What it’s like to swim with the Brighton Icebergers
For the Brighton Icebergers, a daily dip in the bay sans wetsuit — even in the depths of winter — is a way of life and a path to lifelong friendships and wellbeing. This is what happened when one reporter joined the pack.
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Keith Badger calls it “braceful”. I call it water torture.
The two of us are standing on the edge of Port Phillip Bay on a winter’s morning. We are barefoot and close to naked with damp sand between our toes. The water temperature is 11.2C. At least it’s in double digits.
“This is the time of day when you feel most alive,” Badger declares.
Really? The air is cold and thin, the water inky black, and an offshore breeze is brewing.
But Badger, 66, is not one to be cowed by the elements. He’s an Iceberger — one of those hardy, sporty souls who live for year-round open-water swimming, especially in winter. And nothing is going to prevent his customary daybreak dip off Brighton beach.
Former Victorian premier Ted Baillieu is a Brighton Iceberger, too. So is Grand Designs Australia host Peter Maddison. But who you are, and what you’ve achieved, matters nought when you’re down to budgie smugglers at the break of dawn.
What matters to every Iceberger — and there are about 120 of them — is the joy, yes joy, of pushing their nearly bare bodies through the sea, come rain, hail or shine.
“Coming in?” Badger asks cheerfully.
“You go first,” I reply.
So off he goes, striding into the shallows and carving his way towards the lamplit pier.
Fellow Icebergers are already out there, rolling their shoulders through the cold, dark water and — in some cases — swimming for their lives.
Half an hour earlier, I’d been snug and warm inside the Royal Brighton Yacht Club. The RBYC is home base for the Icebergers and from its cafe they have a bird’s eye view of the Brighton pier, the marina and the twinkling lights of the CBD.
“The other morning, we had a rainbow on one side and sunrise on the other,” swimmer Suzy Calley says. “Bliss.”
Calley, a nurse, is part of a growing female contingent at the Brighton Icebergers, but it’s mostly men here, blokes in their 50s and 60s — businessmen and medicos, engineers and real estate agents — who value seawater swimming for the adventure and the camaraderie.
It’s gain through pain, I’m assured, and they stoke my apprehension with whispered warnings about stingrays and jellyfish.
John Scanlon, a leading Iceberger, says: “The sea life welcomes you when you least expect it. Like the time I was out past the pier and felt this huge thing swimming underneath me.”
Shark?
“Dolphin.”
The Icebergers honour board is a roll call of all the men and women who have been tested by two full winters of swimming, and triumphed.
Scanlon’s name is up there, alongside deadset legends such as Doug Weir (who takes almost daily water-temperature readings), Don Fisher and Ian “Serpo” Serpless.
“It’s a hard habit to shake,” says 71-year-old Serpless, squinting at me like a sea captain.
The name most frequently, almost reverently, mentioned is that of John Locco, whose quip “you never regret a swim” is commonly repeated.
Locco was a prime mover in the preservation of the 138-year-old Brighton Baths, the Icebergers’ ancestral home.
The Baths’ fenced-in swimming zone is still preferred by some swimmers but the larger mob that migrated to the yacht club next door in the early 2000s yearned to venture “beyond the cage” and follow a range of open-water courses.
The “No Brainer” (1.75km) is a clockwise swim under the pier and around the breakwater, while the “Big Course” (2.3km) out to the reef marker is one for seasoned swimmers. Icebergers are all urged to travel in pods, pausing along the way at “turning poles” to catch their breath and chat.
Is cold water swimming really good for you? The new book, Beyond The Tip: Tales of the Icebergers of Brighton, lists “innumerable” health benefits, from releasing endorphins and reducing body fat to lowering blood sugar, cutting food cravings and enhancing immune function.
“Very few of us seem to suffer from bad colds and illnesses,’’ 64-year-old Warren Fisher says. Others cite improvements to dodgy shoulders and aching backs. Serpless says it best: “When you get out of that water, you feel a million bucks.”
It’s quarter to seven, the RBYC dressing room is filling rapidly, and Simon Mezger, 53, is recalling the “physical challenge” of his first Icebergers season.
“Having done it for a bit now, I actually prefer swimming in the dark,” he says.
“Even when it’s rough it feels peaceful out there.”
And when you get out?
“You feel ten foot tall and bulletproof,” says Michael Lombard, 62.
Sam Paynter, 50, nods: “If you’ve wrestled with the ocean, frankly, everything after that is a whole lot easier.”
No Iceberger swim is complete without a wind down in the steam room. As the words go in one of their songs:
“Bring me my cap and rubber-hood/Bring me my budgies of desire/Bring me my gear, I’m feeling good/Bring me the sauna and then fire”.
The clouds of warm steam restore everyone’s equilibrium but the chatter is just as warming, with talk of times, trials and tides ricocheting around the room. It’s a men’s shed by the bay.
This boarding-school banter can have a consoling side as well. Badger recalls the “aching pain and sadness” of losing his wife to illness and how “the swimming group really saw me through that very difficult period ... they will always be there for you when needed”.
More than a few Icebergers describe their daily ritual as an addiction but that word, with its suggestion of dependence, is not quite right.
It’s not a crutch. It’s a path to wellbeing. A way of becoming whole.
No more talk. Time to get in.
Some reckon it’s best to take a gasp-inducing leap. Others ease themselves down a ladder on the pier. Pulling on goggles and a neoprene cap, I decide to wade in, throwing armfuls of water over my head until I’m ready to go under.
My feet are numb. My legs are tingling. The water has me in an icelike vice, so tight it almost takes my breath away, but with one stroke and then another, I start to focus on the swim.
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In no time, I’m halfway down and sort of enjoying it. Ten minutes later, the bay’s sandy bottom comes up to greet me and I stride forward through wavelets, feeling like a warrior.
In that instant, the beauty of the day hits me with almost electric force.
Hot-air balloons float overhead. A jet roars in the distance.
Badger wraps his wet paws around me and asks if I’m coming back.
“Not in winter,” I say. But looking back across the beach, now flooded with hard, bright light, I spot a new posse of Icebergers heading into the deep.
I momentarily envy their freedom and watch their bodies beating against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
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