Swimming for our lives
Without Prejudice
Just about all my life i have been swimming and so has my family. It began for me In Port Augusta, bobbing in the water and holding on to the pier legs and stairs, you had to be careful of the Sharp barnacles and the slime. Jackie did a race from the stairs to the opposite shore and won.
And the boys started doing relay races and they won too. In those days we were untrained, just thrashers only Jackie had form and style, almost dainty in her strokes. She taught me in Canowindra when I was 7 and I "got it" straight away, except proper breathing, that I would learn when I won a Scholarship at 8 to be trained by a coach at Liverpool.
In the mean time we started a relay race with just us, the Bruckshaws and we mowed down the competition and I had a chance on a night squad meet to show what I could do. Dad said I dived in like a duck but plowed my way to the end of an Olympic Pool, not taking a breath. And that was it, my love of swimming and competition coming together.
Dad trained us when you could crack ice on the pool, him in his warm white track suit and us lap after lap in the pool. Getting up at 5am and practicing every day and when the winter really set in, we still went there, and did calisthenics. Canowindra was freezing in the winter mornings but the weather would always brighten during the day.
We always had to do 50 laps as a warm up and the coach would ask how many I had done and I would say 23 when it was more like 15. We were fit as fiddles and when the Squad started again, we hit the top. Jackie would go in first and she was good, George dying to get in and powering down the pool and then me the titchy one and then Ian on the last lap and he had powerful strokes, he ate up that pool. We won so many pennants, cups, trophies. It was exciting to be top in something. My hair turned green, not a pretty green a dirt bottle green and Mum heard that tomato sauce got it out, but I just put on the hated cap all the time and it stopped going green.
I hated goggles too, but after too many red eyed days I started to wear them, and suddenly I was swimming 50 laps easier and easily. I found a point on the white lines and I would just concentrate hard, counting my breaths and after a while you feel really calm and you can swim for your life. We jumped off the high dive platform, George could handstand off and Jackie and I just held hands and screamed a lot as we went down.
Hitting the water at enormous speed, ears popping, noses filling, we climbed again and again to jump. Jackie taught me to flat dive, instead of a pebble dropped in water dive. I loved the flat dive, elongating the body out as far as you could thrust. Boys were better at it. So we'd watch them intensely seeing how they did it.
And then I was going to the Nationals, such a big deal in a small town, and after we went up to the Gold Coast as a celebration, i came 5th in a field of 8 but my parents thought that was good enough. And the Gold Coast was the best thing I had ever seen. It was eye popping, even in those days the place was alive with people, happy smiling holidaymakers, spruikers, the man that sprayed you with Coppertone on the beach.
It was fabulous, all of it the Coppertone Sign with the little red faced girl having her bather bottoms pulled down by the puppy, the Arcades, the beach, so big, so white, a photo of that time shows David and I on our knees in our clothes holding up white sand and letting it run through our fingers.
And we were moving again and to Wentworthville and the first Olympic pool was at Liverpool. An English Couple and their two little babies came with us from Canowindra. I loved the babies, watching them asleep in the front room. So plump and sweet and smiling when they woke up, and Mum and Dad had to give the parents their walking papers as he wouldn't work.
So Dad put their stuff out on the street and they went to the Church and complained. And they came back with the Minister but Mum and Dad just ignored their entreaties, we were poor ourselves, and Mum believed
"Charity begins at Home"
We went to Wentworthville Primary and Dave refused to go and Mum would take him on his 3 wheeler and he would be home before she was, he was a bugger, never liking school until he went to Flushdike Primary at Ossett and he used to think he was a Dalek and would sign all his letters as Dalek Dave.But he's now a brilliant Business man and lives in the most fabulous house on the Redcliffe Peninsula and he was not a scholar.
Jackie was at McArthur Girls School and hung around with a girl that Mum said was "Boy Crazy". No one was allowed to be "Boy Crazy" in our family. Any mention of sex and my Mum was out the door, we sensed rather than witnessed her prudishness. Dad didn't care he would tell you anything you asked. He was a sensible Man however and told me the Facts Of Life at age 13, you have no idea how embarrased I was listening my little short fat Scottish Father telling me the facts of life and I had to stand there till it was done.Y
Years later I thought how brave of him that was to do as he knew my Mother wouldn't. ( I told Deb and Yvette early 10 and 9 and Yvette sat their the whole time with her fingers in her ears and going lalalalal, she now has 7 kids !)
So at Wentworthville we had to get to Liverpool, My Mum didn't drive and I had two training nights a week, so I went on my own, catching the bus and train and I was 8, sometimes running through the dark to home from the station with George who had been sent to "fetch" me. It was a poor neighbourhood where we lived, comission houses, all the same as the other except for different colours.
We had an outhouse for a loo. And the Bathroom was tiny pink and white and grey tiles which were my job on a Saturday to clean. Everything had to be coated with Powder Bon Ami then polished off, mirrors, floors, window, bath, hand basin of the old green pedestal style. I hated that job with a passion but it still had to be done.
And we were moving again, to the Gold Coast, God, did we ever stay anywhere was my thought. ???? I was at the age were friends were becoming important and always the moving, but the Gold Coast was the best idea my parents came up with. We loved it and stayed there till I was nearly 12..
And once again we were swimming, squad Thursday nights and the only pool available was one on top of a hotel in Southport. Mum and Dad moved into a flat above the Butchers in Main Beach, opposite us was beach, only the road separating us from it. There was a huge Nursing Home opposite too, all white and like a hotel. We would run across the road and there we were on the magnificent Gold Coast.
We went to school at Southport State School, which had to have been one of the best schools I ever went to. The Teaching staff were friendly and enthusiastic and we blossomed. Sport was encouraged and we swam once a week at The Blue Lagoon Hotel Pool just around the corner, walking there in the heat and diving into the cool green pool as soon as we got there.
I played softball, handball, "handsies" with Jackie wherever we were and we had played that for years and skipping games, perfecting elastics, which was a skill, I joined the fife band and we played every assembly and I beagn to be fascinated with Music at long last after my disastrous piano lessons.
But Dad made me take them up again on a Saturday at The School, which was a highly prestigious Private School and I would hate going there, having to put up with the funny little Austrian music Teacher, who had bottle bottom glasses and evil breath. I had to gasp and turn my head when he leaned over to flip the music over for me. But he was a good teacher, patient, and kindly. I'm not sure what he thought of me as a Piano Player, I regretted not having long elegant fingers but you have to work with what you have.
But the fife I was fascinated with. It was long silver one with holes in it and thumb hole on the back, it had a screw off top, Dad bought it home from his music shop and I played all the time. I had to develop a lip, and breathe so it was a warm husky sound, not a screech. That took time and patience and the music was numeric, and I understood it, easily. And i practiced all the time, my parents sending me out to the Verandah, I was obsessed at getting it right and school too. I have no idea why I was so driven but I was, I had to excel at everything except for housework.
We moved from Main Beach to Marine Parade, Labrador and the Broad water was right opposite so we could swim every day, the boys finding a sunken boat and we made it our project to try and repair it and sail it. And Jackies new Beau who was a used car salesman took us out on his Catamaran to impress Jackie and she was impressed I think but didn't want to show him.
I will never forget that feeling of flying across the water, waves and wind coming together to speed us across, inches from the water, it was wonderful. We stopped at a sand bar and pulled the boat up on the sand. He took us out more than once, poor Merve, Mum and Dad insisted that we go as chaperones, Dave and I, and he took us to the Movies at Southport.
In those days the Southport Theatre was on the pier, canvas slung low chairs with waves literally under our feet, seen through the big gaps in the hardwood floors. It was insane, and people really did roll Jaffas down the aisles, but they disappeared down the cracks.
Merve took us to see Dr NO and it was pretty heavy stuff for me at 11 and Dave at 7 and everytime I looked sideways at Jackie she was locked lips with Merve. Urgh! I thought they were disgusting and could not think of anything more horrible. I was tempted to tell Mum but I didn't, Jackie would have thumped me.
And we went to England and swam there too, this time in heated undercover pools that smelt of steam and chlorine and they had caffs in them where you could get hot chocolate and we spent all day in there just as we had in all the other pools..... and the smell of the sheep dip disinfectant in the small entry pool and the chlorine smell and the burning in my nostrils on the first dive are with me still.
And the meditative state you get into when you swim lap after lap, forcing yourself on. The good swimmer knows when they hit the high, the body rising in the water, fatigue forgotten, rising further out of the water and it's no longer work, it's just you and the water and your rythmic breathing and you could swim forever.
Love Janette
Just about all my life i have been swimming and so has my family. It began for me In Port Augusta, bobbing in the water and holding on to the pier legs and stairs, you had to be careful of the Sharp barnacles and the slime. Jackie did a race from the stairs to the opposite shore and won.
And the boys started doing relay races and they won too. In those days we were untrained, just thrashers only Jackie had form and style, almost dainty in her strokes. She taught me in Canowindra when I was 7 and I "got it" straight away, except proper breathing, that I would learn when I won a Scholarship at 8 to be trained by a coach at Liverpool.
In the mean time we started a relay race with just us, the Bruckshaws and we mowed down the competition and I had a chance on a night squad meet to show what I could do. Dad said I dived in like a duck but plowed my way to the end of an Olympic Pool, not taking a breath. And that was it, my love of swimming and competition coming together.
Dad trained us when you could crack ice on the pool, him in his warm white track suit and us lap after lap in the pool. Getting up at 5am and practicing every day and when the winter really set in, we still went there, and did calisthenics. Canowindra was freezing in the winter mornings but the weather would always brighten during the day.
We always had to do 50 laps as a warm up and the coach would ask how many I had done and I would say 23 when it was more like 15. We were fit as fiddles and when the Squad started again, we hit the top. Jackie would go in first and she was good, George dying to get in and powering down the pool and then me the titchy one and then Ian on the last lap and he had powerful strokes, he ate up that pool. We won so many pennants, cups, trophies. It was exciting to be top in something. My hair turned green, not a pretty green a dirt bottle green and Mum heard that tomato sauce got it out, but I just put on the hated cap all the time and it stopped going green.
I hated goggles too, but after too many red eyed days I started to wear them, and suddenly I was swimming 50 laps easier and easily. I found a point on the white lines and I would just concentrate hard, counting my breaths and after a while you feel really calm and you can swim for your life. We jumped off the high dive platform, George could handstand off and Jackie and I just held hands and screamed a lot as we went down.
Hitting the water at enormous speed, ears popping, noses filling, we climbed again and again to jump. Jackie taught me to flat dive, instead of a pebble dropped in water dive. I loved the flat dive, elongating the body out as far as you could thrust. Boys were better at it. So we'd watch them intensely seeing how they did it.
And then I was going to the Nationals, such a big deal in a small town, and after we went up to the Gold Coast as a celebration, i came 5th in a field of 8 but my parents thought that was good enough. And the Gold Coast was the best thing I had ever seen. It was eye popping, even in those days the place was alive with people, happy smiling holidaymakers, spruikers, the man that sprayed you with Coppertone on the beach.
It was fabulous, all of it the Coppertone Sign with the little red faced girl having her bather bottoms pulled down by the puppy, the Arcades, the beach, so big, so white, a photo of that time shows David and I on our knees in our clothes holding up white sand and letting it run through our fingers.
And we were moving again and to Wentworthville and the first Olympic pool was at Liverpool. An English Couple and their two little babies came with us from Canowindra. I loved the babies, watching them asleep in the front room. So plump and sweet and smiling when they woke up, and Mum and Dad had to give the parents their walking papers as he wouldn't work.
So Dad put their stuff out on the street and they went to the Church and complained. And they came back with the Minister but Mum and Dad just ignored their entreaties, we were poor ourselves, and Mum believed
"Charity begins at Home"
We went to Wentworthville Primary and Dave refused to go and Mum would take him on his 3 wheeler and he would be home before she was, he was a bugger, never liking school until he went to Flushdike Primary at Ossett and he used to think he was a Dalek and would sign all his letters as Dalek Dave.But he's now a brilliant Business man and lives in the most fabulous house on the Redcliffe Peninsula and he was not a scholar.
Jackie was at McArthur Girls School and hung around with a girl that Mum said was "Boy Crazy". No one was allowed to be "Boy Crazy" in our family. Any mention of sex and my Mum was out the door, we sensed rather than witnessed her prudishness. Dad didn't care he would tell you anything you asked. He was a sensible Man however and told me the Facts Of Life at age 13, you have no idea how embarrased I was listening my little short fat Scottish Father telling me the facts of life and I had to stand there till it was done.Y
Years later I thought how brave of him that was to do as he knew my Mother wouldn't. ( I told Deb and Yvette early 10 and 9 and Yvette sat their the whole time with her fingers in her ears and going lalalalal, she now has 7 kids !)
So at Wentworthville we had to get to Liverpool, My Mum didn't drive and I had two training nights a week, so I went on my own, catching the bus and train and I was 8, sometimes running through the dark to home from the station with George who had been sent to "fetch" me. It was a poor neighbourhood where we lived, comission houses, all the same as the other except for different colours.
We had an outhouse for a loo. And the Bathroom was tiny pink and white and grey tiles which were my job on a Saturday to clean. Everything had to be coated with Powder Bon Ami then polished off, mirrors, floors, window, bath, hand basin of the old green pedestal style. I hated that job with a passion but it still had to be done.
And we were moving again, to the Gold Coast, God, did we ever stay anywhere was my thought. ???? I was at the age were friends were becoming important and always the moving, but the Gold Coast was the best idea my parents came up with. We loved it and stayed there till I was nearly 12..
And once again we were swimming, squad Thursday nights and the only pool available was one on top of a hotel in Southport. Mum and Dad moved into a flat above the Butchers in Main Beach, opposite us was beach, only the road separating us from it. There was a huge Nursing Home opposite too, all white and like a hotel. We would run across the road and there we were on the magnificent Gold Coast.
We went to school at Southport State School, which had to have been one of the best schools I ever went to. The Teaching staff were friendly and enthusiastic and we blossomed. Sport was encouraged and we swam once a week at The Blue Lagoon Hotel Pool just around the corner, walking there in the heat and diving into the cool green pool as soon as we got there.
I played softball, handball, "handsies" with Jackie wherever we were and we had played that for years and skipping games, perfecting elastics, which was a skill, I joined the fife band and we played every assembly and I beagn to be fascinated with Music at long last after my disastrous piano lessons.
But Dad made me take them up again on a Saturday at The School, which was a highly prestigious Private School and I would hate going there, having to put up with the funny little Austrian music Teacher, who had bottle bottom glasses and evil breath. I had to gasp and turn my head when he leaned over to flip the music over for me. But he was a good teacher, patient, and kindly. I'm not sure what he thought of me as a Piano Player, I regretted not having long elegant fingers but you have to work with what you have.
But the fife I was fascinated with. It was long silver one with holes in it and thumb hole on the back, it had a screw off top, Dad bought it home from his music shop and I played all the time. I had to develop a lip, and breathe so it was a warm husky sound, not a screech. That took time and patience and the music was numeric, and I understood it, easily. And i practiced all the time, my parents sending me out to the Verandah, I was obsessed at getting it right and school too. I have no idea why I was so driven but I was, I had to excel at everything except for housework.
We moved from Main Beach to Marine Parade, Labrador and the Broad water was right opposite so we could swim every day, the boys finding a sunken boat and we made it our project to try and repair it and sail it. And Jackies new Beau who was a used car salesman took us out on his Catamaran to impress Jackie and she was impressed I think but didn't want to show him.
I will never forget that feeling of flying across the water, waves and wind coming together to speed us across, inches from the water, it was wonderful. We stopped at a sand bar and pulled the boat up on the sand. He took us out more than once, poor Merve, Mum and Dad insisted that we go as chaperones, Dave and I, and he took us to the Movies at Southport.
In those days the Southport Theatre was on the pier, canvas slung low chairs with waves literally under our feet, seen through the big gaps in the hardwood floors. It was insane, and people really did roll Jaffas down the aisles, but they disappeared down the cracks.
Merve took us to see Dr NO and it was pretty heavy stuff for me at 11 and Dave at 7 and everytime I looked sideways at Jackie she was locked lips with Merve. Urgh! I thought they were disgusting and could not think of anything more horrible. I was tempted to tell Mum but I didn't, Jackie would have thumped me.
And we went to England and swam there too, this time in heated undercover pools that smelt of steam and chlorine and they had caffs in them where you could get hot chocolate and we spent all day in there just as we had in all the other pools..... and the smell of the sheep dip disinfectant in the small entry pool and the chlorine smell and the burning in my nostrils on the first dive are with me still.
And the meditative state you get into when you swim lap after lap, forcing yourself on. The good swimmer knows when they hit the high, the body rising in the water, fatigue forgotten, rising further out of the water and it's no longer work, it's just you and the water and your rythmic breathing and you could swim forever.
Love Janette
