Swim

Hmmmm.  I chose the word from the dictionary this time.  It was “swim.”
I do have a claim to fame with swimming that would be lost on many now.  Lawrie Laurance taught me to swim.  It was in the Tobruk pool in Townsville.  I remember him buying me an ice-cream the first time I ever swam a width.
The trouble for me was I would swim with my eyes closed.  One time when I was not being trained, I thought I would swim another width.  Unbeknown to me, while I swam I had changed direction and was heading up the pool.  I was thinking, “I should have made it by now.”  I decided to open my eyes and have a look around.  I was halfway down the pool and  well and truly out of my depth.  At that exact moment someone was knocked off someone else’s shoulders and splashed into the water right where I was.  Well I floundered big time and was carried to the side.  I was uninjured apart from my pride.  One day I was gonna be a big kid.
That pool featured in my youth.  I was never one to swim up and down training, but I did like to retrieve coins from the bottom and do summersaults for the diving blocks.  I obviously got over my earlier bad experience.
That pool was right on the sea front.
Poor girl.  I had never known it to happen to any one until I met her.  She was from out west and had never seen the sea.  I met her at our school formal (which was not the big deal then it seems to be now).  Anyway she was persuaded to go into the sea.  She did and was stung by a box jelly fish.  She was scarred both physically and mentally.
One thing a person does not get in North Queensland is surf.  The reef protects the place from big swells.  That is unless a cyclone is going down the coast.  Then we would converge on the waterfront.  It was ok to swim in the open sea then as cyclones generally meant north easters were not blowing.  It was them that brought in the jelly fish.  Ok the surf was more like dumpers than good surfing waves but hey they were bigger than what was normal.
There were good creeks to swim in around Townsville.  But I would not swim in some of them now.  They have signs up “beware of crocodiles.”  One creek we went down on tyre tubes from a bridge to the mouth of a creek.  It was a couple of kilometres.  I remember thinking “what if there was a crocodile?”   Little did I know that in thirty years or so that was a place that would have a sign “beware of the crocodiles.”  The fishing has improved immensely but I do keep away from the edge.
I reckon I will need to do this one in a couple of parts.  Already I am at 630 words.  I write from 400-599 max.  What you read will have a lot deleted but I think I will do a part two as swimming very much featured in my youth.