Express Glass Island Challenge, Coogee, Sunday, November 25, 2007
Oil on the water
A story of a song, a swim, and a change in the weather.

Wedding Cake Island, by courtesy Midnight Oil (thanks, guys)

Glenn Muir's report ...

It was 1980 when Martin Rotsey and James Moginie of Midnight Oil cut their immortal tribute to Wedding Cake Island, a track called, oddly enough, Wedding Cake Island. A beautiful, haunting, unforgettable track, steeped in surf music tradition, reminiscent of the smell of salt water and clean blue ocean. Its not hard to imagine the feeling they might have had, looking out at that vast expanse of Pacific spraying foam over the rocks, so close, and yet so far.

Twenty-seven years later, and Wedding Cake Island is still there, shaking off the Pacific like a border collie in a bath. It was there the first time we were stunned by the magic and moody Coogee Bay and we hope it will be there for the last. Its seven years since the Coogee SLSC kicked off their first official swim around the Island. We know this, because oceanswims.com puts that kind of weird obsessive detail on his website, and for some reason we like to read it.

First light on Sunday, November 25, 2007, revealed a perfect day at Coogee. After days of watching the Bureau predict rain, rain, and southerly winds, there came a new dawn. A dawn with clearing skies. A dawn with sunshine. A dawn with light winds and smooth waters waiting. A dawn with no bluebottles. Could this be a metaphor for the political environment? We’re not going to draw that comparison, since it rained again on Tuesday.

For us, this is the first, and best, swim of the season. We can’t bring ourselves to do the Dawny, on account of the state of the harbour, and the sharkies. Although by all accounts it is a fabulous day out. And we suspect there’s as many sharks at Coogee as there is at Cockatoo Island. But at least at Coogee you can see ‘em coming.

By an odd coincidence, Peter Garrett was twenty-seven years old when Midnight Oil recorded their tribute to the Island. Twenty-seven years later, things have turned full circle. Back then, Mr Garrett was a tall, bald, singer railing against the injustices of the world, the excesses of big business and the lies perpetrated by government. Today, Peter Garrett is the government, and his first appearance as Federal Minister for the Environment is at the Island Challenge.

Twenty-seven years later, and Wedding Cake Island is still so close and yet so far. It is an ocean swimmer’s dream.

We reflect on this, as we stand in line, wondering how we’re going to get through the three metres of solid kelp in the shorebreak. What we recall, as we contemplate the water, the Island, and another year of ocean swimming, are the first words of the first song on our favourite Midnight Oil EP. Which are, of course, “Lets Rock”. But this year, we aren’t so keen on getting to the water first. This year, we take the smarter strategy of letting everyone else run into the kelp before we do.

Once past the kelp we re-discovered that beautiful underwater world known only to the ocean swimmer. The silence. The feeling of freedom as the sand drops away. The view of the sunlight, forming dappled shafts, probing through the strange blue-green of the water all around.

We discovered something new, this year, too. We discovered a new-found respect for oceanswims.com and his camera-toting underpants. The big man was in Auckland, and unable to present us with water sculpture from Coogee. So we took the plunge, purchased an underwater disposable and, following Mrs Sparkle’s advice, shoved it in the back of our budgie smugglers.

We’re not sure what this made us look like and don’t care to speculate. But we can say that swimming with a big plastic box in your crack leaves a lot to be desired. We felt like Christopher Walken in Pulp Fiction. At least we weren’t disqualified for carrying a flotation device.

Now, which way did they go ... ?

Anyway, floating about at the back of Wedding Cake Island was a sublime experience. Most times, when we’re this far into a swim, we’re getting a bit, well, focussed. Focussed on the underwater panorama, our stroke, and avoiding the elbows and fingernails of people next to us. This year, we stopped to take photographs, and found ourselves in plenty of space. We don’t know if this was because of the wait between waves, or because everyone was avoiding the bloke with the chunky stuff in the back of his budgies. What we do know is that it was an amazing experience, being in the water, a kilometre off-shore, gazing around at the view, and we enjoyed it immensely.

We thought, as we floated, about Peter Garrett and the song Wedding Cake Island. Perhaps out of respect for the soaring guitar, perhaps out of respect for the Island, the usually verbose Garrett recorded only one lyric. A single, barely heard sentence, “lines of swell around the Byron Pass mate”. We’re not sure why. The last time we looked, Wedding Cake Island was 900 km from the Byron Pass.

But we are 100% sure that’s what the lyric is, because our mate, Lachlan Murdoch, told us. That’s not the Lachlan Murdoch who will inherit most of the world’s media. We’d like to say we know that Lachlan Murdoch, on account of he’s fully rich, but we don’t, and we’re not sure he’d be our mate, in any case. The real Lachlan Murdoch is our mate, and he can recite the lyrics to just about every Midnight Oil song that we know.

"Stop! Stop! I only wanted to show you my election campaign routine!"

There is one criticism we have to level at Coogee, and it’s a big one. We couldn’t find the BBQ after the swim. This might be because we are myopic, but we have a horrible suspicion that there wasn’t one. Now, we realise that there are plenty of non-BBQ eats in Coogee. But the fact is that after a 2.4 km open water swim in 19° water, one needs a meat and bread fix and one needs it fast. The last thing one needs is to stand in one’s scungies in a queue of backpackers, for a twenty dollar piece of tuna in baby carrot jus with a porcupine brachêt.

Barbequeue aside, it was a wonderful day and we were glad to be there. After seeing pictures of the 1,000 wetsuits in Auckland, we’re even gladder. Those Kiwis are brave. And fast. Mind you, we’d be faster too, if the water temperature was next to zero. We hope the BBQ was worth it.
As we swam, we reflected on how lucky we are. About how good it was to be there, at that moment on that day, doing what we were doing. We’re looking forward to the rest of the season. We’re even looking forward to swimming at Bondi. Midnight Oil once wrote a song about Bondi, too. It wasn’t as kind as the one about Coogee.

Our favourite swim will always be Wedding Cake Island. As the circle turns, we think about the generations past and what they have given us. Democracy, for one. We hope that the world we pass on is as good as the one they gave us. We hope that Mr Garrett gets his chance to do something about government lies. We hope that he and Penny Wong will stand up and do something about global warming. Because we’d like to see future generations swimming around Wedding Cake Island, rather than over it, and listening to a wonderful song.

Thanks to Arlene Brookes of Midnight Oil’s management for permission to play Wedding Cake Island and Mitch O’Dwyer of the office of the federal member for Kingsford Smith for directing us to Ms Brookes.

P.S. Don’t try and download the song, its copyright, you’ll just have to go out and buy it.

Philosophy in Sydney's eastern suburbs? Glistening Dave was confused with the finishing arch. In which case, the side finishers could see said Start, and they side they couldn't see said, Finish. Was the glass half full, or half empty?

One of these people is an uncompromised environmentalist.

Pics by Glistening Dave, Glenn Muir, and Cathy, his sweetheart.

Wedding Cake Island, by courtesy Midnight Oil

RESULTS

It was 07 Day, short for Kevin 07? Some people at Coogee were very happy, particularly tall, bald ones. We were in Auckland, ourselves (click here for our report of the Auckland Harbour Crossing).