Gore Vidal famously said that you should “never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television,” and to that I would add "go for a swim."
Swimming in the warm ocean is by far the most satisfying. The salt water, the surf, the sand, the sun and the coconut oil all imprint themselves on the senses in ways too numerous to count. Living in cold-water San Francisco means I usually have to settle for swimming in a pool, but the ocean pools of Australia, which I visited daily on SPUR’s recent city trip, opened my eyes to the fact that swimming in a pool isn’t necessarily settling.
Bronte Baths
There are ocean pools all over Australia. In New South Wales alone there are more than 100. The most famous, and picturesque is the Bondi Icebergs Pool at the south end of Bondi Beach in Sydney. Continuing the aboriginal tradition of “bogey holes,” these pools are built of rock, often carved out of headlands and filled with ocean water that floods over the sides. Some are owned and maintained by private clubs that charge the public an admission fee. They have marked swimming lanes and if you arrive early in the morning you will see swim teams going through their morning work out before heading to the office.
Bondi Iceberg Pools
At other ocean pools, like the ones at neighboring Coogee or Bronte, the atmosphere is more relaxed, admission is free and locals who might not be comfortable in the pounding surf can take a leisurely paddle in a stunning setting.
Cogee Baths at Sunrise (top) and Sunset (bottom)
As anyone who has watched an Olympic competition knows, swimming is a big deal in Australia. The first national swimming championships were held in 1894, the modern swimsuit was invented at Bondi Beach and the freestyle stroke, aka the Australian Crawl, was also developed here. Australia continues to win far more medals in international competition than a nation of fewer than 25 million should, and surely some of that must be due to the fact that Australians have found a way to make swimming so damn fun.