Interview Transcript from Illawarra Stories Wollongong City Libraries Oral History Project – Joe McGarity
Interviewer: Edie Swift
Interview date: 20 March 2019
Edie Swift My name’s Edie Swift and, um, I’m interviewing Joe McGarity. Um, and he’s with the Austinmer Otters Swimming Club.
Joe McGarity Winter Swimming Club.
Edie Swift Winter Swimming Club. And, ah, it’s March 20th, 2019. And this for the Local Studies Library in Wollongong, the Wollongong library, so the interview will go into there. And, um, would you like to start with, um, your date of birth and your first memories with the Otters?
Joe McGarity Okay. Well, ah, I was born on 30th October 1936, and I was only three years old when I moved to Austinmer in 1939. And, just, loved the water and the beach. And, ah, they’d settled down with a family at this stage. Ah, um, and, ah, I was looking for something to do and I used to go to Wollongong to swim with the Win-, Wollongong Winter swimming club. And after three years of that I decided that Austinmer had a beautiful pool and a beautiful venue and I’d start a, a winter swimming club there. So, in 1962 I’d go with a few surf club mates, about a dozen of them I suppose all in told. And we held a number of meetings in the beach kiosk on Austinmer beach which was operated by Bruce Smith who was a well-known identity in the town at that stage. His father had the baker shop in Thirroul and Bruce had been the permanent lifeguard on Austinmer beach for many years. And between the all of us we, ah, we founded the club. Ah, basically because we were looking for, ah, like minded, ah, males with similar needs and looking for exercise and being able to do something for the, ah, general public who was at a disadvantage. So that was the reason why we started the club and we all liked swimming.
Edie Swift What was the pool like back then?
Joe McGarity Oh, the pool was, still, still basically the same, not quite the same. Ah, it’s shortened a little bit on the back end, and they’ve had bits in places added down the centre between the two pools which has been to the detriment of, of the pools, I believe. It stops the correct circulation of the ocean and the sand, and it causes sanding up in the pools. Ah, I have photographs which really show that too. But we started off at in 1963 and, ah, we, ah, our first morning we had fifteen, fifteen swimmers – fifteen swimmers. So, ah, we ran heats over fifty metres sprints to, to work out who was going to swim in the final. So, the winner of each heat went into the final and we had a, a finalist every morning followed by a one hundred metre relay swim at the end of the end of the morning which we awarded points for, and we ran a point score during the, that’s the winter season. So, we had club champions and monthly champions. And so we were, we were swimming for, for, for some prestige during, during the days and the mornings as well.
Edie Swift So you met, what time in 1963?
Joe McGarity We, we started, we started to swim at nine and the cut off time was ten o’clock so if you weren’t there by ten your name didn’t go down so you wouldn’t get into a heat. So, it was nine to ten and it was generally half past ten, quarter to eleven by the time we finished. Ah…
Edie Swift And what’s the procedure, how did you organise it then?
Joe McGarity Well, back in the early days there was a, a swimming club at Austinmer and that was run by Mrs Wrench who lived in Austinmer Street. And we didn’t have any money but they had some stop watches from the old winter swimming club that become defunct, so she gave us the stop watches for us to use. And then we started to, to raise funds and we contributed membership fees and swimming fees to, to, to the coffers of the club which allowed us to buy stop watches. And then in the second year of our operation we started to hold events where we started to raise funds for, for, for charitable organisations.
Edie Swift So how did the surrounds differ at that time in 1963? What was around there, does, was the, ah, the same store there, the paper shop, was there the school, was there the, the surf club wasn’t there, that great big surf club.
Joe McGarity No, the surf club was way up the other end of the beach where, where the boat sheds are now. The ah, there was paper shop, there was the, ah, paper shop then there was a, ah, a little delicatessen store and a fish shop. So, there was basically three shops along the beach front. On the opposite side of the beach, the kiosk was operating where the surf club is now. That has always been a kiosk, since probably about, oh, 1914, maybe even earlier. That was always a kiosk, on, on that location.
Edie Swift What did it look like?
Joe McGarity I do have photographs of it. Ah, and it was built by a, a John Lett who was a New Zealander actually, back in the early 1800s. But he went off to the first world war and was never returned. He was killed in action over there, but he does have, ah, family still living in the area.
Edie Swift So what was in the kiosk?
Joe McGarity Oh, basically in the forties and fifties they used to sell sandwiches, Devonshire teas, hot water, because people would come with their billies from the, from the city, from Sydney. And they’d have a billy with them, so they’d make a cup of tea. So, you could buy a cup of, you could buy a billy of hot water for I think about threepence or sixpence for [laughs] a, a billy of hot water to make your tea. It’s, you know, there weren’t cof-, cafes like they are today where you go in and get, ah, you know, ah, tea and coffee and all those other things. But they used to have Devonshire teas served in the kiosk there and they’d serve sandwiches and different things like that. Yeah, so there were people that operated the kiosk and looked after the dressing sheds for the general public.
Edie Swift Oh, did they have, um, a kitchen?
Joe McGarity They had a kitchen, kitchen and then they had a, a servery out the, out the front which was sort of L-shape.
Edie Swift Oh, uh-huh.
Joe McGarity And then they had, ah, tables and chairs throughout the kiosk for Devonshire teas and light luncheons.
Edie Swift Uh-huh. Okay, so, ah, so now how about the dress, the dressing sheds, were they the same?
Joe McGarity Yeah, the same.
Edie Swift The same!
Joe McGarity They haven’t changed. They’ve been there,
Edie Swift Oh.
Joe McGarity they’ve been there since the ear-, early, early 19, 1900s. They’ve been there for I’d say 120 years.
Edie Swift Oh. The, the same as it is now.
Joe McGarity Yeah and they’re still, still in not bad condition for 120 years right, right on the ocean with all the salt air and, you know, the environment which tends to cause a bit of, ah, concrete cancer in the, in the reinforcement iron in the building. But other than that, I think it’s, it’s still fairly structurally sound.
Edie Swift So people would bring their billies.
Joe McGarity Yeah.
Edie Swift down from Sydney but it had no, didn’t have water in them?
Joe McGarity No, we didn’t, didn’t, you didn’t have thermoses or anything like that, so you had to, you had to buy hot water.
Edie Swift Mm.
Joe McGarity Ah, but, you know, you could go in, but everyone couldn’t afford to go in, in those days ’cause it’s, it was just after the depression years and, ah, and after the second world war so there was not a lot of money around to be able to, ah, go into cafes and buy things as you would have liked.
Edie Swift Well how did they heat up their tea then?
Joe McGarity Well the kiosk or the cafe there, the kiosk, they used to have a big boiler there and they used to boil the water and they would bail it out into, ah, into the people’s billies. And, ah, I think it was probably sixpence for a, a billy of, a billy of hot water. That was the, the way people did things back in those days.
Edie Swift What else would they get there at the kiosk?
Joe McGarity Oh, like I said, Devonshire teas, or they could get sandwiches or a light luncheon which would be generally salad and corned beef or something like that you know. I don’t think we saw too much ham in those days. It would have been corn beef or devon or something like that maybe. That was in the early, early 1940’s that was, it would have been. But it was still operating as a kiosk and much the same, but they, they didn’t sell too much hot water back, back in the, in the fifties and sixties. It was more a, more a cafe and a kiosk where you get milkshakes, ice creams, ah, the normal things that you’d expect to find on the beach.
Edie Swift And what would happen now it’s in the sixties, sixty-three then what were the changes as you got into let’s say the late sixties in the pool, the changes in your club? And we better go into the fundraising too.
Joe McGarity Okay. With, with the pool, the back sea wall on the, on the northern pool started to break up and they had to build new back wall and they brought that in, in towards the beach by about four or five metres and they built new back wall and eventually they took the old wall away. So that northern pool was shortened, ah, slightly. Ah, but it means that, ah, it had to have a bigger tide to get the water into the pool to, to flush it out, make sure it flushed properly. And then later on they put pipes connecting between the northern end of the pool and the, the southern pool. Then later on they puta walkway on top of the dividing strip between the pools and it extended right back to the promenade, ah, for access, for wheelchair access I assume. And that blocked off the natural flow of sand and the water around the pools and there’s been no end of build-up of sand over the years in the pools because of it.
Edie Swift So, um, then in the late sixties did, was there a change, ah, in your club and when did you start fundraising?
Joe McGarity Well we really started fundraising back in 19-, 1964 it would have been. Ah, we had our fiftieth reunion some five years ago and at that stage we had raised, in, in excess of, ah, over $300,000 and given away to crippled children and, ah, other, other charitable organisations in that period.
Edie Swift And what were some of the other organisations?
Joe McGarity Well, mainly people with children that needed some extra care or needed particular equipment. The crippled children we, we brought them buses, wheelchairs and built them a swimming pool. Ah, then other people we’ve brought, ah, oxygen machines and such likes, wheelchairs over, you know, the, so, so their children could have a better, a better life, a better style of life.
Edie Swift Where did you build the swimming pool?
Joe McGarity We built the pool at, ah, Cram House in Wollongong. Ah, but that now has since gone because the New South Wales government have abandoned those sort of, ah, situations and they’ve decided to look after those people in a, in a different style, different manner so there’s really no need. But we brought them buses that had wheelchair accesses and motor cars and whatnot so they could get people around.
Edie Swift How did you raise the money?
Joe McGarity Oh, we would run, ah, raffles in, ah, in the hotel, the Ryan’s hotel, the local, ah, bowling clubs, Thirroul bowling club, Austinmer bowling club, Headland’s hotel. We would run raffles and run 300clubs. Ah, so we were, ah, and that’s how, and we did have a number of good sponsors that also assisted us as well in making additional donations to our cause.
Edie Swift Who were the sponsors?
Joe McGarity Oh, I don’t think those people would like me to, they were, they
Edie Swift Okay.
Joe McGarity are the sort of people that do-good things because they wanted to do it but wanted to remain anonymous.
Edie Swift So did, um, how did you find out about who needed your help?
Joe McGarity Oh, well it wasn’t, it wasn’t too, too hard, you know. And then people started to realise what we did, and they would approach us you know, so, you know, we’d get, ‘Can you help us?’, you know. And, ah, that would go before our executive committee of the club and they would make a decision as to, ah, who they would support and who, who we would not, not support, you know. We’d look at, you know, the causes and the means and, you know, try to do our best that way.
Edie Swift And as you go into the seventies was there a change in, in the club? Were there different people from different occupations that joined?
Joe McGarity It was always a club for people of all sorts because that’s what it was originally based on. Didn’t matter whether you were a, a, you know, candle maker, a baker, or a doctor or a butcher or general labourer, it was just people that had similar sort of interest at the end of the day that needed some exercise and wanted to do something for the public. And that’s never changed and we’ve, we’ve had doctors and we’ve had all sorts of people. Ah, the, the local, ah, Thirroul surgery were, were always good to us. The, ah, the doctors in the surgery there they, they always sponsored anything we did. They would turn up to our annual dinners, we would give them an invitation to our annual presentation nights, and they would be included in anything we did outside the pool as well.
Edie Swift So, um, how did you keep warm between these swims?
Joe McGarity Well, as long as you put something warm on your feet like a pair of, pair of thongs and puta towel over your shoulders. But there are, there are some mornings because we’re tucked in behind the dressing sheds there and the wind of a wintertime is generally westerly, so it goes over the top of your head, so you don’t really feel the cold too much especially if you start at the, the start of the winter months. By the time it gets cold in the middle of the winter you’re still fairly well climatised.
Edie Swift And you don’t, you dive in right away?
Joe McGarity Yeah, yeah. Some, some people walk in, but I can’t, I, it’s too painful [laughs]. I like to dive straight in.
Edie Swift So in, in the seventies you had kind of the same procedure and, and, ah, did you have championships with other winter clubs?
Joe McGarity Yeah, yes, well, in we had our own club championships. And then in about nineteen, oh, sixty-six I think it would have been, sixty-five, sixty-six myself Anda few other members of the Wollongong Whales and the Bulli Sea Lions got together, and we formed what we call the South Coast Winter Swimming Group. And that holds championships midway through the winter each year of all the clubs, so we have a South Coast championship event each year now, where all the clubs come together and swim off, ah, from…
Edie Swift And where is it?
Joe McGarity We used to, well, we used to have it at Thirroul pool because it was a pool that nobody used, but we now use the Continental pool because the Council won’t let us have events where we dive into the pool.
Edie Swift Was that at Thirroul pool?
Joe McGarity Thirroul.
Edie Swift It wasn’t open in July, was it?
Joe McGarity Oh, they used to always open…
Edie Swift They would open.
Joe McGarity for us.
Edie Swift Oh, I see.
Joe McGarity They’d open it especially for us.
Edie Swift Oh, uh-huh.
Joe McGarity Yeah.
Edie Swift And that’s…
Joe McGarity It was still salt-water unheated pool where the thing is we swim in, in, ah, in natural, natural pools which aren’t heated.
Edie Swift Isn’t it.
Joe McGarity Because that’s the criteria.
Edie Swift cold? That Thirroul pool is cold.
Joe McGarity Oh, it’s not the coldest one on the coast. The one at, one at Woonona can get down to 10 degrees. We get down to thirteen, but 10 degrees is starting to geta bit headachy.
Edie Swift Mm, mm. And you’re not allowed to use wet suits?
Joe McGarity No, no wetsuits. You put a swimming cap on.
Edie Swift Mm-mm.
Joe McGarity Put a swimming cap on but no, no fins, no other swimming aids that, ah, are allowed as, ah, it’s, ah, prop-, proper swimming [laughs].
Edie Swift How do you equal it out if, are there some handicapped people?
Joe McGarity Yes, everyone, everyone is handicapped so it doesn’t matter how good you are or how old or how young you are, you, you, you do a time trial and you geta handicap. And that’s re-, that’s changed as, as you get either better or worse at, ah, at, at the swimming skills you’ve got. As you get older you generally need your time back [laughs]. As the young ones grow up and go, they get time taken off them if they get too quick.
Edie Swift So how do you, what is the, um, do you have a championship, um, every year across, ah…?
Joe McGarity Yeah.
Edie Swift Like…
Joe McGarity Across and back, yeah, fifty metres.
Edie Swift Oh, all
Joe McGarity fifty metre swim.
Edie Swift all Australia?
Joe McGarity Mm, all Aus-, all…
Edie Swift I mean do you compete with all the Australian winter swimming clubs at all?
Joe McGarity There is a group. We were a member of it. Ah, but they made some changes which didn’t suit us. I won’t say what they are at this stage.
Edie Swift No.
Joe McGarity Um, we, we used to go to those, they were the Australian winter swimming championships. But first of all, that only used to operate in Sydney, and I think then about 1960, then about midway through the 1960’s, 1965-66, it went Australian wide. It was only basically New South Wales and after that then it became a, an international event where there was championships held anywhere in, around Australia.
Edie Swift Do you go, did your club go to that?
Joe McGarity Yes. We, we went to some in Western Australia, we’ve been to ones in Queensland. And, ah, Victoria doesn’t seem to hold many, but it’s either Queensland or Western Australia or New South Wales are the, are the main states which they, they run similar.
Edie Swift Do, do many people go? That’s a long way to go.
Joe McGarity Oh, well yes, they go for a week, they don’t go just for the weekend, they would make a holiday of it.
Edie Swift Oh. Uh-huh.
Joe McGarity So, yes, it’s, ah, but, you know, we would maybe get 10-15 members of our club go to those so that, ah, you can fulfil your commitment at the, at the events.
Edie Swift And then what are these dinners you have? How, how often do you have those?
Joe McGarity They’re, they’re, they’re yearly. We have yearly, an-, annual dinners, same as most, most clubs do where our presentations are made of the, what we call our grade swimmers. Grade swimmers are under twenty-one, over twenties, over thirties, over forties, over forty fives, fifties fifty-fives, like and so through, through like that. Ah, I now, I now compete in the over eighties.
Edie Swift Where do you have the dinners?
Joe McGarity Well, we, we use, we generally use the clubs that support us, like Thirroul bowling club or Austinmer RSL when it was functional or Thirroul or the Austinmer bowling club when it was functional. So basically, it’s Thirroul bowling, bowling club these days. Ah, yeah, the last was held was at the, ah, the Beaches, Beaches hotel last year. So, we, we support the people that support us, that’s what we try to do.
Edie Swift And, ah, after you swim, now what you do us, that’s on Sundays?
Joe McGarity On Sundays when we, we finish we, we, we have, we have a soup and, and, and a cold beer.
Edie Swift Who makes that?
Joe McGarity Well we, we have the local establishments around the town, Thirroul, and Austinmer, they have, they have, they will supply the, the soup and toast for us and we’ll, we’ll buy our, our drinks there and they look after us that way while we look after them by having a drink at their premises.
Edie Swift And which clubs do you use?
Joe McGarity We use the bowling club at Thirroul now, the Beaches hotel and the Rex, Rex Hotel now.
Edie Swift In the old days you had to go into the kiosk?
Joe McGarity Well, no the old days we would have gone to Headlands, Headland’s hotel.
Edie Swift Oh.
Joe McGarity And the Austinmer RSL club.
Edie Swift How early did you go into the Headlands?
Joe McGarity Oh, Headlands, Headlands was operating a hotel back in the, ah, oh, mid-fifties.
Edie Swift Oh, uh-huh.
Joe McGarity So it was fairly well established. Ah, it was a guest house prior to that, it was on guest house, guest house, ah, ran by a Mrs Kelly I think it was. And we had a lot of Sydney people come down and stay but they wouldn’t … Then later on it was made into a hotel with, with rooms so the guesthouse was, was modified and they had dining rooms there that were open to the public as well, which was quite nice.
Edie Swift I should think you’d need something after swimming.
Joe McGarity Oh, yeah, yeah.
Edie Swift How late does it go?
Joe McGarity Oh [laughs].
Edie Swift Your season?
Joe McGarity Oh well it’s generally, generally it’s just the winter season for from Easter. Ah, so Easter varies from year to year, but it goes through to the October long weekend.
Edie Swift Oh.
Joe McGarity That’s the end of the winter so it’s, it’s probably three, three months, bit over three months we have and that’s basically is the period where we spend most of our time trying to raise funds. So, the little period and little time we meet, ah, we’ve done very well I believe to raise the sort of funds that we have and the work that we’ve done in, in our fifty odd years of existence. And this is our fifty, fifty seventh year this year.
Edie Swift So do you have, um, now you have different officers in the, in the club?
Joe McGarity Oh yes, we, it’s the same as all clubs. We, we have a president and a vice president. We have a, a swimming captain. We have a treasurer, a secretary and, and a operating committee.
Edie Swift What do they all have to do, what are their duties?
Joe McGarity Well the, like the president is, his job is basically to ensure everything happens as it should happen. We have the club captain who organises all the pool events and they see that everything runs there. And he looks after the handicapping and he has guys that will martial the swimmers together for him, so he records the, ah, the times of those swims throughout the years. The thing I’d like to say is that, ah, the, the club fastest swimmer was a young, young chap in those days called Peter Croslin. Ah, and his time was about 25.4seconds still stands today, which is the fastest time so, but he’s now since passed away, Peter, but his record still stands within the club after nearly, nearly sixty years.
Edie Swift Wow.
Joe McGarity So we’ve had some good swimmers in the club during our time. And we have very mediocre guys that, ah, are halfway back before some of us go in. So, you know, but everyone has a chance to finish on the line together.
Edie Swift Do people practice during the week?
Joe McGarity I do, but don’t tell anyone [laughter]. No, just some of us do, some of us do. Edie Swift Where do you, do you go to Austinmer and practice?
Joe McGarity I swim at Austinmer but sometimes I go ’cause my son likes to swim and we’ll go toa heated pool at Corrimal and do a few laps there, yeah.
Edie Swift Uh-huh. That’s nice there.
Joe McGarity When you’re in the pool for half an hour or more it starts to get a bit too cold.
Edie Swift It is cold.
Joe McGarity to stay in that long, yeah.
Edie Swift Yeah.
Joe McGarity So, ah…
Edie Swift Now it would be cold.
Joe McGarity Oh,20-23 degrees
Edie Swift [coughs].
Joe McGarity I believe this morning still. So, it’s still fairly warm.
Edie Swift Yeah, now it’s nice.
Joe McGarity Yeah.
Edie Swift Now what happens if there’s a bad storm, do you call it off?
Joe McGarity We still swim. No, no, we still swim.
Edie Swift What if there are huge waves?
Joe McGarity We still swim.
Edie Swift You do? [laughs]
Joe McGarity Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve got to be careful when you get to the edge because you could end up in the ocean, but, ah, yeah.
Edie Swift ‘Cause you, I don’t see how you do it when it’s so stormy, because to make the line, you know, you can’t because there’s all these waves.
Joe McGarity No. After you swim for a while in the open ocean, you learn to swim straight Edie Swift Mm.
Joe McGarity without it you know. Swim with your head up a bit and have a bit of a look [laughs]. Pick a, pick a point at the other end of pool when you turn.
Edie Swift What was …
Joe McGarity Well generally if the tide’s really big and it’s really rough and you’ve got the winds from the south blowing as well it can be, it can be unpleasant. It is unpleasant. But we have trophies for those that swim the whole season without missing swim so…
Edie Swift Crayfish?
Joe McGarity Yeah, they can that a one hundred percenter.
Edie Swift Oh.
Joe McGarity So they have
Edie Swift Oh
Joe McGarity And there’s a special jacket or a special towel or something awarded that year for the one hundred percenters.
Edie Swift What do you award at those dinners, what sort of things?
Joe McGarity Oh, club shirts, club tops, winter tops, tracksuit tops, tracksuit bottoms. Um, like most sporting organisations will have their own, ah, colours.
Edie Swift What are your colours?
Joe McGarity Ah, well there, ah, gold, blue and black. Ah, blue’s blue is, blue is for the ocean, ah, I suppose the gold is the sky and, ah, the black can be the winter [laughs]. But, ah, we had a trouble picking the name at, first of all because each winter swimming club has to have, have it’s, had to have its own individual name. So, you have Brass Monkeys, the Wollongong Whales, the Bondi Icebergs, ah, have Brass, Cronulla Polar Bears. So, each club has its own individual name. And, ah, our, we came up with the name Otters because they’re a playful group of animals that, ah, like the water and we thought that will, that will describe us very well.
Edie Swift So that rock there near the, um, where the swimming sheds are at Austinmer, that’s interesting, all those different names.
Joe McGarity Yeah. And my name’s on that.
Edie Swift Mm-mm.
Joe McGarity I’m a life member. I was made a life member in about 1967 – something like that. I’ve, I’m the only member that has swam the whole time for sixty-seven years I mean others are close but I’m the only one that’s swam every year for, since its conception.
Edie Swift Did they give you a special gift?
Joe McGarity Ah, no, no.
Edie Swift Award?
Joe McGarity No, no.
Edie Swift No.
Joe McGarity Give, give me a lot of cheek [laughs].
Edie Swift And, and it’s, um, you have men only because, um, you feel that’s the best.
Joe McGarity Like well it’s like-minded males and basically it was to, to give people a, a break, you know, ah, so you could get away from your family for half a day. And, you know, it’s something that, ah, whether you be male or female I think you know, ah, women deserve break away from their menfolk the same as men deserve little break away from their womenfolk for your own sanity whether it be theirs or yours. So that’s basically, ah, the reason we do what we’ve done. You know if women want to swim, they basically go, start a little club of their own. But, ah, we have done something that, ah, we like, we like to do, ah, amongst ourselves and, ah, we’re happy doing it.
Edie Swift Have you ever had someone who was not well in the pool, and you had to rescue them?
Joe McGarity Yes. Not rescue them, but, ah, last season we had one of our club members, ah, he’d swam in the pool and, ah, he’d come up to the, to the sheds and collapsed on the, ah, on, on, on the ground under the sheds and, ah, we had to apply CPR and call the ambulance. And, ah, because we have access to the surf club, we were able to get, ah, oxygen and whatnot to him which was, ah helped, helped save his life.
Edie Swift Oh good.
Joe McGarity Ah, but, yeah, the ambulance people were able to complete the, the, ah, rescue of him and took him away to hospital to give him the, the service that he needed there.
Edie Swift Did you ever rescue anybody on the beach?
Joe McGarity Oh, lots of times, lots of times.
Edie Swift When the club was active?
Joe McGarity That, no that was mainly with the surf club.
Edie Swift Oh, I see.
Joe McGarity The actual surf club.
Edie Swift Oh, I see.
Joe McGarity Ah, we weren’t involved in, in rescue work as such, we were basically just there to, to participate swimming and, and camaraderie amongst, ah, like minded, ah, guys.
Edie Swift Mm.
Joe McGarity Ah, but yes, I, ah, I’ve been involved in many, many rescues over the years as a member of the surf club.
Edie Swift You’re also, you also were a lifeguard?
Joe McGarity Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Edie Swift Oh I see. How many years were you a lifeguard?
Joe McGarity Oh, I was a member of the club for well over forty odd years.
Edie Swift Mm.
Joe McGarity Mm.
Edie Swift And you know that beach, ah, it’s very difficult to swim in if you’re like me because I’m not used to rips, I’m from a different area.
Joe McGarity No.
Edie Swift So, but I love the rock, it’s safe.
Joe McGarity Yep, yeah, well you have to be able to read the ocean and, ah, a lot of people can’t.
Edie Swift No, I can’t.
Joe McGarity Unless, unless you, well you, you’re taught basically but then you learn more from swimming in it.
Edie Swift Yeah.
Joe McGarity You know from swimming. It’s experience and experience in the water, that, ah, where you gain your knowledge.
Edie Swift Now the way the pool is right now at Austinmer, um, they’re trying to work on it I think to improve it.
Joe McGarity Well, yes, they’re, the back wall of the southern pool, it, it’s cracked and broken and, ah, I, I think they’ve, they’ve fixed it, it doesn’t seem to, to leak like it used to. Um, but, ah, the natural ocean flow has been changed through those pools because of the wall that they’ve put between the pools. The height that’s been put in has, ah, helped change the natural flow of the water around those pools which leads to the build-up of sand in the, in the pool unbecomes costly maintenance program.
Edie Swift So they have to go and remove the sand and, and somehow, they although, that, ah, about three weeks ago there was an awful lot of, ah, matter of seaweed.
Joe McGarity Yeah, yeah.
Edie Swift How did they get out, how did they take…?
Joe McGarity I, I believe that they brought their bulldozers and machine, mechanical machinery and drained it out in the normal fashion, drained it and dug it all out and, and closed the sea valve. And the tide comes back and fills it up again.
Edie Swift And, and then the sand, they seem to use bulldozers on the sand there.
Joe McGarity Yeah, yeah. They used to use, ah, drag lines years and years ago before bulldozers became a popular tool for moving sand and dirt and soil.
Edie Swift What are those?
Joe McGarity That’s like a, it’s a drag line, it’s a it’s like a big bucket and it’s on the end of a rope and they can swing it out and then drop the ropes and it’ll drop out where20-30 metres away from where it’s swung, like a crane, on the end of a crane.
Edie Swift Oh.
Joe McGarity Then they can drag that back, scoop and pick it up and then they swivel it around and drop the bucket elsewhere what’s in the bucket then they swing it back and they can swing these, these scoops out because of the actions of the ropes.
Edie Swift And, okay, so we went from the kiosk and that was 1963.
Joe McGarity Yeah.
Edie Swift And then what structures have been there since that modern surf club?
Joe McGarity Well the kiosk eventually became the surf club when the surf club at the northern end of the beach became in a unhabitable condition because of the wall behind the surf club started to push in on it and so they had to pull the surf club down to res-, re-, retain the wall between the surf club and the, and the roadway otherwise they would have lost the roadway.
Edie Swift Mm.
Joe McGarity Ah, and then of course the kiosk was Council’s own, and they moved the surf club into the old kiosk where that became the clubhouse for six or seven, maybe ten years, and the surf club raised a lot of the money themselves through raffles again and had, contrib-, contributed to the building of the new surf club which was basically in the same footprint as the old kiosk. So basically, it’s the same footprint in the same place, ah, but just a different, slightly different roof, roof line as such, ah, mainly because of the pine tree needles so they needed something that was going to fall off the roof and not clog the gutters around the, ah, round the, ah, the roof of the clubhouse.
Edie Swift And what are they doing now, they’re doing construction on it.
Joe McGarity That, no that is, ah, to do with the World War 1 War Memorial.
Edie Swift Oh.
Joe McGarity Now, they are now com-, I, I had it all restored in 19-, 2014. I had all the, the, ah, plinths replaced with, with, with, ah, granite and new plinth, ah, there was a new plinth in, in, ah, granite and new bollards and paving put in around the base of the memorial. And our, ah, Council has decided to pull up aa lot of that and do other work there now. Ah, we did it in 2-, 2014 with grants from New South Wales government and the federal government to fund the work of putting the new plinth and bollards around, around the memorial for the centenary of Anzac.
Edie Swift Oh, and then on the other side of the parking lot, as you face the ocean it’s the left side of the beach, they’re, they did something over there or they’re doing something?
Joe McGarity Up the, up the northern end?
Edie Swift Yeah.
Joe McGarity That’s, they built, they put extensions to the boat shed up there. That was a boat shed for the surf club and they’ve now extended that to a part of the surf club as part of the clubhouse as well as, ah, rooms for the Council lifesavers.
Edie Swift Oh, uh-huh.
Joe McGarity That operate there during the summer months.
Edie Swift Oh.
Joe McGarity So they have a room of their own instead of occupying a room back at the south end of the beach in the surf club there.
Edie Swift But they don’t stay there overnight?
Joe McGarity No, no.
Edie Swift Oh, I see.
Joe McGarity No, no, no, they’re only there during, during the patrol hours of 8 o’clock to half past five-six o’clock, whatever their working hours are, patrol hours are.
Edie Swift So
Joe McGarity Because they vary during the summer.
Edie Swift So, so, ah, would you like to add anything else, you’ve done wonderful job.
Joe McGarity Oh, no. Austinmer, Austinmer beach is probably one of the most beautiful beaches in, in, in New South Wales. I’ve seen lots of beaches. It’s a treacherous beach but it’s a lovely beach. Ah, years ago in the early, the late, mid–forties to mid-fifties early sixties, the city people would come down not only to the beach but with the old, what we call kerosene drums. Ah, they were about ten inches square and about fourteen inches high, and they used to pick blackberries up the bush behind the railway line. And they would go home buckets and buckets of these blackberries to make blackberry jam and blackberry stew, blackberry pie all the rest of it. It was what people did back in those days to, ah, to give them, to give them, ah, some of the nice things after dinner.
Edie Swift, I want those back again.
Joe McGarity Yeah, well all the blackberries are basically gone. But we’ve, we’ve got the English people to thank for the blackberries. They’re not a, a native vine in Australia. The, ah, the English brought the blackberries and the rabbits out here for something to do [laughs]. So, we, we have something to thank the Englishmen for [laughs].
Edie Swift Oh, I’d love the blackberries to be back.
Joe McGarity Oh, they’re lovely they’re lovely, there’s nothing like a good blackberry.
Edie Swift Mm. Well, if you want to add anything else you can, otherwise, ah, we can conclude.
Joe McGarity Well I would just like to thank the people that have supported the Austinmer Otters over the years and, ah, the donations they’ve, they’ve given us and supported us with over the years, so we’ve been able to do what we’ve been up to do for somebody less fortunate.
Edie Swift Oh, that’s just great.
Joe McGarity That’s all I can say. Yeah.
Edie Swift Well thank you. And can you donate this to the local studies library in Wollongong library?
Joe McGarity Whatever you’d like to do Edie.
Edie Swift Okay.
Joe McGarity Yep.