Yes, it's back: the Glistening Dave Pano of North Curl Curl, and ...

... Bondi, before heading to Bronte, or Broant, as an American serviceman was overheard to call it in the early 70s in Sydney.

Guest courser this week was Killer. This is his track from Bondi to Bronte. Not bad, reasonably straight, thrown a bit off course towards the end when he spotted the Bronte surf club bar. Really, we got Killer to wear the GPS-in-a-prophylactic as a ruse: We were put up to it by Killer's bride, Merryn (you remember: "Merryn makes me strong, Merryn makes me strong ..."), as a means of keeping tabs on her gadabout husband whilst he's down in Sydney on furlough. Last we heard, Killer was heading back to the airport early, because Merryn, who'd made his bookings, as office manager of Killer Co. Plumbing in Murwillumbah, hadn't told him the departure time and he couldn't afford to miss the plane. So he was heading to the airport early planning just to sit there and wait for a flight with his name on it. Killer Air.

Standing humbly amongst the detritus of human bags, backpacks, dirty thongs and other cast offs on the broad, sheep’s meadow expanse of Bronte Park, Merv Gladstone observed that the Bronte surf club had been blessed with hordes of volunteers who’d descended on the club on the morning of the Bondi-Bronte Ocean Swim, to help out. Merv didn’t give a number, but he was clearly impressed.

Let us tell you, Merv Gladstone is not an easy cove to impress. A great stoic, Merv is as dry as they come, as sceptical and as unforgiving a character as you’ll ever meet. You have to be, to be a boat sweep. And Merv was a boat sweep for many years. A very successful one, too, although it’s always narked the Bronte boaties that they don’t have more major titles to show for it, despite the many thousands of buckaroonees – probably millions – that the Bronte boaties have been able to cajole the club’s board, over the years, to ply into something that is, let’s face it, pretty well worthless as a life saving tool. But what success they did get over many decades, Merv was central to it. Merv and Bluey Graham, the quiet, also reserved character with the goatee who was helping Merv out with the bags. A third bag man was Alec ”The Crab” Menzies, in his Sundee finest, sporting his best Bronte club polo shirt, newly laundered and ironed, his hair trimmed freshly, as diligent as any of them. Alec has always been diligent. Misguided at times, perhaps, but certainly diligent. Alec was a boat sweep, too. He’s known as “The Crab” for his penchant, while at the back of the boat, to make it go sideways.

Not many, if any, of the returned ocean swimmers who visited the sheep’s meadow of Bronte Park after this swim to collect their belongings, shipped from Bondi by truck, will have had any idea of the background of Merv, Bluey and Alec, and their helpers, not to mention the Bronte volunteers helping out in other areas on swim day. They weren’t there blowing their own trumpets. They weren’t there looking for plaudits. They weren’t there looking to buttonhole you about their histories. They were there working for the club that’s been a huge part of their lives for all their lives. Get that: all their lives.

You'd expect nothing less of a club with the traditions that Bronte has. After all, Bronte was the first surf life saving club in the world. Debate still rages with Bondi over that honour, but it is clear that, while Bondi may have the first set of minutes, Bronte was out there and at it well in advance. The club has evidence now that life saving activities were under way there in the 1890s, well before the club itself formed. Indeed, Bronte historian Stanislaus Vesper, in the course of researching his ground-breaking history of Bronte SLSC, uncovered evidence that Bronte even sent a squad around to Bondi to teach that club how to be surf lifesavers.

Merv, Bluey and Alec were Bronte members in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and now the Noughties. They were Bronte members when Johnny O’Keeffe was hanging around the place. They were there when the Delltones were the local band at the Bronte dances. Indeed, the Dellies started at Bronte. We all remember Stompin’ at Maroubra. Much of the stomping actually was going on at Bronte, but perhaps Stompin ‘at Bronte didn’t have enough syllables to be a number 1 hit for Little Pattie.

Bronte came to oceanswims.com’s attention first when, as adolescent tykes, we were browsing through a Surfing World magazine up in Newcastle. There was a story in it headlined, Big Day at Bronte, and it was basically photos of the Bronte lads riding an enormous surf on their boards. And it was an enormous surf. Bronte can take an enormous wave and still be rideable. It’s a beach of rock shelfs, gutters, runouts, sand banks, shifting sands and several breaks. It is one of the most unpredictable, dangerous surf breaks in Sydney. That’s why this swim can be so difficult, so dangerous for the inexperienced. It’s why the organisers must be so careful that the mob they send off from Bondi aren’t being sent into chaos and disaster at the other end. Not only is Bronte a dangerous break almost all the time, when you set off from Bondi with no idea of what to expect at the other end. That’s why journey swims are so interesting. The Big Swim from Palm Beach to Whale Beach is similar.

The blokes who rode Bronte on that enormous day in the 60s include some of the blokes who were looking after your bags for you on the broad expanse of sheep’s meadow after this swim. Merv Gladstone was the boat sweep who guided Bronte’s best boat crews through the middle and final decades of the 20th century. In the early days of the Bondi-Bronte swim, we used to spot Merv out on his double ski with his cobber, Jim Morrow. Haven't spotted Jim for a year or two, now, and Merv's now older and a landlubber. We hope Jim is ok.

Bluey Graham was Merv’s crew’s stroke, a sporting freak who was an outstanding athlete in everything he touched, from rowing, to ski and board riding, through running. Bluey was one of those characters who excelled at everything he tried. For many years, Bluey held the record for the Bronte Joggers Sunday run from Bronte to Bondi and return, back around Mackenzies Point: something like 12 minutes 17 seconds. His knees have gone now. He has new ones, in fact. We won't mention Bluey's role in Bronte getting it's new clubhouse in 1974. There's not the space, and we weren't witnesses.

Alec the Crab, before he was a boat sweep, was a Malibu board paddler, who just missed out on two Australian championship titles. Why did he miss out? According to bar talk at Bronte, it was because he paused to check for waves when he was coming into the break in the lead. Silly boy. But The Crab is perhaps the best faith character we have ever known in surf clubs, and we started in them as whippersnappers. Alec is as enormously honest as that surf was back in the 60s. Don’t ask Alec about the Phantom Feeler, though. He might get upset.

He cuts a fine figure on Bondi, does our Killer, in his two-storey cossies.

Everyone has a story; everyone has history. The stories and the history of these characters is more interesting than most. But here they were, minding your bags. And a good job they did, too: they way they unpacked the bags, lined them up in rows, like a corn field, so you could walk up and down and pick your baggage. It was very well done, well thought out. We don’t know whether they thought it out, but they carried out it, and they carried it out well. When Merv made his observation to us, there were just a handful of bags left. Merv had gathered them all in to one little spot in the middle of the park, when he stood sentinel over them until their lackadaisical owners decided to front. Just Merv and a handful of bags.

These characters weren’t the only volunteers, of course. Another story is Gayle Dundas. Over at Bondi, Gayle ran the check in table for the 50s age group. Then she jumped in for the swim, swam second in her age group, then backed up in the barbie tent, where the team worked like Trojans. Gayle wasn’t the only one doing that, either. Coleen O’Neil and Ginny Hedderman did likewise. Their husbands helped out, along with lots of other old Bronte types. Mo Hitchens was in the barbie tent, too. An old wharfie, is Mo, and not as lively as he once was, but he is one bloke who has always been at Bronte whenever we have been there, and our track record stretches back now to 1973.
It’s characters like Merv, Bluey, Alec, Gayle, Coleen, Ginny and their husbands, wives and friends that make events such as Bondi-Bronte possible. How would this event go if the contributions that all these people make had to be replaced by paid labour? They couldn’t survive if the workers were paid. But these characters wouldn’t expect to be paid. They do it for their club, which has been their lives.

Bondi from the 'Bergs.

You might get the impression that oceanswims.com has a soft spot for Bronte. And we do. It was our club for many, many years. We rowed for Bronte in the 70s and 80s. We got a state medal with their B grade boat crew in 1974 at Tathra, along with The Crab, Zipper, Tom Teacup, Alastair (who didn’t have a nickname, such was his personality). Indeed, in that championship. Merv Gladstone himself jumped into our for’ard seat to fill in because Alastair had a dodgy back, and saved himself for the final.

In the late 80s, oceanswims.com was the secretary of Bronte surf club. Our name is on the honour board in the club’s stairwell. We haven’t been a regular there now for 20 years, but these places get into your blood. It still makes us feel good to be at Bronte. Our cobbers are older, they’re slower, their skin is leatherier. But it’s the home of our heart.

Re the volunteers, it was a similar story at North Curl Curl. As it is at pretty well every club that we visit on our annual ocean swimming circuit. These events would not run without volunteers. They are their lifeblood. Because they know that the work they do, unpaid, will benefit the clubs that are central parts of their lives. It’s not just that the clubs put on the patrols that help make our beaches safer places, indeed that they give Stray’a an identity that no other world state can match. It is that these clubs are a major part of their communities. They are integral and key elements in the social capital of local communities. They make communities function as communities, and make the difference between communities which otherwise would be just a collection of houses.

It is the proudest boast of ocean swimmers and of ocean swimming that so much of our funds contributed by way of entry fees goes to help the surf clubs do what they do. And it’s Merv and Bluey, and Alec, and Gayle, and Coleen, and Ginny, and Mo, and their friends and partners, and Glen and Colin and Louis and their cobbers over at North Curl Curl. on the day prior to Bronte. And all the other surf club volunteers that make our swims happen, who we have to thank for them.

By the way, both Saturday at North Curly and Sundee at Bronte were two magnificent days, made so good by the volunteers mentioned above, and by the quality of the ocean right now. Glorious, clean water, no nasties, not much swell, although perhaps we could have a little more swell.

At North Curly, special commendation to the organisers who decided late that, since the conditions were so welcoming, why not run the swim around the point and down the cliff towards Dee Why, rather than leave it is a tedious circuit inside the Curl Curl bay, which we’ve done so many times.
It paid off big time. The Curly swim was a ripper, spectacular, on the edge, taking us into new frontier territory. And the ocean swimmers who became aquathletes for the day at North Curly and didn't get to do this swim: eat your hearts out. Singleton ocean swimmer -- and that's not an oxymoron - John Bamberry just emailed us as we wrote this to say: "I was 'chomping at the bit' watching the ocean swim and kicked myself that I didn’t do both". That'll learn ya, John.

It's a beautiful swim out around the headland at North Curl Curl. Rock shelfs, wafting weed, welling waves, darting fish, surging swell. The thing that’s so good about ocean swimming around points and along cliffs is that there are so many beautiful bottoms out there.

Does he take off when the cord is pulled?


PS: It was a pity that such a grand effort by the volunteers should have been marred at Bronte by so many reported errors in entries, times and results. We heard of a number of swimmers who had entered online (oceanswims.com did not do online entries for this event) but whose entries were not there at registration, including swimmers who had entered, checked their entries online, and found everything ok before race day. But on race day, they weren't there. Even Killer, retiring type that he is, who entered several weeks ago, was not on the list and the organisers were in the process of making him pay again when a worker found a second page of entries for his age group which had been missed. Another swimmer had entered by mail and had checked over the phone that his entry was ok. But it wasn't there on race day.

Another friend who'd entered online well in advance also was missing from the list. He'd had the foresight, however, to bring a copy of his entry receipt with him to prove that he'd entered.

Then the results ... Check the results and you will see a number of swimmers listed as "Pre-race withdrawal" or "Withdrawn during race". We are aware that one of these "pre-race withdrawals", a friend of os.c, actually swam. Indeed, he was part of a team which got nowhere because this time wasn't recorded. If you add up the times of the other members of his team, then impute a time for him on the basis of his known speed, ranking, etc, this team reckons they would have won their division by several minutes. This is conjecture, of course, but it's conjecture based on some knowledge.

At least the other members of this team was entered. The Tatts swimmers entered two teams, told us that they'd checked with the organisers beforehand, but only one team was listed on race day. And the Tatts boys say it's not the first time, or even the second, that this has happened to their team at this event.

Large events such as this will always have problems, of course. A name missed here or there. But it's hard for swimmers to accept or understand when they've gone to the bother beforehand themselves to check.

Then there was the absence of a public address system at the finish, which left many swimmers ignorant of the presentation ceremony held upstairs in the clubhouse. There was a crowd milling around outside waiting for the ceremony, which already was taking place upstairs. We trust no-one's name was called out for a travel prize when they were waiting for the draw outside.

And what happened to Meggs's pink sheet on the cliff over the Bronte pool? It's been there, at the suggestion of John Maguire, former Bronte Preso and organiser of Bronte's original ocean swim event, the Bronte Biathlon, back in the 80s, to provide a target for swimmers coming in from Mackenzies Point. But it was missing this year. Indeed, we missed it.

And what goes with the minimum age for this event? The event website said minimum age was 12; the results have an age group 10-15. We saw some very young kids out on the course, including one who certainly looked under 10 and who appeared to have started in the elite wave, judging by the colour of his cap. Maybe he was just small for his age.

Some swimmers were alarmed, too, to find a pod of boofhead swimmers barging through the peloton from behind wearing wetties and/or fins. We're told a bunch of quite fast swimmers left in the Fins/Wetties wave at the back of the swim. Some of them certainly showed no courtesy on their way through. Check out the results, and you'll see that a fins wearer is credited with 8th place overall. Well-known Bondi triathlete Spot Anderson also started in the "Flipper" wave and is credited with 15th. We saw Spot go past whilst we were sitting, bobbing around in the sea off Mackenzies Point. We thought he was a pink cap swimmer, but then we realised he didn't have a cap on at all.

The ocean was glorious, though. And Bronte is such a beautiful beach, as is North Curl Curl. One of the delights of ocean swimming is that we get to go to these places each year. Can't wait for Long Reef and, especially, Bilgola, next weekend.