Article: Sunday Age, 13th January, 2008

Dim sims, deep ends and Westie friends
Byline: William McInnes

THERE are many ways to spend Sunday morning in Melbourne. Sleep in. Go to the galleries. Read The Sunday Age. Sit in your favourite coffee shop doing whatever you do in your favourite coffee shop. Or you can spend it with the Footscray swimming club.

You walk past the woman with the water aerobics class who likes her music loud. Maybe the people in her class like it loud. Hopefully all the people in the pool complex like it loud because it's echoing around the Maribyrnong Aquatic Centre.

Across in the big spa and glass-walled steam room, people sit surrounded by bubbles and wispy jets of smoke. A kid told me once that these people looked like dim sims. Both steamed and fried. The image has never left me. The kid and I stared and burst out laughing. All those blank faces through the steam and bubbles. Then one winked and smiled. We laughed even more. Dim sims have not tasted the same since.

You walk on to the end of the pool to the big glass windows and a view stretching down the Maribyrnong River to the city of Melbourne. Here a group of families mill about on shallow concrete bleaches. Children giggle or sit with friends or cuddle under the wings of parents.

It's not a huge club and I suppose it's similar to many other swimming and sporting clubs across the city. But it represents something special. The western suburbs of Melbourne, and especially Footscray, come in for quite a bit of stick and sneer. It's as if the west is a lesser part of the city. You hear the jokes about moccy-wearing Westies and a host of other stereotypes that are tiresome, like most cliches.

The particular quality of the Footscray swimming club is the make- up of its members. Some seem to have been members since Adam was a lad. In tiny rooms there are club photos from years before. Black and white images of swimming galas in the 1930s and high divers arcing gracefully through the air above the waters of the Maribyrnong.

You can see Gordon, barrel-chested and smiling, with his arms folded and his hair Brylcreemed to within an inch of its life in a team photo from the 1950s, and then see him marching along the pool deck every Sunday. His hair is not as Brylcreemed these days, but he is still organising and smiling and encouraging. His encouragement is extended to kids who come from a rainbow of backgrounds. Some have been born in lands far across the seas, some are first-generation Australians, and some have ancestors who were on the First Fleet. Many follow different faiths but come together every Sunday at the club.

A little boy stands on the edge of the pool for his first swim, shaking with apprehension as he peers into the Deep End. But he needn't worry. Everybody shouts encouragement and as he splashes along two older kids keep watch and stroke with him. Amazingly, he beats them. A huge smile stretches across his face and he's cradled in the arms of a sporting club that can show the city a great deal about acceptance, tolerance and community friendship.

High on a hill above Melbourne is a jewel that shines as bright as that little boy's face. The Footscray swimming club.