Originally Posted by
bob10
I can't miss the opportunity to go totally off topic, and bore you with an old sailors story. 15 years old, boy from the bush, comes to the big smoke [ Sydney], by train. Changes trains at Central, and goes to.....Quakers Hill, the old Schofields air base. R.A.N.A.T.E., Royal Australian Navy Apprentice Training Establishment, as far from the sea as you would wish. It set the scene for the next 21 years , expect the unexpected, and if you couldn't take a joke you shouldn't be here. The first 6 months we were called sprogs, detested first termers, cannon fodder for the much more sophisticated [ in their eyes ] 2nd termers. Then came the swimming test. And where else would Navy sprogs do a swimming test? why the RAAF base Richmond, of course. [Stay with me there is a pattern forming. ]
Swimming test. Overalls, socks, sandshoes. Start at the shallow end of the Olympic pool , swim to the deep end, come back about 10 yards, tread water for 15 minutes. Easy what? Not for the boy from the bush. I made it to the other end but nearly drowned after that. Then , along with 4 others [ out of about 100 ] my name went on the dreaded backward swimmers list. Now the pool at HMAS Nirimba was the pool you have when you don't have a pool.[ if you can't take a joke etc] A small barge sunk into the ground with a rudimentary filter system. 5 feet deep. [ Another pattern was forming. The RAAFies get an Olympic pool, Navy gets an old rusted barge. not long enough to swim in.] We soon found out that the barge was a torture device, no doubt thought up by the much feared Gunnery Instructor, G. I. Jones. [ His daughter took a fancy to me ,me a skinny wretched bag of bones , and it nearly ended my Naval career, but that's another story. ]
Stay with me , we joined the joke in the July intake, WINTER . The " pool " had a layer of ice that had to be broken , by us jumping in, much to the delight of the Reg. Navy base staff sailor that had to take charge of us. Up at 4 AM, togs , track suit, sandshoes, towel, double the 1.5 KM's to the " pool " , break the ice, stand in the water shivering and turning blue until the sailor in charge had thought we'd been punished enough, then out , dry off, but wait. Sailor in charge , who probably never had an opportunity to have a group in his total control before, [ and had a bicycle] always took us the long way back, about 5 KM's up the airfield. Never mind, by the time we got back, we were warmed up. This went on for 7 days a week for two weeks, We little band of hopeless swimmers had learned the lesson, we were not in Kansas any more.[ in all of that two weeks, we didn't swim a stroke, just turned blue. I believe our leader judged the time to let us out of the pool by the depth of colour of the blue. Funny what you think about ]
That wasn't the end of the lesson. At Nirimba in winter, the hot water system couldn't cope with the number of Apprentices [ we lived in WW2 wooden huts, the showers were a corrugated iron building with a concrete floor, where the wind blew thru, happy days.] The early birds got the hot water. By the time we got back, we had to have a cold shower. You had to have a shower whether you needed it or not, because the thoroughly demented 2nd termers always made sure we did. And normally came through just before wakey wakey to roll our beds, [ unmade beds were a kit muster] by the time we made the beds, yep, cold showers. By the end of the 6 months first term, out of 100 or so there were 64 left. [ If you can't take a joke etc]
I passed the next swimming test, and the only time I needed that [ thankfully] was in the Mediterranean Sea where the Skipper of Brisbane called " swim ship" and we all had a swim in the sea. Happy Days.[biggrin]
