Menachem's Yarns: Swimming with Orders of Nuns and Phyla of Crustaceans

Menachem's Writings

Swimming with Orders of Nuns and Phyla of Crustaceans

Mrs Kelly taught me to swim when I was five years old. She taught half of Coogee to swim. It was imperative for a little boy to learn to swim in Sydney's coastal suburbs because we were surrounded by water. The Tasman Sea, the South Pacific Ocean (OK two names for one body of water, but it was a huge body of water, with big waves), Sydney Harbour and Botany Bay (originally called Stingray Bay for obvious reasons).

My parents learned to swim in rivers. They were born and brought up in a landlocked country. Amazingly though, Czechoslovakia, while not producing top swimmers, did have an amazingly high level of water polo. And the undisputed champions of Czechoslovakian water polo prior to the second world war, was a Bratislava Jewish team. (After the war there were barely enough Jews left alive to form a polo team).

To this very day, I still do not know if my mother learnt to swim, but my father did a pretty good breaststroke. He just could not swim with his face in the water. No crawl, but a mean breaststroke. In the new country however, they taught crawl right off. Australian Crawl of course. In Australia, real men crawl!

My mother faithfully took me swimming (and to many other places too — like, can I admit it publicly — yes, to ballet) at the appointed times of the lessons. The pool in which I learnt to swim was universally known and loved as the Ladies Bathes. It is a rock pool located just south of Coogee beach. Entry to this swimming facility is (very) restricted to females and little boys up to age ten. Only much later did we realise that this was a hang-out for nuns. Remember, Coogee was a very Catholic suburb, and a number of religious orders were represented here.

The nuns sunbaked topless behind a few little seven foot tall wooden fenced-off enclosures, scattered around the grounds — sunbathed for American almost-speakers of English, but believe me, the Australian term is much more descriptive and applicable in our story — these ladies really baked themselves — their skin was tanned like leather. They used to rub oil all over their enormous blubbery bodies in order to speed up the tanning process — the place could have been called the Ladies Tannery. I do not recall seeing them do too much swimming.

We were young and naïve. We were brought up in a very sheltered environment. When they told us little boys not to enter these enclosures, well, we just did not. (For all I know now, they were sunning themselves in the all together.) We did wonder a little about what might have gone on there, but we were good boys. We were so dumb that we even thought the pool had been built as nature reserve for penguins swimming north for warmer water in the winter. I remember one day seeing a moustached walrus, and on another, a slippery seal (or sea lion) — nuns came in all shapes and sizes.

In the water, we felt plenty of oozy, slippery objects: sea anemone (a sea flower), sea urchins (soft bodied echinoderms, enclosed in a round shell covered with long spikes like finger nails) and other slimy nameless creatures. They were stuck to the pool walls — the pool was covered with them. We would inadvertently rub against each other continuously — yuck! They were hard to avoid. And crabs and shrimps shared the water with us: the nuns, the girls and the little boys. At high tide, the Tasman sent its waves crashing over the barrier which divided us from the outside sea, that unknown expanse of ocean. Wedding Cake Island, a hundred and fifty yards off the coast, was the extent of our known world. Daily, waves would bring a new colony of crustaceans and sea anemone, and suck back out the old. We were environmentally correct. (Yes, crabs do bite.)

The nuns, after returning to their habits, sat by the exit chatting and selling sticky homemade toffee to the little boys (and girls) for a penny a piece. Stick to our teeth they did. The Church should be paying my dental bills! But I admit, we enjoyed chewing and then sucking that sticky muck off our teeth.

When I was eight years old, my mother decided that my little brother too should learn to swim. Since she had nowhere to dump me after school, when his lessons were on, she took me along too. Because I am a bother when I have nothing to do, she enrolled me in the pool swim squad. And that is when my bad habit started. Since that day, there has barely been a day in which I have not been in a pool somewhere or in the surf. I swam competitively as a kid and now I compete in Masters (euphemism for old fellas) swimming events.

In those days, the real swimmers also swam of a morning — at a different pool, the Coogee Aquarium. This was an Olympic length pool, 55 yards! The "Aqua" had started life as a shark pool. In the twenties and thirties, people would pay to come and watch the sharks swim around in captivity. By the forties the killer creatures had disappeared. People lost interest. You could stand on the sand at the beach and watch sharks eat one or two people every now and then. Far more exciting. That was before there were nets on beaches. Though sharks still managed to visit on occasion.

The new pool allowed people to swim there instead. The Aqua as we fondly called it, was located about a hundred yards from the beach. Water was pumped in from the ocean. This pool was tiled. This was a very different experience to the ladies pool. Men and women, boys and girls, all together. Mornings were serious swimming only. From age nine, I wouldd be found there daily, at six o'clock in the morning. Mrs Kelly also trained us there.

However as the nuns liked me a lot, I was allowed to continue swimming with Mrs Kelly in the afternoons at their haunt, until I turned twelve.

In those days we did not swim in the winter. No pool was heated, nor had a roof. The sun well took care of us.

I remember arriving at the pool on 1^st October, the first day of the new season. I guess I was ten years old, and my previous swim was in the nice warm April waters. I got up on the blocks. Mrs Kelly (that's what the boys called her — the girls called her Auntie Rose) said, "Take it easy and start with an eight lap warm-up". I dived into the pool. I thought I had just died. My short life flashed before me. I thought perhaps an unnoticed, escaped iceberg was parked in the pool. It was freeeeeezing! I froze, literally. I managed two laps, panting like a dog. I thought I was dying of frostbite, my teeth would not cease chattering. Mrs Kelly hauled me out of the ice water and wrapped me in every towel she could find. I was the only swimmer crazy enough to brave the pool that first day. She hugged me lovingly to stop me shivering. When I finally warmed up, probably by noon, I got dressed and she drove me home in her little mauve Morris Minor. Then breakie and off to school.

Ever since that day, I have never entered a swimming pool with a dive. I ease in slowly, excruciatingly so, very gently. These days most pools are heated, but I still take no chances. The trauma remains. I always slide into the shallow end, and once in the water, I slowly walk towards the deep water, very slowly, until the water is up to my chin. Only then do I start to swim.

While I turned up to the pool early every morning, I was not always that keen. Coach would say, "16 lap warm up, followed by 16 by 110 yard sprints, on the two minutes". "Yes coach." She had a big squad, kids at many levels, some needing more attention that others. If I was not in the mood, I would just do a couple of the warm up laps, then hide in the boys' change room for half an hour, and return to the water for the last sprints. Ah the advantages of having a female coach — she'll never find me. Well ... there I was one morning, minding my own business, meditating in the little boys' room, an occasional visitor entering for a pee. Suddenly she was standing there — in the mens' room! What? I let out a yelp, a scream. Did I get a lecture, was I in trouble. She said, "No-one forces you come here, so what gives? Swim or stay in your warm bed." She had a point there, but I was too speechless to get a word out. How embarrassing. How did she dare to enter this all male domain. (The last visitor to the urinal had been sent by Mrs Kelly to ensure I was in there on my own. Outsmarted by coachie!)

But I did keep coming to the pool everyday. And later to beach for a bit of bodysurfing. I love to be in the water. I love the weightlessness. And I have become addicted to the endorphin rush.

Coogee has other pools too. They probably have different names today. First there were two little rock pools to the south the beach itself, right under the Surf Life Saving Club (Coogee SLSC) building. We swam there when the surf was too high, which on Coogee Bay is rare. To the south of the Ladies Bathes was Wiley's swimming pool. It was also a rock pool, but bigger than the others and with a higher sea wall. Less waves and less sea creatures. We did not go there much except when were learnt Life Saving at school. And then there was Giles Bathes into which I have never ventured and about which I know nothing. It was nicknamed the "Bogey hole" and in the nineteenth century was used solely by male bathers.

There were not yet indoor pools in those days in Sydney.

My photo above shows the larger Coogee Beach rock pool.

P.S. No, I not aware of a pool in Coogee [or Randwick or Clovelly] for priests and little girls or boys or other creatures. If there was, it was certainly well disguised and hidden from my view. But in hindsight, given the Pope's apology during his recent visit to Royal Randwick (racecourse) to the people of Australia (who were once children), I really cannot say I know what was happening to my neighbours. Walking home from primary school, I used to pass the all boys catholic school, with these black cloaked men standing amongst the boys. I never had good vibes walking past there, though I was always on the other side of the street.

P.P.S. Perhaps I should be thankful I was too stupid to enter the wooden enclosures at the Ladies Bathes.

19th August, 2008
19th Elul, 5768

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