"Wanna swim?"

One of my favourite memories from 2023, was a lunch stop in Jundah, Queensland (population 106).

Tanja and I had camped the previous night at Coopers Creek and visited Sandos Sandhills in the morning. We were sweaty and dusty, and quite keen to find somewhere to swim.

Our only hope was the public pool in Jundah. But our dreams of swimming were thwarted because, in Jundah, locals have their own keys to the pool which isn't open to the general public. So instead we made our lunch in the adjacent park and set ourselves up under a tree to cool down as best we could.

We were chatting away, making plans for the next few days of our road trip, when we heard a very quiet call of ‘wanna swim?’ from the direction of the pool. We both looked up to see an older gentleman carrying a towel standing at the pool gate. “Wanna swim?” he called again, and without hesitation Tanja and I leaped up and called back in the affirmative.

We dashed to the car to grab our togs and follow our new best friend into the pool.

The gentleman was the town nurse; a tall, muscular man with a thick moustache. He had recently returned from volunteering in Ukraine with Médecins Sans Frontières and perhaps seemed a little bored by his current gig as the sole medical professional in town.

I think he was intrigued by the two strangers loitering around the park (he’d seen my interstate number plates when he arrived) which I think, alongside his generosity, motivated him to invite us to the pool.

With the promise of relief from the heat ahead of us we rushed straight into the water. I am not exaggerating when I say it was the most refreshing swim in my life.

The cool water was a welcome shock. It was crystal clear and deep. At first I was even giddy with excitement before relaxing into swimming some lengths and chatting with our host. It was with reluctance that we eventually climbed out and thanked our new friend before heading on our way again.

For Tanja and I, the stop in Jundah, which we expected to be a brief and unexceptional moment of our road trip, turned out to be one of our more treasured memories.