Straight after
Christmas I linger in Sydney a while and set up temporary lodgings in Matt and
Jane’s spare room at their flat near the Stanmore Station. The closest pool is the Fanny Durack on the
edge of Petersham Park -The very oval where, at 18 years of age, Don Bradman struck 110 runs, his first triple figure in an
official game- and the walk there becomes our afternoon suburban pilgrimage.
Along Trafalgar St
which parallels the snaking train tracks, up over the wooden bridge at
Petersham station and past the bowling club that somehow yearly survives the
creeping re-developmental fate of having brick flats plonked onto its green. Turn right onto Station St where we pass an unusual tree I look at every time; a
smooth milky ghost gum whose branches have gracefully yielded to the dipping arc
of power lines in a perpendicular gesture of, “be my guest,” like they were
there first and have first dibs on the air-space. A left and the atmosphere darkens slightly as
you turn into the park and paths lined with Camphor Laurel trees that provide voluminous umbrage to the picnicers.
The flat-roofed
dark brown-bricked entrance, of the same architectural vision as the public
toilet block beside, is at odds with the turn of the century wooden bandstand across the way. Often,
whichever teenager is in charge of taking our money at the kiosk is off hosing
down something or other so I let myself through the turnstile and pay on the way
out.
We pick out a patch of ground and mark it with our unfurled towels. Many mums of the Inner West favor the soft lawns too, and the undercover child wading pool is sometimes fuller than the main one. A mural of a giant middle-aged baby coveting a beach ball adorns the wall of the pump-shed with a reminder to use sunscreen: Use 30+, Live 30+. The message being if we protect ourselves from the sun we should hopefully live past age 30.
We pick out a patch of ground and mark it with our unfurled towels. Many mums of the Inner West favor the soft lawns too, and the undercover child wading pool is sometimes fuller than the main one. A mural of a giant middle-aged baby coveting a beach ball adorns the wall of the pump-shed with a reminder to use sunscreen: Use 30+, Live 30+. The message being if we protect ourselves from the sun we should hopefully live past age 30.
My holiday in
Caloundra has set me on a path; a combination of swimming and painkillers has
got me through a bout of the mystery illness I’ve been plagued with for years.
My training starts here at the Fanny Durack and Jane is my unofficial
motivator.
As our afternoons
pile up my strength and endurance grows. 20 laps, 25, 30. The main problem I’m
having now is keeping count. And the
boredom.
At the awkward length
of 33 meters I find myself doing mental arithmetic up and down the lanes. 3
laps equals almost 100 meters, therefore 30 is close to a kilometer. Usually after about 3 laps my mind starts to
wander and it’s hard to control: 4, 5, 6, 7…do tomatoes count as part of my daily fruit or vegetable intake?...7... hang on, didn’t I do 7
already!?
I start making up
rhymes to help:
One, One, I’ve
just begun
Two, two, there’s
more to do
Etc, until it gets
complicated
Twenty one, twenty
one, this is not plenty fun
When that no
longer works I start a new game, Artistic Works Containing Numbers.
One flew over the
cuckoo’s nest
Two Mules for
sister Sara
The three Amigos
Four Weddings and
a Funeral
Slaughterhouse- 5
The Sixth Sense
The Magnificent
Seven
Dinner at 8
Nine ½ Weeks
Ten Canoes
Oceans 11
and then it gets
hard…
Oceans 12
Oceans 13
and then it’s near
impossible…
Jane and I get
competitive at our daily lap count. She moves through the water with a lot more ease than I do, and usually when she gets out she's ahead by about 6 laps. My power is determination; I lumber on.
At night I can’t sleep for black line fever and in the morning the sheets smell faintly of chlorine.
At night I can’t sleep for black line fever and in the morning the sheets smell faintly of chlorine.
By the time the
summer temperatures are waning my mind has somehow melded with the lane lengths
and I’ve started to feel what number I’m on, even if my mind wanders off.
Specs: As of the time of writing the Fanny Durack is closed pending renovation, controversially being downgraded to a 25mt length.
History: the pool was one of three 33mt pools commissioned in the early 1960s in the Marrikville area after unresolved squabbles as to where a single 50mt might go, and opened as the Petersham Park Public Swimming Pool. It was re-named in 1999 after Fanny Durack, Australian swimming legend, who lived her twilight years in nearby Douglas St. Durack overcame local puritanical banning of women from competing with men due to immodesty, to travel to the 1912 Stockholm Olympics and win Gold.
Specs: As of the time of writing the Fanny Durack is closed pending renovation, controversially being downgraded to a 25mt length.
History: the pool was one of three 33mt pools commissioned in the early 1960s in the Marrikville area after unresolved squabbles as to where a single 50mt might go, and opened as the Petersham Park Public Swimming Pool. It was re-named in 1999 after Fanny Durack, Australian swimming legend, who lived her twilight years in nearby Douglas St. Durack overcame local puritanical banning of women from competing with men due to immodesty, to travel to the 1912 Stockholm Olympics and win Gold.
