Mona Vale

Mona Vale's pool is the odd one out, and I love it for that. Nearly every ocean pool in New South Wales is tucked in under a headland, or walled in behind a great pile of rock, but this one sits out on an open shelf, on the promontory that divides the main beach from Bongin Bongin Bay, with nothing in front of it. Thirty one metres by eighteen, and shallow, about a metre and a half at the deep end. So when a set comes through, you don't get to watch it break on rocks first, and brace yourself. It just arrives.

But it started as a natural hole in the platform, and was cut into the pool that's there now by men on unemployment relief in the thirties, which is true of a lot of pools along this coast, and worth a thought while you're swimming a lap in one. Somebody cut that out by hand, in the middle of a depression, and it's still there.

And winter's when the place fills up, which surprises people. The Pittwater Pirates swim here right through the cold months, and winter swimming clubs are their own institution along this coast, full of people who treat the temperature as the point, rather than the obstacle. There's a particular noise seventy year olds make going into cold water early on a Sunday, and I've never once managed to photograph it, which isn't for lack of trying.

Tide runs everything here. At the bottom of it the shelf is out of the water for thirty or forty metres, and the pool stands up off the rock like something built on a table, while at the top of a big tide the shelf vanishes underneath, and the whole thing looks like it's floating. I've shot both for years, and I still couldn't tell you which one I prefer. You'll want to watch where you put your feet on the way out, though (that platform has taken the skin off both my knees, more than once).