This morning my wonderful wife took me to Kiama. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and the water was beckoning. We had gone there in the hope of going swimming, but the combination of school holidays, Kiama seaside markets, a kids’ fishing competition and a beautiful sunny day meant parking spots were at a premium.
We drove around for ages until we finally found the last available spot in Kiama near the fish markets. We looked at the rock pool, but the water was freezing and the steps down to the pool wet and slippery (d’uh) so we decided that we could do the trundle around the waterfront at Black Beach to the old olympic pool. It’s located under the headland on the northern end of the harbour.
It was quite a struggle to get through the crowds at the seaside markets but we got there and headed for the pool. This particular pool has a ramp down into the pool with a railing which looked perfect. We got the wheelchair as close as possible and I helped myself into the pool, hanging onto the railing. It was SO good to be in the water. The bottom of the pool is rocky and uneven, but, as long as you’re careful, it’s not a problem.
I was careful not to kick my legs, but it was so great to be able to swim. After enjoying the water for 10 minutes or so, I decided to get out and headed for the ramp. I reached for the railing and started out. A man was hanging onto the railing so I guessed he was in a similar predicament to me, so I moved aside and kept going…eh?? I was walking without hanging on to anything!!!!!!!!
I have always understood Archimedes Principle about displacement of water, but it suddenly hit me that, in water, I was weightless, I could walk! I walked all the way to the top of the ramp, turned around, walked all the way back in and then back out again. In water the body is supported and the weight that would normally be on the dodgy leg wasn’t there…whoohoo!!!
I will be going back to the pool again for some more home-made hydrotherapy!!
For those of you who know Kiama, this will be familiar. For others, here’s a quick potted tour of one of my favourite towns (and I’ll explain at the end why). The world famous Kiama Blowhole is at the bottom right of the picture. Directly north of it is the rock pool where we normally swim. To its S/W is Kiama Harbour and to its west, Black Beach (called so because it has no sand, just a black pebbly bottom). Immediately above the “B” in Blowhole Point Road is the fishermans’ co-op at the harbour where we parked the car. We then walked (I wheelchaired) along the path that curves around Black Beach all the way to the pool at the top of the picture. Very picturesque, actually.
Now, my Kiama obsession goes back a long, long way. In 1968, for my “gap year” – well before the concept became popular, I worked for a year for Kiama Council, saving money to help fund my university studies that I planned to begin at the start of 1969. I fell in love with the town right then. Though it was still a tourist attraction back then, it was more of a sleepy country town than the bustling leisure centre it has become. On the place where the large grassy park now is, south of the rock pool in which we swam today, was Kiama Olympic Pool. It was a tidal pool, partially filled by the actions of the tide and partially from pumps which pumped in the seawater. It had concrete walls, but a natural, rock bottom, and one of the jobs that I regularly had to do, along with many other staff members, was to clean the pool. This happened once a fortnight, from memory. At low tide, the pool would be pumped dry and we would then rush into the pool with bass brooms and huge bags of chlorine powder and sweep the whole pool clean of the algae and other marine encrustations that had made it their home.
It was a huge job and it was a pressure job because it had to be completed while the tide was at its lowest and before the natural action of the tide began to fill it again. We worked in normal clothes, with only rubber gloves as token protective gear, certainly no respirators to protect our airways from the vicious particles of chlorine that filled the air as we broomed it around. I shudder to think of it now.
Years later, it seems, the council decided that the expense involved in maintaining the pool was not worth the return (entry to the pool was free) and so it was back-filled and the park that now sits on its site was created. The rock pool was there back then, but few people swam there as it is rather shallow.
Needless to say that, as a feckless youth, the thought never occurred to me that buying a lock of land there, back then, could have been a good investment…ah, me, another wasted opportunity.