When my mum died in 2012, I found a box of her old life-saving medals that she’d been awarded as a teenager. She grew up in public housing in Williamstown, with a full-time working mother and a father who never really returned postwar. She used to say swimming saved her. It gave her a purpose, a sense of place, somewhere to belong when life at home was hard. Later she taught my brother and me to swim, and then my children, instilling in each of us a love of the water that has never gone.
My grandmother stayed in her one-bedroom high-rise tower flat facing the Williamstown beach until she had to move into an aged care home. For her, the smell of the salty sea drifting across land to her window on the fifth floor made her feel home. Gran wasn’t a swimmer, but she was a great supporter of the life saving club, earning lifetime membership in 1961. And when I checked, her name is still on the honour roll.
It had been many years since I’d visited the life saving club, and when a local writers’ festival event found me back there, I immediately searched the walls for evidence of my family. I found Mum in a black and white photograph from 1957, hanging high on the wall. I had to climb up on a chair just to get close enough to snap off a shot. She would have been 17 or 18, but I recognised her immediately, with her big smile and her dark hair swept back under her swimming cap. It is a photograph of the six junior and senior champions standing alongside their instructor. They are wearing matching one-piece Williamstown club bathers and standing barefoot on the grass out the front of the clubhouse.
There was something magical about finding Mum on the wall, surrounded by newer photographs of contemporary champions. For her, being a strong swimmer was something worth owning. Poverty meant she was forced to leave school young, and I think as an adult she often questioned her own worth. But swimming was always something she was good at. It was hers, and the fact she kept the medals for all those years proved just how important it had been.
On the day of the writers’ festival event, 100 swimmers waded into the freezing cold bay after they listened to authors read passages about swimming. I joined them, imagining the spirit of Mum not far away. I didn’t swim properly that morning, but the wonder of being close to a place that had meant so much to people I missed, had me longing to go back.
I’ve always found it hard to resist swimming in water if I’m close to it. Even in winter, I will usually manage a quick dip. So a few weeks ago I arranged to meet a couple of friends for an early morning swim at Williamstown beach. We met near the life saving club, and I said a quiet hello to Mum. Buoyed by the sight of other swimmers already powering along, we followed. It was 10C in the water, and not much warmer in the air. The three of us started slow, until a stranger told us to drop our shoulders under because that was the hardest part. Our bare skin prickled with the cold and then numbed as we started swimming. It was slow going, pushing out to where one of the two poles stands offshore. We decided to swim around the one the locals affectionately call Noleen, because it stands straight. The other is Eileen because it leans a little to one side. Eileen is further out, and we weren’t sure how far we’d manage, but promised to each other that we’d work up to it.
We mostly swam breaststroke because the water stung our faces if our heads were under. We bobbed around a little, chatting, swimming, chatting some more, until we made it around the pole and started back. The sun was edging slowly into the sky and the morning was clear and crisp. As we reached the group of men standing in knee deep water with their beanies on and their coffee cups, we planted our feet on the sandy bottom and grinned at each other. We’d done it. We’d managed our first cold water swim. Our skin was red as we walked up the beach to where our towels lay. Standing in front of the life saving club, facing the lawn where Mum was photographed all those years before, I peeled my bathers off under my towel, and changed, pyjama pants sticking to my damp skin.
We shuffled to the cafe for a coffee to warm up, watching tribes of swimmers in their matching jackets and caps catching up on the week. Our teeth chattered and hands ached as our body temperatures dropped and forced us back to our cars where we cranked up the heaters and drove home. We’ve been back twice a week since that first morning. It’s still freezing and we’re still slow, but the shock of it has gone. Now we wade in faster, knowing that our bodies will adjust and that afterwards we will eventually get warm.
• Nova Weetman is an award-winning children’s author. Her memoir, Love, Death & Other Scenes, is published by UQP
