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murray cox's odyssey, 2010/11

Sat'dee, May 7 - Murray Cox's life changing odyssey

Sydney's hairiest swim?

Little Bay-Congwong

Sexagenarian Bondi landscaper Murray Cox is close to achieving his goal -- swimming over the course of the season from Barrenjoey, at the northern end of Palm Beach, to Cape Banks, the northern headland of Botany Bay. All that's remaining is the South Head Roughwater this coming Sundee.

Murray's done some hairy swims along the way, including swimming solo from Manly around into Quarantine Beach, and from Whale Beach around to Avalon. Some of the hairier swims, he's done with a handful of cobbers, such as across Sydney Heads, from Quarantine Beach to Camp Cove, with an interlude at Lady Jane Beach along the way.

And, last Sat'dee, May 7, Murray did another hairy leg, again with a couple of sharkbait cobbers -- Little Bay around Cape Banks into Botany Bay, emerging from the water at Congwong, next to Bare Island at LaPa (La Perouse). After all those worrisome swims, Murray seems to have become inured to their perils, as if to say, "Wrack off hairy legs".

Murray's cobbers were Bold and Beautiful buck Ian McGregor, Tacoma Jim Goins, Richard "Sharkbait" Murray, Bo Keogh, Belinda Curley, South Head awginisah John Fallon, os.c, and Murray's masseur, who drove the accompanying tinny. Murray's bride, Parfait l'Amour, sometimes known as Mimi, followed us along the cliff. She features as a green speck in one of the photo gallery pics.

At the start of this swim, at Little Bay, Murray Cox came armed to the start of this swim with songsheets, and we all stood around and sang, Botany Bay (... it ain't leavin' old England we cares about..., etc). There were some foreigners amongst us who didn't know what we were on about. Lucky Johnny Howard wasn't there. They'd have lost their citizenship.

Little Bay to Congwong is indeed a hairy swim, but not as we expected, along the coast from Little Bay to Cape Banks. The heart-in-the-mouth sector was after rounding Cape Banks into Botany Bay.

The seas were running along Sydney's rocky coastline. They were pounding onto the rock shelfs at the base of the cliffs. They were rolling and pitching, the water nervous and jumpy. The 3km from Little Bay to Cape Banks was innocuous enough, but, despite the pitching. It was safe. We stopped off Cape Banks, the sets crashing onto the rocks about 75 metres inside us, and we taped an interview with Murray on reaching his goal. Then we set off around the Cape into the bay. Within a few minutes, we'd been swept into the bay by the swells and the end of an incoming tide. There was so much water running into the bay, though, that there also was a rip running out of it. We were into an offshore breeze by then, too. One of us, Belinda Curley, a marine biologist with the Fisheries bureaucracy, urged us into the cliffs between Cape Banks and Congwong, to get us "out of the rip, and because I know what's out there". Indeed, rounding the cape, we immediately set into the estuarine water. And estuarine water means one thing to ocean swimmers -- bull sharks. Botany Bay is renowned for these creatures, as indeed is Sydney Harbour itself. We knew what Belinda meant.

That reach from Cape Banks into Congwong, about 2.5km of it, was one of the hardest swims we've ever done, because of the liveliness of the sea, the swells rolling through, crashing onto and back from the rock platforms, the tide running in and the rip running out. One of those swims when no two strokes are the same. We emerged from the water with two stroke defect rashes, both on our left, one of the tip of our shoulder -- we hadn't shaved that morning -- the other at the base of our neck, where our left arm was coming too far over, across our middle as our body rolled with the swell and the chop. That's why it's called stroke-defect rash: if you have a stroke defect, then these conditions will discover it and it will tell on your skin, particularly over 6.42 km over 2 hours 27 minutes.

Little Bay-Congwong is one of those swims, across Sydney Heads, that one might never otherwise do. It was an adventure.

Check out Murray Cox's SwimSydney website for a complete account of what truly is an odyssey... click here

< style="FONT-STYLE: italic"> After swimming 6.42 km from Little Bay to Congwong, inside Botany Bay, most people would be a little disturbed.

Pics by Tacoma Jim and oceanswims.com. Video by os.c using Olympus Tough 810.

Sat'dee, Feb 12, 2011

The Strait of Sydney

There is a point, driving down New South Head Road towards Watsons Bay, from where you gaze out over the strait between South Head and North Head. It's a reach of enigmatic water, always rolling and tossing, always unsettled, always truculent. Either the wind is blowing through, or the swell is rolling through, or the wind and the swell are rolling through, maybe in the same direction, maybe in sympathetic directions, maybe in opposite directions. The strait is where the elements conflict; it's always turbulent. This day, it's grey, clouds hover, rain threatens. You know what we all say on days like that, when we peer out over the sea towards the horizon: The sea is sharky today. What makes it sharky? Probably nothing more than does on a clear, sunny, warm, welcoming day. Is there anything about a grey, drizzly day that makes the sea sharky any differently from the searing summer sun? Probably not. This day, though, as we roll down New South Head Road, there is a fishing boat in the middle of the Strait of Sydney, a tourist fishing boat, anchored right in the middle, both laterally and longerally.

We know it's a tourist fishing boat because we have seen this boat before. It takes tourists fishing around and off Sydney heads. We have encountered this boat before, in 2003, we think it was. We were swimming the South Head Roughwater, which runs south to north from Bondi to Watsons Bay. There was a 3-4 metre swell running from the sou'-east, and we decided -- os.c decided -- that we as a team should hang out from the shore by around a kilometre -- every other team was hugging the cliffs -- then run directly with the swell into South Head from a certain point. That certain point, we decided, was this tourist fishing boat anchored up ahead. This day, it wasn't in the middle of the Strait of Sydney; it was a few kilometres south of Hornby Lighthouse, which sits on the apex of South Head. So we headed for this fishing boat, four of us in a team, each in turn swimming our legs.

A few hundred metres from the fishing boat, our boat skipper, a Frenchman, not that that matters, yelled to us: There was a shark circling our swimmer. Our swimmer at that point was our cobber, Pete, a dead ringer for Fred Flintstone. Pete was an honest schlepper in the water: head down, ploughing through anything, he measured his distance by counting his strokes. Once he was going, nothing would rouse him. Certainly not us yelling at him, pounding the gunwales of the Frenchman's boat, yelling ourselves hoarse, watching the shark fins circling Pete. We say fins, for there were several of them. It was either a couple of little sharks, or one very big one. We yelled for ages before Pete lifted his head, saw our antics and plodded over to the boat. We told him what it was. He was monumentally unconcerned. We headed inshore with the other teams, and Pete dived back in to finish off his leg. Our other two team members refused from then to get back into the water until we were inside the heads, leaving the next few kilometres to Pete and us. And it occurred to us, that we had been swimming towards a marker that was a fishing boat which had been in that one spot throwing burley around to attract big fish. We know it had been there for a while for we had gone past it on the way from Watsons Bay to the start at Bondi a few hours before. The burley had worked, naturally, and the closer we got to that fishing boat, the bigger and the more numerous the fish hanging around it. Sure, there was a shark there. Special subject.

So we remember that fishing boat well, and here it was, as we rolled down New South Head Road, anchored right in the middle of our swim course, no doubt still throwing burley around to attract big fish.

It was at that point that the ambivalence we had about this swim came gushing to the surface, through our throats. What the hell were we about to do?

Indeed. The plan was this: we were escorting Murray Cox, the soul-searching 60-year-old who was spending a good part of this season swimming from Barrenjoey to Cape Banks. Much of the distance, Murray was completing through taking part in formal swims. Then he fills in the gaps. At some point, Murray had to cross the Strait of Sydney, and that point was Sat'dee morning, February 12. Today. Most completes most of his gap swims by himself, then he tells you about them afterwards. Sometimes he has a paddler with him, mooching along nearby, and sometimes he's by himself. Sometimes he approaches local surf clubs for escort. One club said they'd escort him, then quoted him $600 to do so. He hasn't done that swim yet. He has done some stretches of water most would never consider even in autumn or winter. If you haven't checked out Murray's odyssey, do so now -- or when you've read this story -- click here

Along with our Queen, Mrs Sparkle, we had offered to swim with Murray across the Strait of Sydney. Accompanying us was our friend, @RealDeal_Cat, always in search of an adventure. And there were two friends of Murray, Belinda, a marine biologist, and another chap, Matt, a quietly spoken lad. Murray had mentioned the swim to the Boldanbeautiful people at Manly, and they came along, too. A crew of 20-plus of them. The strait was a bit less wild and woolly than we had expected, but this was no ordinary stretch of water. Plenty of room for everyone. The Boldanbeautiful went off in one pod, and Murray and his acolytes went off in another, escorted by the father of wild and woolly ocean swimming around Sydney, John Fallon, who founded the South Head Roughwater as a personal project whilst going through divorce in 2002, and is running it still in 2011. John escorted is in his yacht, Pegasus, and ferried us to the start at Quarantine Beach, just inside North Head. Staying aboard was Murray's bride, whom we'd known when both of us were young reporters on The Sydney Morning Herald in the 70s and 80s. She was known around the newsroom then as Parfait l'Amour. Funny, she doesn't go by that name any more. Nowadays, Carolyn Parfitt calls herself, Mimi. We always had something in common with Parfait, however, since we're both Novacastellians. With them was our very good friend, Glistening Dave, who wanted to document our demises (that's what we suspected, anyway) on fillum. On a cute little wave ski was Dr Nick, Murray's other cobbler who, as a doctor, could tend to our wounds. Dr Nick's wave ski was propelled by a couple of seal fins sticking out of its keel. A remarkable sight under water and even more remarkable that, in the middle of the strait, it didn't attract one of those Men in a Grey Suit.

The funny thing about ocean swimming is that, despite all your doubts and fears before you start, once you start you focus on what you're doing, on you in the environment, and you just do it. Ocean swimming is an enormously therapeutic pastime. It's an individual pastime and it;s a group pastime. You can be with everyone and no-one, you can think of everything and nothing, all at once. It's incidental that you're swimming with others, and almost incidental that you're swimming across perhaps the most frightening stretch of water in Sydney. You just do it. You're in it together; and once you're out, you're committed. There's no getting out -- although we could have, had we wished. Reccie-ing the course beforehand on Google Earth, we worked out that it was 3.1km as the crow flies from Quarantine Beach to Camp Cove, inside South Head, allowing for rounding points. Not too far. Murray thought it would be farther. In the end, the oceanswims.com GPS-in-a-plastic-bag measure the track we swam as 5.34km, which seemed to us to be an exaggeration. Murray, a landscaper, using his trade tools of a piece of string and a Gregory's, worked it out at c. 3.5km. On Cap'n Fallon's advice, we headed to Hornby Lighthouse, which was a distinct landmark on the tip of South Head.

In the prevailing conditions, that meant we were heading out through the heads a little, allowing us to be blown back in by the breeze, washed in by the swell and the tide.

Just get on with it...

So what was out there? It was not an easy swim, quite apart from the distance, it was not your average Sundee ocean swim, not just because it was Sat'dee. The issue was that we were into the wind, the swell and the chop all the way. It was in our faces, directly, coming from both sou'-est, outside the heads, and sou'-west, inside the heads. The wind swirled around the massive landform that is South Head, easing gently down to the promontory itself, which sits quite low on the water, so that it came at us from both directions. So there was no possibility of running across the breeze or across the chop. It was into it, all the way.

In those conditions, it's useful if you breathe bilaterally. Bilateral breathing should be the essential goal of all ocean swimmers -- never mind the meaning of life -- for it makes the difference between comfort and discomfort in ocean swimming, between breathing towards or away from the swell, the chop and the breeze. In a more self-interested way, it makes the difference at times between whether you're gazing across the sea at the horizon all the way, or appreciating the spectacular landforms that make up the Sydney coastline. There are those who have swim the Stanwell Park swim, for example, who've never gazed up at the Illawarra Escarpment, towering over them, because they breathe only to the right.

What was out there in the form of wildlife? By the time we got into the middle, the fishing boat was nowhere to be seen. It had scarpered, leaving its burley bobbing in its wake, attracting fish for hours to come throughout the day. But we didn't see fish. We didn't see much at all. But we felt them: stingers. None that we could see: those gossamer beynon thread-like stinger which feel like bluey tentacles without the bubbles on top. They don't sting as badly, but the sting stays with you. That night, both Mrs Sparkle and os.c came up in rashes on our arms, albeit not in every place we had been stung. They were the kind of stingers that you notice when they sting you, but the sting subsides quickly, and you move on. But they leave a residual tingling, then later some of them come up. It didn't help that one of our rest stops, probably right in the middle of the Strait of Sydney, about where the fishing boat had been anchored, we stopped in the middle of a swarm of these little blighters. They got us good.

That was the grand part of the swim. The beautiful part of the swim came when we reached South Head and swam along one of the most beautiful reefs in Sydney. Lots of fish, weed waving gently in the to-and-fro' current, lots of brilliant, clean sand amongst the weed.

We stopped at Lady Jane Bay. The girls hadn't been there before. They said. Neither had we. Not on the beach, anyway. Indeed, we had been to Lady Jane Bay, in the early months of 1974. And our visit that day, we claim, reverberates through Sydney culcha to this day.

Our place in history

It was a cool, grey Sundee in March, 1974, and we were out for a training row with the Bronte B crew. We were surfboat rowers. Boaties. There was us, Zipperhead, Tommy Teacup, Alastair (no nickname we can recall) and our trainer and sweep, Alec the Crab. We had headed from Rose Bay to Camp Cove, then headed around to South Head, hoping to catch some runs in the boat around the headland. We rounded the point from Camp Cove, and there it was: Sydney in the raw!

We had had no idea about Lady Jane Beach or what went on there. There were a couple of hundred people on the beach, all of them completely newd, and most of them, it seemed, blokes. We scoured the beach for the non-blokes, as good boaties would, gently dolly tapping with our paddles about five metres off the beach, from one end of Lady Jane Beach to the other, and back again. Suddenly, a kid in his early teens yelled at as derisively, "Having a good perv, boys?" Mortified, we lit out, our biggest, strongest, fastest strokes away from the beach, our faces crimson at being unmasked.

At the time, we worked for the Herald, as we noted earlier. Our job then was as legman for Seumus Cunningham, the gifted diarist who wrote the Herald's Granny's Column, Column 8. When we got into work the next morning, we told Jim about our experience and he suggested we write about it in Column 8. Which we did.

A few days later, the wallopers raided Lady Jane Beach, causing a storm of outrage from fashionable Sydney. The Police Minister, a corpulent, highly strung, cherubic chappy named John Waddy, defended the coppers from a public incensed at this infringement of the Sydney way of life. The controversy continued around other beaches, too, and it led to the Wran government, two years later (by our memory) legalising newd bathing at Lady Jane Beach and at Reef Beach, on the north side of the harbour. So, we claim credit for the legalisation of newd bathing in NSW.

So last Sat'dee was the first time we'd been back to Lady Jane Beach since 1974, apart from twice when we'd passed it in the course of the South Head Roughwater. Crossing the Strait of Sydney, however, we called into Lady Jane Beach for a rest stop. You'll see the photograph of it on this page. We emerged from the sea, our first landfall since leaving Quarantine Beach on North Head, and Murray Cox, rising triumphantly to his feet in waist-deep harbour, announced to the bemused, newd codger wandering along the shore, his bronzed third leg bobbing gracefully, languidly, as he walked, "We've just swum from North Head!" To which the newd chap turned indifferently away, as if to say, "And...?"

Never mind. We appreciated the feat. We returned to the sea and followed the cliff around to Camp Cove, where the Boldanbeautiful had formed an honour guard for Murray, and clapped and cheered him generously as he emerged from the water.

Faster ocean swimmers, more deft with technique, can handle such swims with ease, leaving aside the mental issue of the Strait itself. But, into the wind, the swell and the chop, it is not an easy schlepp for a swimmer like Murray who, like most of us, did not have the opportunity as a little boy of developing the technique that stays with good swimmers for life. Most of us are condemned to plod through the sea like a three-legged dog with worms. That's certainly how we swim. But then, Murray ain't out there to break records. He's out there just to do it, with all that that involves. Like most of us.

Check out Murray Cox's blog on swimming from Barrenjoey to Cape Banks, SwimSydney... click here

Thank you to Glistening Dave for the photograrphs.

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