Bucket List Bondi
I don't really have a bucket list. I am very fortunate. I have told you of my challenges learning to swim. I found it difficult to float as a child and had to dramatically improve my prowess for love.
Last week, we visited Bondi Beach and, more poignantly, Bondi Icebergs Club to swim a few laps. Like Katie once did, the kids now slap my feet demanding I hasten my stroke.
Formed in 1929 by male surfers looking to keep fit in winter, shamefully, women were only permitted membership in 1995.
Rule 15B of the constitution remains in place requiring club members to swim three out of every four Sundays for five years to maintain membership.
Bondi Icebergs Club is 90 years old; a concrete structure filled with salt water by the ocean splashing over the rocks and lapping into the pool.
There is seaweed and moss on the edge of the pool and at the bottom. The lane ropes are more string that high-tech material. The paint is worn away in parts.
However, it is beautiful in its simplicity. There are old people and young people in all shapes and sizes, some visitors like our family mixing with others who have been swimming every day for years no matter the weather nor temperature.
Honoury Tasmanian and AFLW author and leader, Sam Lane stopped for a chat and I told the kids she is famous. We had to time our arrival because the pool is closed on Thursdays.
Back home, we complain when consideration is given to closing museums during the week. Many around the world do exactly the same because it gives the facilities and staff a break. It also saves on running costs.
It was the one clear day for weeks. As we drove to the city, a fit young cyclist from Sydney's salubrious Northern Beaches on an outrageously expensive Tour de France styled steed, donned his helmet, and a dust mask to assist breathing.
Unfortunately experts tell us it is a placebo. The smoke has been measured at 20 cigarettes per day so the effort was laudable.
We had breakfast at a Bondi cafe, not even close in ambiance and quality of experience to Degraves Street in Melbourne, but it's the vibe. There were more surfers than I could count.
I wondered out loud whether they actually worked or were just fashionably late for meetings. My boss told me, via text, to wear my best thongs to meet Australia's beautiful people.
There were more yoga positions than any Bikram studio could teach. The waiter told us we were lucky to have visited because the air was clear for the first time in weeks.
It was a surreal comment. I sound like I am complaining or homesick or melancholic. I am not. I am glad we are visiting at this time. But Tasmania is fortunate and we are grateful.
A week ago, we came across a dozen or more firetrucks filling up at a local service station. Heroic men and women having a break, grabbing a water or coke or milkshake and party mix lollies before heading to the fire front again.
They looked tired and dirty, but maintained that typical Aussie fighting spirit which allowed them to chat with locals and tourists alike; sharing a joke and a yarn. In awe, we took photos and would have waited longer for them to move on so we could depart. So many people said thank you - it gave me hope.
On arrival at Booti Booti National Park, we sat on the beach yet we couldn't see the other end. It reminded me of a visit to Kowloon, Hong Kong.
The following morning I chatted to the owners of a coffee van working the site.
They told me of a town just further North where residents had endured 89 days of smoke without a break.
Paraphrasing, and as was similarly said at the end of a beautiful ABC television show of the 1990's, there's always a town enduring smoke somewhere ... I can't emphasise how debilitating the conditions are across New South Wales; it's relentless and depressing and makes us worry about our asthmatic son. And, unlike Bondi Icebergs Club, that was not on my bucket list.