Everyone remembers where they learned to swim. Ask any swimmer you know, and they will surely tell you that that water is in their blood. It becomes a part of you.
For Kay Burton, it's the water where Findon Creek meets the Richmond River at Kyogle.
"I have been a swimmer all my life," she told Topics, "I learned to swim in the Richmond, and when I moved into town, I joined the Kyogle Swimming Club."
Except for about nine years spent in the far west of NSW, Mrs Burton has never been far from the water. She has been a competitive swimmer, a teacher, a coach and now - at 85 - a Master in her home club at Springwood in the Blue Mountains. Swimming has been a part of her life for as long as she can remember. To swim well, she says - not just to be able to stay afloat, but to swim well - is something intrinsic; "It's God-given".
"An awful lot of people think they can swim, and they can't," Mrs Burton said. Then: "I'm 85. I'm pretty old. (But) I can't remember when I couldn't swim.
She completed another ocean swim at the weekend.
"There is an ocean pool tour of the Northern Beaches, and it's for charity, so I donated my $50 to Lifeline," she said last week.
"I will drive over there, start at Palm Beach, and come down to South Curl Curl.
"More people should swim who don't. And those that don't have missed out on a lot."
By the end of 2023, Mrs Burton had swum a lap in 54 ocean pools around the country and was determined to achieve two feats in 2024: to complete her mission to swim in every ocean pool or bath in the country and stay out of "the old people category".
When Mrs Bruton talks about the water, she talks about it in needful terms; it's not a hobby or a sport; it's a calling. Her mind is never far from the water.
"Swimming is just what I do," she said, "It sure beats walking. Everyone remembers where they learnt to swim. It's something that is ingrained in you. It's having that ability and recognising that you have something that not everyone else has."
Mrs Burton plans to visit the refurbished Newcastle Ocean Baths in February to add the city's four ocean pools (including the Bogey Hole and the canoe pool) to her catalogue after the aforementioned underwent a major two-year overhaul and re-opened in December.
"I'm interested in the history of the pools and what they mean to the people around them ... Some of them are very old, like the ocean baths at Peal Beach; they were built in 1928 and are nearly 100 years old. Some are heritage-listed. Some are war memorials.
"My grandson is a Qantas pilot, and he tells me that you can see Merewether Ocean Baths from 37,000ft.
"It is the largest ocean pool in the Southern Hemisphere. As I'm swimming them, I just think about the hundreds and hundreds of people who have gone before me. The pools have become a meeting place and a focal point for generations of people - and they are still doing that."
They're also, Mrs Burton firmly believes, saving lives.
When she was a child, she remembers suffering from terrible motion sickness while travelling in the car. In adulthood, even as the saltwater calls to her, she doesn't contend with the open ocean. Mrs Burton has Meniere's disease - a condition that affects the inner ear and causes, among other things, dizzy spells and vertigo. Mrs Burton gets seasick.
"To be an open water swimmer, I would have to do a lot more training to stay fit. You have to be very fit to commit to the ocean; you would be a fool if you didn't. But I get seasick."
Her quest to swim in every ocean pool in the country is loosely guided by photographer Chris Chen's study of Australian baths, published in the 2022 book Ocean Pools.
"Look, it's $70, but oh, it's worth it. [When you see the photos], you will understand why I'm doing it," Mrs Burton said, before adding with a note of confidentiality, "But I have found 10 pools that she has missed - see, she hasn't got the one at Darwin, the one at Townsville, the one at Snapper Rock at Coolangatta. She still needs to get Huskinsson in it."
Mrs Burton is not one to mince her words and it could be that, even as Newcastle's newly refurbished Ocean Baths are the place to be this summer, they will be truly tested once they pass the Burton muster.
"I want to do Newcastle pretty soon," she said, "I have a niece at Thornton, and I think she'll probably come with me.
"I've got a lot of things happening in January. I have to go and have some lessons and my driving test, and I have some social commitments and one swimming carnival. I'm pushing it a bit to jam it into January. We're thinking of February.
"I won't go without letting you know."
