Bondi Icebergs: a Sunday habit stronger than the cold

A fifty-meter seawater pool stretches through a rocky hollow by the ocean, and the club building stands above the water. People without club membership and regular participants in local swims both come here to swim. On Sundays, the pool serves as the venue for club races, organized by the committee.

This pool has two ages. The baths were laid out in a natural rock basin as early as eighteen eighty-seven. Bondi Icebergs appeared here four decades later, and the name above the pool refers first and foremost to people.

In nineteen twenty-nine, local volunteer lifesavers decided not to stop training when summer ended. In the warm season, they had to patrol the beach and enter the surf for drowning people; in winter, without regular swims, they lost their fitness. The lifesavers formed a club, elected officers, and called themselves “icebergs” in honor of their readiness to swim year-round.

Intention alone was not enough for them. In the nineteen forties, club members added the 15B rule to the bylaws. A swimmer had to take part in club races at least three Sundays of every month from May through September—and keep to that routine for five years. Then the swimmer received lifetime swimming membership.

A missed Sunday required a written explanation. If the committee did not receive one or did not accept the reason, it could suspend the swimmer from competition and move the swimmer into the ranks of the club's ordinary social members. Speed determined a swimmer's place in a race; iceberg status was earned by returning here week after week.

The rule is still in force, although the fifty-meter pool itself is also open to visitors with no connection to the club. The most exact test of this habit came in two thousand sixteen. A storm damaged the coast, and the pool had to close for several weeks. Holding Sunday swims was impossible, but the committee did not suspend the attendance record. To receive credit for the week, club members were told to come to the pool anyway. There was nowhere to swim—missing Sunday was not allowed.