Rosedale ....and Beyond (Eurobodalla) : Bermagui's Blue Pool (2 January 2012)

Monday, 2 January 2012

Bermagui's Blue Pool (2 January 2012)

Bermagui is a Sapphire Coast town some 100 kms south of Rosedale. It's a great place for a day trip; there are a couple of good cafes, and the Blue Pool.

According to local tales, Barbara Streisand and husband James Brolin stopped there to eat fish and chips when she toured Australia....they drove between gigs in Sydney and Melbourne.

For some more historical information, see this entry on my Swimming Blog

One of my favourite Australian journalists, Lenore Taylor, recently had this to say about Bermagui's Blue Pool:

"Blue Pool, Bermagui. 'When you face forward it’s just you and the endlessness of the ocean.' Photograph: Andrew Brown/Destination NSW

There’s always that sense of smallness swimming in the sea, of how tiny you are relative to the ocean that stretches to the horizon and further. But swimming out from a beach you can keep a toehold on the familiar world of the land, reaching down with a foot for the reassurance of the sand as you swim, turning back to check how far you are from the kids shrieking on the shore.

Bermagui’s Blue Pool is at the bottom of a cliff, reached by steep steps. Just beyond its edge is deep, dark water and jagged rocks where the waves crash in. When you turn back, the cliffs obscure most signs of life. When you face forward it’s just you and the endlessness of the ocean.

It’s been there since at least the 1930s. I first swam in it when I was sent to the south coast of New South Wales on assignment as a young journalist in the late 1980s. I stayed at O’Shea’s Hotel, where the walls of the bar were covered in faded sepia photographs of game fishermen standing proudly beside the ones that didn’t get away and “old Mr O’Shea” was still there to tell the little town’s big fishing stories.

It was the start of many decades of happy trips to discover the coves and rocks and cliffs and forests of the south coast, the changeable weather and the cold water currents, so different from the straight-as-a-die beaches and glaring sunshine of my native Queensland.

Blue Pool is refurbished now – the steps are less rickety and there are benches and a new toilet block and change rooms. The lap swimmers are still there in sensible togs and bathing caps.

Me, I like to float and contemplate the vastness of the sky, the depth of the sea, the distance to the horizon and the implausibility of infinity."

Lenore's article link.

I love to swim in Blue Pool, AND lie back and float. Oft times there'll be someone more daring than I jumping off the rocks at the side.