Blue Duck nude midwinter swim

By Chris Valli

Wanting to brighten up the shortest days? Then this may help.

Science has shown that cold water stimulates one’s body to increase blood flow circulation. Subsequently, increasing circulation redistributes blood and delivers freshly oxygenated blood to areas of the body that need to recover.

It’s timely then that the idea of a midwinter swim at St Arnaud came from a Department of Conservation staff midwinter dinner in 2002.

The Blue Duck Nude Midwinter Swim has been running for more than 20 years and is now a well-established event. At 600 metres it’s the highest altitude midwinter swim in the country.

Organiser Bill McEwan says it’s family friendly and has always been small compared with the large more commercial midwinter swims on the coast.

“Last year there were about 20 of us, of all ages,” he says. “We call ourselves ‘survivors’ and new swimmers ‘the misled.’”

Bill says punters go in at the East Jetty at Kerr Bay, Lake Rotoiti by the campground as there is more shelter there and it’s away from the other jetty where the eels are.

“It’s quiet, small and natural. We say “Just the lake, the stones and the swimmer.” Pretty much everyone goes nude but you don’t have to.”

“Most of us share a love of our greater-than-human world, gratitude for life and a sense of fun.”

Bill says the motivation for the event is because ‘many of us live in an artificial, constructed world’ and ‘this is a great opportunity to join with others at a dark, cold time of the year in something elemental’, a little unusual and enjoyable.

“There’s a great feeling after, which I love,” he says. “We have a joke about one of us who swam out into the lake for 20 strokes and back in for just 10, the last four of which were over dry land.”

Bill encourages those to come