I have a secret swimming spot. Surely all Sydneysiders have one somewhere in this city; a special summer place to swim out the worries of the week. The exact location is almost immaterial though for me lately it has been the ocean around Coogee. Wherever yours is the same principles apply: you go, strip to your swimmers, lather up with sun cream and swim. Sometimes when I'm serious, I pop on a swim cap and goggles.

Of course, much more than simply swimming happens in this sacred space; it's way deeper than exercise. Rome has the Vatican, Mecca has the Kaaba, but for Sydney it is the water which is holy; the ritual place we go to meditate.

Salute to the sun: Northbridge Baths. Credit:James Brickwood

Often I think some of my most profound thoughts while freestyling. I've constructed entire stories in my head while plying pools, and come up with some of the funniest lines I wished I'd said. Sometimes when I'm sad, my secret swim spot is the only tonic I know that is failsafe; I never leave the water feeling worse than when I got in. I've cried more tears than I care to count while underwater, and no one would ever know because goggle marks make your eyes look awful anyway.

The sheer scent of certain sun creams plunges me into the pools of my past, like Marcel Proust dunking his favourite Madeleine cake into some linden tea in Remembrance of Things Past. I can taste the Redskins lollies from the pool tuckshop at Parra pools where I did my bronze medallion. I can smell the cut grass of Dence Park, Epping, where I splashed and frolicked as a child. I can recall the freshwater chill of Lake Parramatta, back in the days when you were able to swim in that bushy oasis, one of the most beautiful in western Sydney.