t the youngest or fittest group of athletes in town.

“I’d be more worried about a heart attack or stroke out there than a shark. Or a serious fall on those rocks getting in or out…

The probability of something happening- well it has to come around sooner or later doesn’t it?!”

He smiles paternally as we bolt to the showers, mentally ticking us each off his list. The pool is surprisingly popular, 6am on an icy winter morning and there are eight lane-swimmers, and just as many aqua-joggers in the shorter pool.

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So what is the attraction? Why throw yourself every morning headfirst into a face-numbing, headache-inducing icebox, while the rest of the world is tucked up toasty warm in bed?

Sue, a complete non-swimmer until 3 months ago, explains it to me.

“We call it ‘walking and talking’. Up and back up and back…we get so out of breath- not from the exercise but from laughing so much.

It’s the camaraderie. It’s all part of the therapy.”

Arynna, with her thick Californian drawl and flawless skin, believes the cold ocean water has powerful anti-ageing qualities. She cites studies into curing chronic fatigue, raising levels of master anti-oxidants and general body rejuvenation.

She raises her goggles in the barely-there dawn light. I’m baffled. How can eyeliner and lip colour be so flawless after half an hour’s swimming at 6am?!

She catches me staring.

“They’re tattoos. Eyeliner, eyeshadow and lip liner. Aren’t they fabulous?”

They are totally fabulous; and so is she. At 70, Arynna is one of the younger winter swimmers. She believes the pool creates connections; not only with people, but physically through the water to the universe as the sun comes up, creating positive energy that lasts her all day.

“I think that connection is what we’re missing in the world right now.”

She works in her husband’s chiropractor practice, dealing with a large proportion of patients on anti-depressants.

“So many people are depressed. They’re down… health problems, family problems, financial problems- they’re stuck in that mould.

I think by getting up and being out with nature you are caring for your body, mind and spirit. It’s all one.

I just want to take away their anti-depressants and throw them in the pool.”

Lifeguard Darren thinks it’s like a drug. They come down every morning for their hit of saltwater.

“I’ve had people sneaking in while we’re cleaning it.

The waters draining out, and they’re bashing around doing some sort of breaststroke in less than a foot of water. They’re desperate!”

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I wondered what they do now- Darren has to lock the gate Monday mornings, so the lifeguards can clean the pool in peace.

It didn’t take much to find out. Monday morning, 530 a.m. and here they are, collapsible walking sticks perched on the edge, diligently lapping the quaint little rock pool, just north of the pool.

This was the Gentlemen’s Bath. In 1869, Wollongong was one of the few coastal towns where both sexes could bathe; the men here, and ladies in a small indent under Flagstaff Hill.

Although illegal to bathe between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., many disobedient gentlemen, ‘whose position should teach them better manners’, would sneak in for a forbidden 4 o’clock dip.

The Illawarra Mercury flooded with complaints. How could women uphold their purity, when there was every chance of seeing non-related gentlemen in bathing attire during daylight hours?

The controversy continued. The Sydney Morning Herald chastised the ‘Peeping Toms of Wollongong’, gentlemen coming a little too close to the ladies rock pool, warning they will ‘one day meet with the punishment that such sneaks deserve’.

How to deal with all this scandal??! The council was flummoxed.

First, they tried a ‘bathing machine’ in the new harbour. Picture a shed on wheels, with bench seats and hooks for your clothes, pulled into the sea by a horse. The new-age invention had a fenced swimming area for privacy and protection from sharks, and bathing was now permissible all day long. However at 10 cents a turn, it was only an answer for those who could afford it.

In the 1920’s, Wollongong finally found a solution.

We made headlines around the country. Not because the nation’s largest steelworks relocated here from Lithgow. Or that we were planting Norfolk Island pines around North Beach; or even that British novelist D.H. Lawrence lived here, whilst writing his famous novel Kangaroo.

No. In the 1920’s, Wollongong made national headlines because we had a pool where…

Wait for it…

Men and women could bathe together.

Totally risqué.

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Construction started in early 1923, when a few determined locals started lugging rocks from the harbour into a makeshift sea wall, desperate for a more sheltered place to swim.

Council realised they weren’t going to be discouraged, and took over the project a few months later, investing £900 and their entire reputation, opening in April, 1926.

The locals today are no less determined.

John Guy has been defying council every morning for 46 years. His scrambles his hefty frame over the rocks, scoots around the back fence, and plunges in for his 20-lap pre-dawn ritual.

What if someone told him not to?

“Well they’d just better bloody well not!”

By ten past five he’s done, and waits patiently by the change rooms for Darren to unlock the showers.

“The first winter was the coldest. We got a few 12 or 13 degrees…”

He scoffs my idea of a wetsuit, along with his doctor’s suggestion of a flu jab.

“What’s the good of having a swim if you’re wearing a wetsuit?! The saltwater can’t get through!”

Every time I go to my doctor he wants to give me a flu needle. I tell him I have one at ten to 5 every morning.”

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The pool and ocean beyond have served up years of tough love, thrusting icy water at their faithful followers all winter long. Swimming here isn’t about exercise, or friendship, or even the chance to show off your rapidly ageing frame in a pair of high-pant speedos.

It’s simply a ritual, and it’s one I’m happy to be a part of.

Rob trawled the ‘interweb’, and found the answers to staying free from the jaws of sharks. His grandson printed them off.

The laughter begins.

“Cover your companion in lard. They love that.”

The laughter turns to belly-aching hilarity, as he works his way down the list.

“And if all that fails, just swim with someone fatter than you.”

I think I’m safe. I might have been the youngest, but there was definitely someone fatter than me. I’ll come again tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012 at 3:09 pm. It is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.