Warm Salty Water.

Where I live the water is cold. Even in the middle of summer when the air temperature is hot the water is cold. In winter it’s just freezing. I look across the ocean to the horizon knowing that the water is cold. I go swimming and surfing and just put up with it. You do get used to it. It is OK once your are in, seriously.

So after 40 years living in this town and swimming in cold water you are conditioned to the fact that it will be cold when you go in the ocean.

Now, I am fairly well travelled but never really had occasion to go swimming anywhere but on the stretch of coast within a few hundred km of home. There was one occasion in the Red Sea, but you would expect that to be warm wouldn’t you so it doesn’t count.

Any how on my recent holiday to the East coast of Australia I had a dip in the ocean at a place called Caloundra. The water was WARM. It was a shock. Going into the ocean and the water being pleasantly warm. I had my jaw clenched for the inevitable shock of the cold water but it never came. It seemed almost un-natural. The Ocean is cold! It’s not supposed to be like floating in some infinite womb of embryonic fluid.

I mean what is the fun of splashing water at the person who refuses to get in if the water is warm? Would the people of Caloundra even know what the phrase “it’s ok once your in” means? They would probably think you are being crude! I always thought the pictures of smiling beach babes splashing in the waves without pouting nipples were faked. Now I know the truth. They all live in Queensland…..