Sink or swim

One of the things I like about Australia is that there’s always someone exercising and there’s always someone sitting in a café, often after they’ve been exercising. I’m glad to say that that I’m doing my bit to maintain this admirable state of affairs but I’ve had to withstand some cultural intimidation along the way. Exercise, and sport, is taken very seriously.

Fired by my enthusiasm to stay afloat and alive on the local beach - Diggers has a mysteriously mobile and treacherous rip that has been known to draw away unsuspecting holidaymakers - I decided to take myself off to the proudly named Coffs Harbour War Memorial Olympic Pool (I should say that “Olympic” refers to its size and, apparently, the aspirations of its regular users; the Games have never been held here).

It took me a few visits before I made it across the threshold, even at 9am, because for weeks the pool was booked for school competitions right through to lunchtime. Before 9am, the pool was used for “squads”, as one of the attendants told me. I didn’t bother asking which squads because I took it for granted that in every town, in every sport, every morning across Australia, “squads” are at work, striving for sporting domination, and possibly even enjoying it. They then go to the nearest café.

When I finally made my way in, it was very different to the siege-like atmosphere in many British public pools. I asked the jolly woman on the gate if they had lockers. “We do,” she replied. “But they’re not worth the trouble so if you‘ve got any valuables, you’d better give them to me.” She put my wallet and keys next to someone’s sandwiches on a shelf. No one bothers with the changing rooms, either. You arrive wearing your swimmers, shorts and a t-shirt so it’s straight to the pool, which is open-air and so vast, you can barely see the other end. In March, the air was pleasantly warm and the unheated water pleasantly cool and I started working on the only stroke available to me, the breast stroke, which, with practice, becomes reasonably efficient, despite my habit of lying in the water at an angle, like a surfacing submarine with a surfeit of ballast in the stern.

I flogged up and down, feeling glad the pool was empty as I was going so slowly (oh yes, there were no lifeguards; they seem to have no need for them). A couple more swimmers drifted in - there were never more than a three of us at that time of the morning - and then something like a torpedo went by in the next lane, trailing a stream of bubbles. Of course, I didn’t catch it and humiliation was complete when the torpedo was revealed to be a slim woman in an elegant swimsuit who, though clearly extremely fit and youthful in spirit, was even older than me. I’m fifty, for the record, and it would not be polite to hazard a guess at Ann’s age. We started chatting each morning, before, as she puts it “we’d better get down to business” and she powers off to the distant, far end of the pool while I flounder along in my lane. She also does more lengths than I do.

I’m impressed by Ann and, believe me, there are many more like her, all out there unintentionally humiliating passing Poms. I was even more impressed (yes, ok, even more humiliated) when, after a couple of weeks, she revealed that the pool is her second exercise session of the day and, that before 9am. “I usually go for a walk over Mutton Bird Island with some friends and then we have a long swim off Jetty Beach,” she told me casually. “But I like to do a few lengths here as well.”

Behind the bench where we leave our clothes, a new generation is prepared for the stern business of being Australian. In the teaching pool, protected from the sun by a wooden roof, children who can yet barely walk are having swimming lessons. “Long arms, Monty, long arms,” shouts the instructor. Inside, two small boys are made to race for a ball flung to the far side of the pool. Monty wins by a head, possibly because he has long arms for his age, or he uses his arms in some secret, Aussie-domination-of-sport way that makes his arms seem longer. I notice that they both have floats strapped to their backs, clearly to correct the tilting submarine tendency. If only I’d had their advantages.

Anyway, I’m having a break from all this because the pool has shut for what passes here for winter. I asked the pool’s owner, who works there full-time, how he passed the close season. “Grouting,” he replied. “It’s a big job.” They really are indomitable, these Australians.