Big River Man

Last weekend The Advertiser's SA Weekend magazine had a fascinating article on the Slovenian long distance swimmer Martin Strel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Strel who swam the Amazon River in 2007 when he was 53. Apparently the award winning documentary 'Big River Man' which is now out on DVD shouldn't be missed by anyone interested in swimming. Fellow bloggers may be particularly interested in Strel's diary of the final days of his journey. The BBC published it not long after he completed the journey: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/6389845.stm

It was a big weekend for open water swimming as The Weekend Australian Magazine (page 34) carried a timely preview of next weekend's 19.7 km swim to Rottnest, mentioning among other things that Dieter Loeliger, former Adelaide Masters member, will be completing the swim two days before his 77th birthday! Good luck to Dieter as well as Pam Gunn and the other Adelaide Masters swimmers competing this year. Check out the Rottnest site http://www.rottnestchannelswim.com.au/content/other-events for more on this event.

Ocean swimming booms: record numbers show for Cole Classic

The love of sea and salt is proving irresistible to a growing number of ocean swimmers, with a record number taking part in one of the country's longest-running ocean swims, the Cole Classic in Manly, Sydney. Four and a half thousand swimmers entered the 1 kilometre and 2 kilometre events, despite the heavy rainfall making for dirty conditions.
 
As a sport, ocean swimming is booming and NSW leads the way, followed by Victoria and Western Australia.

Download audio here from ABC website

The AM on Facebook

For all you Facebook junkies the AM has a group on Facebook.  Follow this link if you are keen to be a member:

AM Facebook Group

How does a blog work?

A blog is simply a web page designed to deliver information in an easy to read well formatted manner. To access the AM blog you can follow this link.:

Link http://amnewsletter.blogspot.com/

There are 2 ways to follow the site. One is to regularly follow the link to see what is happening but we also send out an email with the link after several stories have been posted.

The second option is to subscribe to our blog. For this option you will need a Gmail or Yahoo email account (both can be set up free of charge) and by clicking on the link Follow to the right of the blog and adding your email address you will receive an email when the site is updated.

The blog happens chronologically, older items will be further down the blog or under the link on the right.

That's it!  Enjoy the blog.

The newsletters they are a changin'

Be patient with us that's iain and me well me more than iain i'm a bit old and out of touch and trying to stave off dementia by learning something new not doing something I'm already comfortable with and I'm sure not readily comfortable with blogs and creating the first post of what we hope will be many posts written by and expanded upon and published online by us and you as a fun way of bringing our club and its wondrous characters and history alive and well for all of us to read about and enjoy

i'm peter by the way peter mcfarlane petermac petermacca macca sometimes poider i was appointed editor of the newsletter at the agm last year but as you can see from the photo i took of the poster put out by the desperate-for-members petanque recruiting team at collonges la rouge in the dordogne i ran away to france and other places for an extended stay as a way of escaping all responsibilities and left them all with iain wright former newsletter editor and much appreciated and indispensable member of the editorial team who reckons and i believe him well almost that we'll all be going online to check this blog out as well as add to it and build on it for the future once we've got the hang of how easy it is to do and we appreciate how splendid it will be to have blogs on what was then what is now and what's coming up in the future

so thanks to iain this blog's under way we've already got a post on the vanuatu swims plus a great link to the issue of suits that sue our president found in the washington post and a brief summary from iain on how to get into the blog and subscribe to it that is the mechanics of the thing and he says and i believe him that once we follow his directions and get the hang of how to collect and edit posts there'll be lots more entries and lots more links and the aussi masters swimming blog will grow and grow into a pretty exciting and enjoyable addition to our club

what's going to be in future blogs is up to us and what we want to read about but i'm going to make a small beginning by responding to the members' suggestions that were in the recent survey and begin collecting stories and photos and articles from our older members as a way of celebrating the swimmers who founded the club and made such a significant contribution over the years

over the oncoming months i'll be approaching various people with requests for articles and ideas on this and other topics but if you've already got something you want to write about or if you've found a link you want to recommend to everyone don't wait for me to ask please email it to me directly as my aim my hope my wish for the future as i hope you've been able to work out from this unpunctuated rush of thoughts from my brain is that the adelaide masters swimming blog is one that's made by and for all members of our club

Scrapbook

In the beginning...

For the benefit of our new and younger club members articles containing Adelaide Masters' history and past personalities will be a regular feature in future AM newsletters.  Di Simons, one of our founding members has written this one.

In the early 70, she writes, a group of coaches and ex-amateur swimmers met regularly to compete as a means of staying fit and keeping in touch. The called themselves the Old Time Swimmers League.

Josie Sansom (left) was part of this group. She had been chosen to represent Holland in the 1948 Olympic team until TB and the removal of a lung put paid to her aspirations.

Josie heard about a group called the Australian Union of Senior Swimmers International (AUSSI) which had been formed by returned diggers in NSW. Consequently Josie, Stan Walker and Pam Squires went to Harbord Diggers Club to compete and that was the nucleus of Adelaide Masters.

Ours was the first AUSSI club in SA formed in November 1977. Ern Reddaway, the manager of the Parade Pool (now State Swim Norwood), was our patron and he allowed us to use the pool free 3 nights a week for training. Impromptu meetings were held on the back lawns as we scoffed a sausage sizzle.

Josie became our much loved and revered coach and would coerce/cajole us into time trials and swims we thought beyond our capabilities.

Twenty eight members competed at Melbourne Nationals at the Footscray Pool completing 9 swims in one day. The team was placed 2nd overall, won the St Leonard's Trophy, and thereby became a force to be reckoned with at future Nationals.

PERSONALITIES

The oldies at our club were a canny lot who would all get together to plan their swims to maximise points for the club and up until the mid 2000s when they were all in their 80s, scored a large percentage of our winning points at Interclub meets and made a great contribution serving on various committees over the years. Names which come to mind are:

Mavis Boase (left) who at 68 won the Henley to Grange swim. She complained that she swam it 5 minutes slower than she had when she won this event 50 years before and said with a chuckle, 'They looked at me and saw a little frail old lady.' She has since passed away.

Joe Savage (life member below) who endeared himself to everyone when he entertained us all night at a restaurant under the Princes Bridge at the Melbourne Nationals. He had a beautiful bass voice and his last rendition was at the Darwin Nationals in 1999 when we were on a sunset yacht cruise - a memorable night! He competed into his 80s and I have a memory of him diving in and swimming 50 metres with his togs around his ankles because he'd forgotten to tie up his bathers! Sadly he passed away in 2007.

Mary Kemp, life member, (below) joined in 1982 because her son told her she wallowed in the water instead of swimming. Mary regularly brought along cakes to raffle at our training sessions to raise funds to subsidise our trips to the Nationals. We all felt desperately sorry for her when she was regularly disqualified for a screw kick in the breaststroke events. Turned out it was a hip problem causing this disability. She was swimming and competing regularly (she is now aged 89) until a knee reconstruction slowed her down this year. Mary plans to get back in the water as soon as possible.









 .....to be continued

Swimming Around Australia

Follow this link to see Natalie Hann's blog on swimming around Australia....what a great idea!!


http://swimmingaroundaustralia.blogspot.com/

Vanuatu ... AM swimmers in paradise

Four Adelaide Masters swimmers – Jeanette Ashton, Sue Graebner, Pam Gunn and Michael Harry – made the trek to Vanuatu for two rewarding swims in June. Among a dozen or so swimmers from SA around 100 in total which made the trip including a number of local Vanuatan swimmers.

Vanuatu is a fascinating country, a spectacular tropical environment, volcanic terrain with some volcanoes which you can trek to and clear, deep blue water with abundant reefs teeming with fish.

It is the people who really make an impression – mostly extremely poor, they are universally friendly, relaxed and welcoming.

The population is young and homogenous – 95% indigenous ni-Van with a small community of French and English expats and a Chinese minority which operates most of the country’s businesses.

Our deeply religious drivers were called Thomas, Luke, Moses and John!

While there are literally hundreds of local dialects, English and Bislama – pidgin English – are widely spoken and communication is never a problem.

Everyone seems to be employed – mostly in subsistence agriculture, though there is a growing tourism sector.

Infrastructure – most obviously health, education and roads – is quite primitive but the country has a sense of purpose and well being that shines through the poverty.

Accommodation, local travel and food are reasonably priced. Food is incredibly cheap if shopping at the local markets or from the roadside.

Some of the treats are the Vanuatan beer Tusker and coffee, grown on the southern island of Tanna.

The first swim, a 3.2K course around Iririki Island at Port Vila on the main island Effate, was held in overcast but fortunately fine conditions after a wet and windy day before.

On the day the water was almost flat, clear enough to see tropical fish while swimming over reefs close to shore, and markedly cooler crossing a deep, indigo trench between the island and the mainland.

There is also a 1500M loop swim.

The awards dinner the following night was fun, a ni-Van string band played Vanuatan reggae and there were tarot, yams, curries and other interesting dishes as well as lots of fish.

After Port Vila we flew to Espiritu Santo, the largest of the islands about 200K north.

Lugarno, the capital, is a small, almost sleepy township, with distinct French influences and fascinating relics and infrastructure left by the US forces in World War 2.

While Vila is friendly bustle, Santo feels more remote and exotic.

The day after we arrived we were taken in canoes to a “blue hole” - a deep crystal clear brilliant blue waterhole fed by mountain rivers - then swam back downstream to meet our bus.

The next swim, 2.6K from the Luganville foreshore across a channel to Aore, a separate island, was more challenging than the Vila swim, however the weather was kind and predicted strong currents didn’t seem to create problems for most swimmers.

Water cover was provided by a fleet of traditional outrigger canoes, which had done an exhibition race the day before.

A memorable feature of the swim was the large cohort of local swimmers – around 30 including 5 or 6 women tackling the course.

Self taught, in boardshorts or jocks, without goggles unless they were able to get hold of a donated pair, and with no preparation, most managed to finish, some completely spent by the finish line.

Other highlights included an entertaining traditional welcome dance before the swim, loud and humorous and a fine awards lunch on

Of our group, Jeanette distinguished herself by winning the 60 – 65 category in both swims, a terrific achievement, as the standard was high.

All were happy with their swims, and could not have asked for a better experience.

We didn’t get around to visiting a kava bar....that, together with lots of other adventures, remain for a return visit.

Pacific Swims did an excellent job organising the trip and made a genuine effort to give something back to the local community as well as providing a memorable and great value experience for swimmers. Check them out yourselves at www.pacificswims.com.

One suggestion for future swims – in the spirit of east-coast open water swims – leave your high tech swim suits at home. They are not necessary in 24C degree water, and don’t fit with the spirit of competition which the local swimmers epitomise.

By Michael Harry

Washington Post Article on Full-Body Suits

The Washington Post recently posted an article on Full-Body Swim suits and their use by masters swimmers. Follow the link below to find out more....

"Master Swimmers Are Split On Full on Full Body Swim Suits"