One of Australia’s top marathon swimmers and organiser of Australia’s longest ocean swim, the Palm Beach to Shelly Beach, Tim Garrett, has introduced a new marathon swim onto the Australian calendar – the Manly to Bundeena.

Set to take place on the 15th of December 2023, the 36-kilometre Manly to Bundeena Swim is a continuance of the Palm Beach to Shelly Beach marathon swim seeing swimmers start at Little Manly Beach before swimming the length of greater Sydney to finish at Bundeena Beach.

The Manly to Bundeena Swim is not for the faint-hearted with swimmers having to have already completed a swim longer than 20km to be eligible to participate.

“This swim will effectively be one of the harder marathon swims to do in Australia,” said Mr Garrett.

“I really want accomplished marathon swimmers to enter and give it a go because the course is quite challenging yet very rewarding at the same time.

“I am hoping it will be the gold standard of marathon swimming in Australia and we will have the cream of the crop participating.

“The course has everything a marathon swimmer wants; from swimming across three harbours, negotiating commercial vessels, swimming in the dark, contending currents and bounce-back of cliffs, multiple checkpoints where you have to tread water, swimming in the deep ocean, ranging from anywhere between one kilometre to five kilometres offshore and not to mention that it’s a long swim.”

This event is the first of many marathon swimming events Mr Garrett plans to introduce to Australian shores, in a bid to give Australian marathon swimmers more opportunities on home turf.

“Manly to Bundeena is one of many events I am trying to organise to introduce a whole marathon swim series in Australia,” said Mr Garrett.

“Really, I am trying to promote marathon swimming in Australia and increase the amount of marathon swim opportunities here in Australia because we have a lot of marathon swimmers here but not a lot of marathon swim opportunities.

“A lot of our marathon swimmers have to go overseas for their swims and when you look at the cost-benefit of going overseas, you don’t get change out of $20,000 Australian dollars.

“We have such beautiful beaches and waterways in Australia, it just didn’t make sense to me that with so much opportunity in our own backyard, we weren’t taking advantage of it, which is why I set out to make more marathon swim opportunities here in Australia, with Manly to Bundeena being the next one.”

Marathon swimmers will need to be quick to enter as the swim is limited to only 20 swimmers.

Enter now and be the first to tackle the new Manly to Bundeena Swim.