On the town!

The scene from the pier at Lorne as the peloton gathers for the 4th Annual Greg Fountain Winter Pier to Pub Swim on Saturday, July 21. Look carefully, and you might see how well rugged up most people are. Look at the brooding grey sky. Look at the wind tussling people's hair. It was not a welcoming day.

Indeed, look how well rugged up punters are here: the lass with her pool deck coat, he crocs and here two swim caps. Ingilby Dickson (at right) with his neoprene cap covering the ears and attached under chin, sitting over a ladies ruffled rubber cap, which he must have got from his gran. Why do punters dress like this? Because it's mid-winter down along the Great Ocean Road at Lorne.

Gingerly stepping onto the beach (above and at left): the sand was freezing, the weed was freezing, but Melbourne punters who get up to this kind of caper regularly claim the water was "very warm" . It was 12 degrees Celsius. Maybe for them. But this was outside the Bay (Port Phillip Bay), where, they reckoned, the water at the time was in the range of 6 deg - 7 deg C. And these eejits swim in that!

oceanswims.com travelled to Lorne especially to have a go at this Winter Pier to Pub, which follows the same course as the regular Pier to Pub at Lorne in summer. The regular swim is the biggest ocean swim in Stray'a, perhaps the world. Why did we travel al lthat way, from Godzone's Sutherland Shoire to Lorne? For the cold water. We, personally, have never swum in anything colder than 15 deg or thereabouts. We had a cold snap in Sydney in January last, which took temps down as low as 13.8 at Gerringong, ironically on the same weekend as the regular Pier to Pub swim. It was warmer there than in Sydney.

But we were curious as to how we might handle the cooler water. The tradition for the Winter Pier to Pub, you see, is that it's done without a wettie, which is fine by us, since we despise them so much and we don't own one.

This swim was started four years ago by a bunch of wettie-haters - the Brighton Icebergers, who swim in Port Phillip Bay all year 'round nude, as it were. And now, each mid-winter, they all head down to Lorne.

So how did we handle it? The oceanswims.com wrist thermometre told us at the end of the 1.2km swim that the water was 12 deg C. Much warmer than we'd feared.

We were last into the water, because we were taking the pics you see here. We didn't mind that too much, since the last thing we wanted was to dive in and head out to the start and have to wait around, treading water in that water, before the starting whistle, which went, as it turned out, when we were half way from the beach to the start, about 75 metres out. So we could just keep going.

Being last and being hurried up by the starter meant we didn't have time to hang about agonising over trivia such as temperatures and freezingness, and we just dived in and took off.

The initial sensation was dramatic. The initial cold sears through the body, like you'd just walked into a freezer nude. You stretch out. And you keep stretching out. And within 50 metres, we found, the exercise was enough to take our minds off the cold as it generated warmth inside. Throughout the swim, we were conscious that we were in very cold water, but it wasn't so cold that it caused us any difficulty. As long as you keep swimming, as long as you keep generating your own warmth, it's ok.

We took one precaution: three swm caps, two of them silicon, because most heat escapes from the body through the head. The farther we went, the warmer we got, and for ten minutes after we finished, standing around on the otherwise deserted, windy beach in front of the Lorne surf club, the pub looming over it on the hill behind, we were fine.

After ten minutes or so, though, once we weren't exercsing still, we started to feel the cold. We started to shake and shudder, to shiver and tremble violently. We took refuge in the hot showers inside the surf club, which were so hot that we started to feel funny pins and needles pains in our fingers and hands. We figured going from one extreme to the other wasn't a good idea, so we got out, got dressed, and took up, eventually, a more measured warming position in front of the log fire in the pub across the road.

We did it, though, and we're glad and proud we did. The 4th Greg Fountain Winter Pier to Pub - named for Brighton Iceberger Greg Fountain, who hasn't been real well lately - brought 56 punters, which is more than double last year's, even though it's not promoted and notification is by word of mouth only. Youngest swimmer was 15 (a lass who swam in a bikini, for goodness sake!), and the oldest c. 80, young John Dineen (we hope that's how John's name is spelt), who also swims "nude" in the Bay at Brighton.

We up here in balmy Sydney have no idea what this kind of swimming is like. It's one of those experiences that one must get up to at some stage in their ocean swimming careers.

Into the breech: the peloton heads to the start.

Paul Beukelman was the last one in, except for oceanswims.com, tardily taking pics behind.

We know we shouldn't be encouraging him, but Beukelman (right) is known for his hi-jinks. Leaving the water, he jumped up for a piggy back on the enormous back of Alby Bardoel, whom he leaves floundering in the break behind him. Small wonder.

In the distance from Lorne, at the northern end of the Great Ocean Road, the Split Point Lighthouse stands beaconically in the setting sun, which is an exaggeration down there at this time of year. It's not so much a setting sun as a rapidly diminishing gloom. We'd like to be back next year, though.

Some of you by now will have heard that Mrs Sparkle had an accident just over a year ago and, for the past 12 months, she's been getting around the place with a decidedly weird gait. She fell out of her roof, you see.

She was banged about pretty badly and, a week later, after returning home to supervise her house move, from a wheelchair - which didn't stop her in the slightest from barking instructions to sweating, panting boyfriends - she went back into hospital for a 4 1/2 operation to attempt to fix it up.

Trooper that Mrs Sparkle is, she didn't let it keep her away from the things she loves, apart from oceanswims.com. And it hasn't hurt her swimming so much. She has almost as much vertical flex in her phenomenally hyperextensible feet, although she can't kick as hard with the affected left one. Lateral extension is another matter entirely. And it has made her walking dead dodgy, indeed.

The reason, apart from the original injury, was that the sawbones pumped her full of lead, or titanium, rather, to pull back together the ten shattered fragments of her left heel bone, which people with medical certificates call the calcanius. Why they should bring maths into this, well, we don't know, but there you go. A plate and 14 screws, they bunged into her. $5,000 worth, which caused all sorts of consternation when she passes through the security entrances at court complexes, but registered not a jot when she passed through security at Sydney International Airport. No wonder the gait was dodgy, and no wonder it affected her entries and exits from the water at ocean swims last season.

Just recently, Mrs Sparkle went back to hospital to have the plate and 14 screws removed. She was a little apprehensive about this and, for several days before we drove her over to the hospital, she was very difficult to get along with. One reason for this was that she'd discovered the snooze doc allotted to her operation was a bloke whom, some 13 years ago, had treated The Ice Princess with grommets and The Ice Princess, aged 3 at the time, took exception to him placing an anaesthetic mask with strawberry essence soaked into it, over her face. So she hauled off and smacked him in the kisser. The Ice Princess smacked him in the kisser, that is, not Mrs Sparkle, who's far too demure for that.

Anyway, she fessed up with that bit of a tale right at the outset, getting it off her chest, and the snooze doc didn't seem to mind at all. He hadn't remembered, as a matter of fact. Funny, that. Mrs Sparkle had felt, for sure, he'd have her and The Ice Princess's names etched into leaden bullets tucked away in his breast pocket always, just in case he ever ran across them again.

The story gets better, though. The $5,000 worth of titanium in her foot was in the form of a plate bent every which way with screws securing the plate to the heel fragments, in all kinds of directions. It was a schemozzle, according to the x-rays. Ever since she had them inserted, Mrs Sparkle's left foot has been almost 50 per cent wider and rock hard along it's western edge. She doesn't carry a lot of flesh on her feet, the sawbones remarked, so the rich metal inlays stood out all the more.

What he discovered when he opened her up this time, however, was that she'd broken the plate. It was in two pieces inside her foot. No wonder it was a bit sore in the evenings and when the weather turned cool. And we thought she was just whingeing.

They're a bit of a badge of honour, now. Or badges of honour. She posed very proudly with them for the oceanswims.com -on-the-spot photo, with our Brownie Starflash, in a woollen jumper, this time.

At right, you can see where the plate has broken, and where it fits together. The sawbones reckoned it was from Mrs Sparkle constantly wiggling her heel up and down, side to side, trying to get her foot to work properly again. She was doing this from the day she came out of hospital. Maybe it was made worse by all the fin work we had her doing at Squad on Fin Fridays. "I must be pretty strong, don't you think, oceanswims.com," said Mrs Sparkle to us, lolling on her bed back home again less than 24 hours after the operation. "Do you think Wonder Woman could have broken that plate like I did? ... Or Xena, Warrior Woman ? ... Or Super Woman? ...

We sighed. "No, dear ... we reckon you're pretty strong, you are." We humoured her. She was a patient, after all, so we should be patient, too. "Do you think I should get a name, too, oceanswims.com?" She whimpered this out. The block on her left foot was wearing off. The drain hole, vacated by the drain itself, was weeping. The dressing was starting to fill with blood. "How about ..." we ventured, "Wonder Sparkle? ... Or Sparkle Arkle? ..." She didn't think we were taking this seriously.

She is one tough gal, but. Barely a whimper the whole time, and never loses her head in a crisis. Except when The Ice Princess gives her lip. Mrs Sparkle is one person we'd have beside us any time in an hour of need. Take a geek at all that hardware above. How would you go walking around for a year with that lot stuck in your heel. Would you whinge? We would.

Have a look at the break and the plate. The two bits would have been going in different directions most of the time. Do you reckon that might have hurt inside that petite, hyperextensible little foot? She's a trooper, isn't she!

The doctor reckons he'll have her running in no time, fast. Which would be pretty remarkable, since she couldn't run before.

It's January, and the cricket is on, which means the Bardoel boys will be visiting Sydney.

oceanswims.com and his queen, Mrs Sparkle, visited the Icebergs pool at Bondi on January 3 to catch up with our cobbers, Ed and Mary Lou Malphus, in and on the town from LA. In 2003, we swam the PT 109 swim in the Solomon Islands with Ed and Mary Lou. We were telling them about the last time we visited the Icebergs, two years earlier. That was to meet our buddies, the Bardoel boys, Alby and Peter, who come up from Melbourne every now and again to bask in the glamour of Sydney.

Alby and Peter are large figures in ocean swimming in Victoria, physically and metaphorically. They've swum the English Channel, and they're enormous supporters of other long distance swimmers. They're vociferous in their advocacy of nude swimming (sans wetties), which is a minority pursuit in Victoria.

It was a beautiful day at the 'Bergs. Magnificent, clear, baby blue sky, gentle offshore breeze holding up a respectable nor'-east swell, which crashed over the corner of the baths spectacularly, as if daring mug swimmers to get in there. As we leant over the railing looking down on this glorious scene, a giant of a man emerged from the remnant white water beside the baths, up the stairs used by swimmers to enter and leave the water for point-to-point swims at Bondi. "That looks like Alby Bardoel," said Mrs Sparkle, incredulously, for it would have been too great a coincidence - not to mention unheard of - for Alby to be visiting Sydney, visiting the Bergs, just at the first time in two years that we'd been there. Particularly when he hadn't told us he was coming. "Naahh, can't be," she dismissed the fantasy. "That fellow's too big for Alby". She wasn't referring to height, for Alby has always been a giant of a man, inversely proportionate to his outer bravado. "That one's been in a good paddock," she said.

But as we looked at the bloke, in his tiny Icebergs cossies, his gestures and mannerisms, his clear self-effacement as he chatted with the poolie, little bits seemed to add up, the jigsaw falling together. Indeed, it was Alby Bardoel, who'd decided, he told us later, on the spur of the moment two days earlier to make a lightning visit to Sydney, for the cricket as much as anything.

What a pleasure it was to catch up with him. For the Bardoel boys, along with some of their cobbers in Victoria, are some of our favourite people in ocean swimming.

Lucky we had the oceanswims.com Brownie-Starflash-in-a-plastic-bag, albeit this time out of the plastic bag, for we were able to capture Alby, preparing to re-enter the water off the Bergs, which is, we gather, one of his favourite places. The swell wasn't huge, but it reared spectacularly off the edge of the pool, like a posing cobra, before crashing harmlessly between the lane ropes, more show than grunt. But powerful show, just the same.

The lens can play tricks, especially when combined with a photo editing tool on the computer. Look at it above, Alby standing alone against the sea, Hemingway-like. Then look at it below. Still a beautiful image, but in its proper context.