What a beautiful, beautiful beach ... Forresters Beach from the northern headland. The swim runs, as you will have seen above, anti-clockwise around the reef. Perhaps the prettiest swim we've ever done, run by the friendliest bunch of coves. The kind of friendly bunch of coves who are just so grateful that you turn up to do their swim. Remember when all swims were like that?

At Forresters, the Coke Memorial swim is not named after some rotgut soft drink, but after Dave "Coke" Wards, whose head was coconut-shaped, and who died of leukaemia almost 20 years ago. Now, Dave's cobbers remember him annually around this time -- we're told this swim is always the second Saturday in October -- with a surf contest and now, too, a swim, with proceeds going to leukaemia research. Swim maestro is The Palm, whom you can see here briefing the peloton on the course. The Palm, owner of One Palm Creations, is named for a mishap at the cereal factory four years ago when he got his hand caught in a machine and it shredded one hand. And here he is, surfing, running contests, and making the delightful wood-carved trophies that the gang gives out up here. Life has its vicissitudes, but it's not too bad sometimes.

Yes, yes, yes, they're off! Out to the sea ... out to sea ... around the island, the reef. There's a grey nurse nursery out there, we're told.

Wearing a wettie, but loving it.

Douglas Bader.

Head for the blue awning.

One Palm made Mrs Sparkle's trophy, the second she has received from Forresters, and she was very grateful for it, offering up some of her deepest treasures in return. "I couldn't get under hs big-brimmed hat," she said later.

Forresters local and familiar ocean swimmer, Brett Larkin, didn't swim this day. He'd had an altercation with a rock at the top of Mt Kosciuszko the previous weekend, he told us. He could be called Zipper Head now, except that that name is taken already. Check out the black eyes, too. Makes Brett sexy to some toey gals, judging by the attitude that Rozanne Green strikes when she spots his stitches. Rozanne, by the way, won first prize in her category, but left immediately for a wedding in Cronulla. Who in their right minds would leave Forresters immediately for Cronulla?

Perhaps only in a town like Morpeth, near Maitland in the lower Hunter Valley, would you get horses waiting blithely for the bus as well as humans. We never saw the bus.

The front seat of a parked car in Morpeth. Hmmmm.

One advantage of swimming in rivers, as opposed to oceans, is that one's stroke is more distinctive and it's easier for friends and rescue authorities to pick one out.

How brown is my custard? asked Mrs Sparkle.

It is disconcerting, to be sure, when one is swimming along, suddenly to find some bozo walking along next to one. At one stage, shortly after the start at Morpeth, there must have been half a dozen such bozos wading through the river as we thrashed about next to them, determined that swimming is more energy efficient in the water than walking. It reminded us of the World Masters 3km Open Water in Victoria in 2002. The peloton swam 1.5km straight out in the most appalling water imaginable, at Hazelwood Ponds, the power station cooling ponds, where you couldn't see your hand before your face, only to find at the half way point that the turning booees were officials standing in waist deep water.

There are creatures in murky water that one can't see but sometimes feels.

We have these vague memories of Morpeth of when, as little tykes -- that's in the generic sense, not the religious -- we were taken to Morpeth by Peppermint Pattie and Rotten ol' Herbie to visit an old family friend, Sister Catherine, who had retired there. Sister Catherine had lived in the convent next to our Nana's place in Stockton. She attained folkloric status in our family. In Morpeth, we remember being ushered into the convent's drawing room, just inside the front door, awaiting the aged nun. We remember her receiving us, pontifically, in the drawing room. There was afternoon tea, we seem to recall. No cake. This is the convent, looking much the same, only smarter and more commercial now. It's a guest house. The church remains next door. It wasn't hard to find. There aren't many streets in Morpeth.

One of the glories -- and at once one of the tragedies -- of ocean and open water swimming is that it is so egalitarian. The corollary is that they let all kinds of weirdoes take part, including eccentric old farts with silly hats. These are what is known in the sport as "Senior swimmers". They are tolerated and indulged, and made to feel special, rather than respected.

There were some red-hot swimmers there, too, such as Brian Standlick, who seems to get faster each year as he ages.