Holding my breath
This is an article I wrote for my last dive club newsletter:
One of my earliest childhood memories is diving into our backyard pool. The shock of the cold against my sun warmed skin, and then trying to stay at the bottom and sit on the fibreglass floor. I wanted to stay down there, where it was so calm and so still. But inevitably I would have resurface, and push against the bottom to gasp at the air on the surface. The drain, which I called the “bath plug” in my 6 year old mind, had a broken grill on it, so sometimes I would swim down and pick up the grill and take it back up to the surface. But on land, it seemed to lose its mystery and just became a broken bit of plastic.
My parents split up, and we moved away from that house and that pool. We were poor then: Dad wasn’t giving us any money, and Mum refused to go on welfare, and so struggled to bring up 3 children on a hospital employee wage. But we all loved to swim, so Mum used to take us down to Lake Burley Griffin, and we’d swim out to the pontoon, which was covered in duck droppings, and as we got older, even swim across the lake, trusting that our swimming caps would protect us from any wayward sailors. People used to say there were dead bodies in Lake Burley Griffin, and it certainly was deep murky brown, with greenish algae that would get caught in your swimmers. Visibility was about 5cm.
I was probably about 10, when one summer’s day, my brother said he’d touched the bottom. It seemed such a long way down, so trusting him and his word, I swam down what was probably 3m and then resurfaced, bringing evidence of my achievement in brackish sand seeping away from my hand. My ears hurt, and it was completely pitch black 3 metres down, but I thought my brother had done it, so I could do it too.
Probably the next memory is when I swam in my first swimming race, and won it. I was a natural swimmer. I started training regularly, and rapidly improved. At 14 I was representing my state in swimming. But then I ran away to live with my Dad.
He said, when he saw me swim, that I was like a dolphin, and a swimming instructor near my regular work out pool said it was like I had gills. He regularly points my technique out to people learning to swim – which is both flattering and embarrassing at the same time.
So I guess my love affair with water began a long time ago.
When I was at uni, training up and down in the pool, I used to watch these strange, black clad spider-people hang out at the bottom of the pool. They used to sit there motionless. I was never able to do that, and particularly as I got older, I got more and more buoyant. I wanted to be like those spider people, and be able to sit and stare up at the light through the water. But every time I thought about it, the cost of the initial course put me off.
A few years later, I ran into some students. By then I was working at a university. They raved about SCUBA, and again I thought I want to try that. But I never did.
Then a 3 years ago, I started working at UTS. I met someone who was into SCUBA diving, and desire to learn was re-awakened in me. She spoke of thrilling night diving, where the water was once again black, and creatures ducked and weaved in front of the torch beam. So, several months into my new, stressful job, I went to Port Douglas where I had a short holiday at a resort. I decided to do a resort dive and try SCUBA diving out.
On the way out to the reef, a long, long boat trip, we filled out a medical form. The divemaster wasn’t sure I’d be able to dive, because of the medication I was on, but a phone call to the doctor confirmed I could. Then I learnt the 3 basic skills – I think it was retrieving your regulator, clearing your mask, and equalising your ears. I’m not exactly sure though.
All I can remember is being desperate to get into the water! And then they put the BCD and tank on me. It was so heavy! I couldn’t believe that I’d be able to move underwater, let alone stay there. But trusting them, I jumped in.
Once in the water, I grabbed hold of the rope, and slowly made my way down. The divemaster made sure I was equalising every half metre or so, until suddenly I was 5 metres under water. I remember looking up, and seeing the light through the water, much farther above me than it had ever been before. I couldn’t believe it – my lifelong dream to stay underwater had happened.
One of my earliest childhood memories is diving into our backyard pool. The shock of the cold against my sun warmed skin, and then trying to stay at the bottom and sit on the fibreglass floor. I wanted to stay down there, where it was so calm and so still. But inevitably I would have resurface, and push against the bottom to gasp at the air on the surface. The drain, which I called the “bath plug” in my 6 year old mind, had a broken grill on it, so sometimes I would swim down and pick up the grill and take it back up to the surface. But on land, it seemed to lose its mystery and just became a broken bit of plastic.
My parents split up, and we moved away from that house and that pool. We were poor then: Dad wasn’t giving us any money, and Mum refused to go on welfare, and so struggled to bring up 3 children on a hospital employee wage. But we all loved to swim, so Mum used to take us down to Lake Burley Griffin, and we’d swim out to the pontoon, which was covered in duck droppings, and as we got older, even swim across the lake, trusting that our swimming caps would protect us from any wayward sailors. People used to say there were dead bodies in Lake Burley Griffin, and it certainly was deep murky brown, with greenish algae that would get caught in your swimmers. Visibility was about 5cm.
I was probably about 10, when one summer’s day, my brother said he’d touched the bottom. It seemed such a long way down, so trusting him and his word, I swam down what was probably 3m and then resurfaced, bringing evidence of my achievement in brackish sand seeping away from my hand. My ears hurt, and it was completely pitch black 3 metres down, but I thought my brother had done it, so I could do it too.
Probably the next memory is when I swam in my first swimming race, and won it. I was a natural swimmer. I started training regularly, and rapidly improved. At 14 I was representing my state in swimming. But then I ran away to live with my Dad.
He said, when he saw me swim, that I was like a dolphin, and a swimming instructor near my regular work out pool said it was like I had gills. He regularly points my technique out to people learning to swim – which is both flattering and embarrassing at the same time.
So I guess my love affair with water began a long time ago.
When I was at uni, training up and down in the pool, I used to watch these strange, black clad spider-people hang out at the bottom of the pool. They used to sit there motionless. I was never able to do that, and particularly as I got older, I got more and more buoyant. I wanted to be like those spider people, and be able to sit and stare up at the light through the water. But every time I thought about it, the cost of the initial course put me off.
A few years later, I ran into some students. By then I was working at a university. They raved about SCUBA, and again I thought I want to try that. But I never did.
Then a 3 years ago, I started working at UTS. I met someone who was into SCUBA diving, and desire to learn was re-awakened in me. She spoke of thrilling night diving, where the water was once again black, and creatures ducked and weaved in front of the torch beam. So, several months into my new, stressful job, I went to Port Douglas where I had a short holiday at a resort. I decided to do a resort dive and try SCUBA diving out.
On the way out to the reef, a long, long boat trip, we filled out a medical form. The divemaster wasn’t sure I’d be able to dive, because of the medication I was on, but a phone call to the doctor confirmed I could. Then I learnt the 3 basic skills – I think it was retrieving your regulator, clearing your mask, and equalising your ears. I’m not exactly sure though.
All I can remember is being desperate to get into the water! And then they put the BCD and tank on me. It was so heavy! I couldn’t believe that I’d be able to move underwater, let alone stay there. But trusting them, I jumped in.
Once in the water, I grabbed hold of the rope, and slowly made my way down. The divemaster made sure I was equalising every half metre or so, until suddenly I was 5 metres under water. I remember looking up, and seeing the light through the water, much farther above me than it had ever been before. I couldn’t believe it – my lifelong dream to stay underwater had happened.
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