The Glistening Dave Pano always lifts one of our pages, but this time, at Forster, following heavy rains and the Myall Lakes spewing gunk into the sea, he drops us once back into the merde, which is French for muddy soup.
Pre-race day. Then ...
... Race day itself. Sadly, the ocean itself didn't change from day to day, and the water, as you'll see below, was so brown that it was like swimming, according to Glenn "Ribbitt" Muir, in French onion soup, but without the gastronomic eroticism.
On Pre-Race Day + 1, Colin Reyburn took his kids, after a week indoors due to the rain, up to Bennetts Head, which separates Cape Hawke from the run into Forster. Get a load of the difference in the water. The muddy stuff really isn't so muddy ... well, yes it is, but it's also ti-treey, whooshed downstream with cow poo and all from heavy rains on flat dairy farmland. It rushes out to sea next to Forster main beach, ushering every bull shark along the east coast before it, no doubt. It surges out to sea through the rip off the bar, then bifurcates, spewing around in a mushroom plume, north and south. South, it lands right on the end of Bennetts Head, as you see here. And which is why the sea was so miserable in Forster, but on One Mile Beach, home to Cape Hawke SLSC and swim start on race day, it remained sublimely clear, albeit with occasional heavy-ish sets pumping through.
Night time, and the carnival on the pier at Forster comes alive, like Brigadoon ...
.. offering lollipops to the Lord.
Night time, from the Dorsal Boutique Hotel.
The weather breaks, but the break is weathered.
Glistening Dave and his clouds again.
Forster offered up a wealth of atmosphere for photodrunks specialising in sepia, as we all were this weekend.
But One Mile Beach was a pitcher, as Glistening Dave would put it, with sets pumping through.
At One Mile Beach, however, veteran lifesavers warn off novice surfers from entering a dangerous break. Some novices, clearly unsuited to the conditions, stand out a mile. One mile. Like a good citizen, Mrs Sparkle stands loyally by. She is a good citizen, you know, and we need to tell her so, for sometimes she doubts herself. Like the night before at the Dorsal Boutique Hotel, when she showered in the dark, without the fan, and set off the fire alarm. Hotel guv'na John Koorey pounded downstairs, down the fire escape, not being allowed in the lifts with the fire alarm going off, only to find it was us, in the room next door to him. "What are you two doing up there?" he panted into the phone. And we told him, but too late to prevent two clanging, tolling, flashing fire engines from screaming to a stop in the street outside. He called up again, "Are you decent?" he urged us ... "Because you're about to get a visit from the fire brigade". Clump, clump, clump! Went the fist on the door. And clump, clump, clump! pounded the two burly firemen, fully kitted out in Fireman Sam gear, helmets, raincoats, Blundstones boots, into our room, where Mrs Sparkle cowered in a corner. "Can you be arrested for creating a public nuisance?" she asked us, in a whimper of a voice. We told her, "Yes." Next morning, still at liberty, a police car cruised past the pub. "They're here, they're here," she cried, instinctrively grabbing for her handbag. "I told you they'd come to interview me," she sobbed. "Why me?" she choked back the tears. "I'm a good citizen, aren't I?"
Whenever oceanswims.com finds a beach or a pool canteen that offers Pluto Pups, well, he's just got to try one. Strictly in the interests of science, you see, so he can compare with those he would scoff on Sat'dee mornings at the Newcastle Ocean Baths, following regular weekly meets of the Newcastle Police Boys Amateur Swimming Club. None of them compare, however. Snapping this pitcher, entrapped, as it were, Dave thought he would embarrass us.Not bloody likely. It had been Anzac Day just the day before.
"Eureka! ... I have found it!" cries Glenn "Ribbitt" Muir, epiphanically striking on a theme for his special report, below. The bottles and glasses helped. He is such a genius, is our Ribbitt, that he even has an assistant to stroke his brow.
The difference between ocean swimming and pool swimming is that you don't have to continually go up ...
... and back ...
... Jeez, I'm sick of this...
Just because the swim was called off, it didn't mean we couldn't enjoy the fruits of Forster's participation as Race 6 in the Hahn Super Dry Fine Ocean Swimmers Series. Or Pippy Stokes enjoyed them, anyway ...
... and shared them with Forster organiser Ian Tulloch, when discovered trying to horde it all to himself.
"Rent me!" Indeed. "RENT ME....!!!!"
The only ones who weren't game to go into the water for a pretend swim in the French onion soup on race day was the Manly mob. Now, there's an irony for you.
While the real manly mob prepares to take the plunge, led by Colin "China" Reyburn.
A desultory peleton heads down to swim start.
And off they go, into the French onion soup, spiced with bull sharks, urged on by race sposor John Koorey (foreground), guv'na of Forster's Dorsal Boutique Hotel.
See what "Ribbitt" means by French onion soup?
... the kind of soup with froth on top.
Sheepish.
If you can't swim, then what do you do? You go to dinner.
