It’s mid-January-duco-stripping-red-raw-trucker’s-tan-Holden-seats-that-peel-thighs-as-an-ape-undoes-a-banana-HOT. The tar ripples, snaking into the distance like a strap of liquorice that writhes indecently in the sun, and while I cope admirably with such adversity (a packet of frozen peas between now steaming knees), cold water is called for.

In this wasted fringe of the city, once the site of fellmongers yards and slaughter works and still shrouded in heavy industry – its legacy of contamination worn like a muzzle –wharfies and stevedores rumble in gangs in fluoro, a fine mist of av-gas sprinkles burning shoulders and the sun bakes an oily blackness deeper into the earth. And while Foreshore Beach is just moments away from the wreckers I am hunting through for hot-to-the-touch Kingswood parts, its sand/ sea/ sun = beach classification got cancelled a while back.

The grease monkey points west: “Best get up there doll, it’s cool and wet”. Not entirely sure I understand what he is talking about I enquire further – he goes on to describe a fertile sanctuary: “Honest love, we all get up there after a coldie at the end of the day…”

Almost louche in its reclining glory, the Botany Aquatic Centre lounges amid a sea of city green, hidden from the horror of the stained industry at the bay’s edge. With a Soviet-style entrance and solid concrete floor the centre is a throwback to a simpler time, and a paean to 70s swimming culture.

It inadvertently celebrates the halcyon days of summers past, with sole-burning bricks that steam as the drips dry, concrete fissures that sprout lurid life, springy grass sprinkled with bindis, a Peters-ice-cream-blue kiosk doing a roaring trade in schitzies and hot chips, drumsticks and zoopa doopas – all drizzled in utilitarian institutionalisation for good measure. Can’t be getting out of hand now.

This is a world steeped in blue and green, the surf and turf of the colour palette, with flecks of neon and soda adorning skin from chocolate to Pepto-Bismol pink in delicious contrast. Pools are lapped by grass while ancient paperbarks dip their toes in the damp, and shady groves curl out tendrils of cool, home to sprawls of families their boundaries littered with picnics, floaties and striped towels that flak and flutter in the breeze.

I follow the trawl of tip turkeys that sidle and stalk for Jatz and hot chips, red sauce like blood on their beaks. They lead me to my plastic moulded nirvana, a place that is maudlin in its search for a frosted glass of tequila sunrise…

Umbrellas crowd excitedly, splashes of tango, turquoise and out-of-fashion blue. They are the stars of the show, selflessly casting pockets of shade onto passing birds and their reluctant sidekicks, chained to them to prevent ‘an incident’:

There is a rowdy scrabble of youth, from goggle-eyed babes to splashing small fry who squeak and giggle, tweens that tumble and preen, and teens closely monitoring the ride of hi-cut swimmers and low-slung boardies. They are hunting. Mostly each other.

Beads of salty water roll from goosebumped skin and the wet bricks sweat. The kids’ pool is like a chlorinated Lord of the Flies, piggy howling in the shadows and ripe fruit smeared along the edge. A scrawny, wiry woman with a litter of kids still suckling her home-brewed homilies entreats Lozza to “ger outta the water, youse getting wrinkles!” Her age-rippled back reads Live Not to Lose and she is as yet unaware of the rusting hose coiled menacingly behind her…

Shrouded women lead their lycra’d progeny to the water’s edge but resist the temptation, the sedate demeanour of their darkened attire balanced by a swooping cursive dialect, non-stop chatter and bawdy laughter: Asra and her toes again…

Stained creme caramel coloured brick blocks squat around the largest expanse of water, bleachers climbing high with a ‘competitive edge’. The lane markers are rolled up tight, despite the best machinations of a toddler intent on their release, and the bunting droops – it’s been a busy day.

Credit: Awol Monk.

A lifeguard trundles past on rubbish duty, a message on his back reading; WHERE IS YOUR CHILD?

I recover quickly, realising he doesn’t mean mine, and that the Tin Lid is safely ensconced in Kindy. He can, however, shed no light on what this is:

An older woman sporting a natty zebra one-piece, straw hat with a knitted brim band and a jaunty ankle flick wanders through the generations, perusing life. She stops for a chat: Beryl’s a local, been coming here for ‘too many years my dear. But it’s always the same. It’s real and genuine and honest. Now, you enjoy your little slice love. See you next time, I’m off to the waterslide…”

Unbound palms sprout and seed with abandon at the entrance to the water slide, indicative perhaps of the jungle that awaits. Harassed lifeguards corral the mob in human sale yards that get sprayed with salt each time another cork pops from the pipe, yelling. On and on hot steaming skin is flushed through soupy water in sun-cracked tubes in a febrile ripple of sound, flumes spewing laughter and one-piece bum-wedgies.

Eyes closed, toes exposed, it surges over me, a sluice of a time past yet vividly of the now as cool drips of water sprinkle my exposed skin, courtesy of a cartwheeler as she spins past.

An oasis is defined as a ‘fertile spot in a desert, where water is found amid the burning desert sands, a watering place’. Beyond the oil-streaked mirage out the back of the wreckers, I was led to my oasis by a grease monkey and an ibis. I just have to work out a way to thank them…