The Surrey Dive
When I was growing up in Box Hill, my old home town, I had two close mates. In that year or two after the War we were nine or ten years of age, and my two mates and I were inseparable companions. There was Dick Wellington whom we nicknamed “Boots” (after Wellington boots) and a tall, skinny kid Cliff Schwab whom we called “Little John” after the tall friend of Robin Hood.
In the long Melbourne summer afternoons and evenings, we used to spend all of our time together roaming the paddocks and creeks and drains of Box Hill. Sometimes we would be daring each other to get through the barbed wire fence and go up to pat the wild bull in Molloy’s paddock. Other times we would hold Wearne’s cow still while we squirted each other with her milk. But mostly we played imaginative games.
For some time we enjoyed Robin Hood. Little John was Little John, Boots was the Sheriff of Nottingham and I, of course, was Robin Hood. We all had our home made bows and arrows and the pride of our arrows were those we had tipped with the empty ends of .22 bullets. Those bullet tipped arrows were our special arrows which were kept for shooting wild boar or deer in the forest, except in the gorse covered paddocks of Box Hill South we had neither boar nor deer. The only thing I can remember ever being shot with a bullet tipped arrow was me.
The Sheriff of Nottingham had one day loosed a villainous arrow from behind a pine tree as I ran out from behind my pine tree shelter. His bullet tipped arrow hit me directly in the knee underneath the kneecap where it lodged at a rather peculiar angle. I fell to the ground but the arrow stayed there. Surprisingly I do not remember any pain. The other two fellows quickly gathered round and were amazed to see the arrow still sticking out from beneath my kneecap. They helped me home with the arrow still lodged there. There were no tears and no pain. My mother was not home from work at the bakehouse and so I did what I had seen them do in the movies: grit the teeth and, with a yank, pulled it out. I carry that scar in my knee to this day, a glorious memory of the last game of Robin Hood we ever played. After that parents banned bullet tipped arrows, and in fact bows and arrows in general.
Boots, Little John and I then developed “The Comic Club”. There were plenty of palings from half built fences around the neighbourhood and if we ever needed any more we used to surreptitiously take them from the back of some unwitting neighbour’s fence. With those palings we built a square building in the back of our yard at the corner of the fence. It had a window and a door with a chain and lock on it. It cost six comics to join and the purpose of the club was to swap comics. There were the comics from England which were mainly black and white and printed on thin paper with all the funny English characters, many of them film stars like Norman Wisdom and others like Billy Bunter and his pies. The American comics were produced by Walt Disney or else featured heroes like Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, and The Lone Ranger.
But the one we liked best of all was “The Phantom”. The Comic Club quickly evolved into “The Phantom Club”. The problem with the Comic Club was that I was President, Boots was Secretary, and Little John was Treasurer. We used to meet every night after school but as there were no other members and as we had no money there was very little to do as President, Secretary and Treasurer. So we equipped ourselves with masks and met every night in the spirit of “he who never dies”.
We sent away the coupons from the back of the comics and each received a phantom ring with the skull of the phantom on it. We would press the image of that skull into pieces of clay and leave them beside the desks of girls. When anybody saw the mark of the phantom they would be stricken with fear. However, no one seemed to be fear struck when we showed them the mark of “The Phantom”.
Our real problem with being the sons of Phantom was that we had nothing to do. We had banded together as brothers, cut our fingers and mixed our blood together so that we would be blood brothers forever, dedicated to fight for truth and justice, to right wrongs, and never betray each other. However, in Box Hill in those days there did not seem to be many wrongs that needed to be righted, justice had its own way of looking after itself, and there never seemed to be any maidens in distress.
After a while The Phantom Club faded away and Boots, Little John and I developed a new club called “The Lone Ranger Club”. We painted some of our old bullet heads that came from the arrows from our Robin Hood days silver to leave as the mark of the Lone Ranger and practised our “Hi Yo Silver” calls. Little John wore a rag around his head and practised saying “Kima savvy” as Tonto his faithful Indian friend. We would all gallop around slapping our sides with our masks on willing to be the Masked Avenger against any who robbed gold mines or wore black hats.
As there were only limited numbers of gold mines and robbers in Box Hill eventually that club died out through lack of opportunity to serve the community in avenging wrongs.
We then formed ourselves into The Surrey Dive Swimming Club. It must have been the height of summer that allowed us to take our interests as a club to the Surrey Dive. Off course there was a real Surrey Park Swimming Club and Frank Beaurepaire had set a world mile swimming record swimming in the straight 100 yard lanes of the Dive.
But we were a special Surrey Dive Swimming Club.
The Surrey Dive was the most fearful place in all of Box Hill. From earliest childhood mothers made sure their children were warned never to go near the dreaded Surrey Dive. Everyone knew of boys who had been drowned there, even if they could not recall their names.
It was an awful place. When the earliest settlers came to Box Hill they began in 1892 to dig a brick quarry. The quarry had been dug to an enormous depth by the Box Hill Brick Company. What happened next is shrouded in mystery. The historians will tell you that the clay pit hit some source of subterranean water which gradually filled the Dive to a point 40 to 60 feet below the level of the ground. However, the true facts as presented by parents were much more interesting.
The fact was the men had dug so deep in the quarry that they broke through the roof of a vast underground cavern. The water rushed up. Men were drowned struggling to get out of the quarry. Horses laden down with their carts full of clay, clawed helplessly against the rising level of the water. The water with vicious speed filled the quarry and to this day the remnants of the horses and carts and trapped men were at the bottom. Some people even said that they could taste salt in the water and if you were able to dive down deep enough into the subterranean cavern you would eventually surface out in Bass Strait.
As children we imagined going on Jules Verne like dives in submarines to reach the bottom of the bottomless dive and then eventually surface on some ocean water near China.
The Dive had been there for 50 years by the time we were boys. The facts were that the Dive was bottomless, it was dangerous, and it was forbidden to all people under the age of 21. There was a high picket fence with barbed wire around the perimeters and only one gate. Only adult members of The Surrey Park Men’s Swimming Club were allowed to enter through the gate.
Every summer there used to be grand aquatic carnivals when thousands of people would attend. The highlight of the summer evening swimming competitions which featured the famous hundred yards straight, was the men’s diving from a rough platform called “the crow’s nest” and even some who ventured as high as “the pinnacle”. As darkness fell the last event came with two or three courageous men smearing their bodies with methylated spirits or petrol, then suddenly being set on fire to jump from the height of the pinnacle, flaming into the water.
Probably the bravest thing that you could do in Box Hill in those days was to dive from “the crow’s nest” or even higher up from “the pinnacle”.
The platform at “the crow’s nest” was 40 feet above the water.
As boys we had gained confidence on the two diving boards at the Box Hill Swimming Pool one was one metre high and the other three metres. To dive from the three metre board was an accomplishment and we did it with regularity. But the greatest challenge of all was that day when we would eventually dive from “the pinnacle”.
Boots, Little John and I formed “The Surrey Dive Swimming Club” and each day we would head off for the Dive. Boys were not allowed in the Dive and there was a man on the gate that went between the swimming pool and the Surrey Dive who only allowed adult members of the Surrey Park Swimming Club to enter. But kids used to stand round the fence sunning their backs while they looked through the pickets into the dreaded waters of the Surrey Dive. We three members of The Surrey Dive Swimming Club of which I was President, Boots was Secretary, and Little John was once more Treasurer, found a way into the Dive over the far side, away from the man on the gate. A picket was prised loose and there was enough room for the three of us to squeeze through.
We looked a funny assortment in our long woollen swimming togs with their short legs and white belt and silver buckle. Boots was fairly stocky, if not plump, Little John was long and incredibly skinny. Even in his Phantom mask he would have been recognised anywhere. I was short and thin. The growth hormone had not yet begun to work and I had been nicknamed “Mozzie Mosquito”. It was a name I did not like and it seemed to point out my smallness and slenderness.
One summer afternoon the three of us were standing at the very edge of the pinnacle. We were talking about how we would dive one day from the pinnacle and of the kinds of dive to do. Someone was arguing that it would be better to start by jumping but I always maintained that a proper swallow dive, entering the water with the hands firmly clasped above the head would break the impact of the water like a silver bullet.
I did not realize it but that day was going to stand out in my mind. While arguing the theory of entering the water like an arrow or a silver bullet I was standing on the very edge of the pinnacle, that highest rock that stuck out over the edge of the steep cliffs of the Dive looking at the water some 50 to 60 feet below. I was demonstrating how the swallow dive would be performed with my toes around the edge of the rock leaning out as far as I dared, bent over with my arms held back behind my shoulders. To this day I do not know whether it was Little John or Boots who decided to give a helping hand on the seat of my swimming togs.
But suddenly I was propelled out into space and had that dreadful feeling of knowing that I could not recover my balance or get backwards. I had enough presence of mind to realize I must not fall flat on either my back or my stomach as occasionally we had done from the three metre board. That would be enough to kill you. I decided the only thing to do was, however unwilling the start, to turn the rest of the descent into an arrow dive. I maintained my hands in the swallow position for as long as I dared, then brought them over my head in rigid formation firmly grasping them together to break the water, keeping my legs absolutely straight. I hit the water vertically but the force of the water slapped my hands back behind my head. My knees buckled. I seemed to go into a concertina shape before I entered the water. Everything hurt. Every ounce of breath had been knocked out of my lungs. By the time I opened my eyes I was so deep that everything in the water looked black. I was disorientated. I did not know which way was up. I needed air.
I suddenly felt my body slowly beginning to rise and started crawling like a dog upwards. My legs would not work. I could not kick them. I did not realize until afterwards that the force of hitting the water had pulled my woollen bathing togs down around my ankles and they were stopping me from kicking. The water gradually turned to dark brown and then to a golden clay colour, eventually to a lighter orange and eventually to a light yellow and I broke through the surface gasping great lungfuls of air.
Every bone in my body was sore. I looked to the top of the cliff. My two mates were peering over the edge anxiously but there was great cheering coming from behind the picket fence from the direction of the swimming pool. Everybody seemed to be yelling out. I started the forty yard swim around to the platform. I pulled my swimming togs up and climbed out on the platform to be faced by the groundsman who had the job of standing guard on the gate. He was swearing and carrying on about boys not being allowed in the Surrey Dive. I had to get out of there immediately. I walked back through the gates into the swimming pool where I was immediately mobbed by all the other boys. Everybody was excited and hitting me on the back. Several people were saying “Did you really dive?” “Have you done it before?” “What is it like?” Other boys were saying “Of course he dived. I saw him.”
Little John and Boots were right at the back of the crowd as if they were not sure about coming too close. Someone kept saying “Have you done it before?” when I heard myself replying “Oh, a few times quite a few times in fact I do it often, but I do not usually do it when there are people round to watch.” Some other kid gave confirming evidence “Yes. I see’d him dive many times at night time just before we went home when there was no one else around.” From that moment my reputation as the pinnacle diver grew.
Other boys quickly took up the cry “Will you do it again now?” But everybody knew that the guard would not let anybody in through the gate so I promptly replied “Perhaps tomorrow when the members of the Surrey Dive Swimming Club come down here again. But we do not usually do it when there are many people about.”
Two interesting thing happened from that day. Without me realizing it, the other kids stopped calling me “Mozzie Mosquito”. That name did not somehow fit someone who regularly used to dive off “the Pinnacle” which was about as close to winning the “Victoria Cross” as anyone could in Box Hill. The other thing was that my friendship with Boots and Little John came to an end. It was not that I no longer trusted them, but we were now playing in different leagues. They could continue with Robin Hood, The Lone Ranger, and The Phantom, but anyone who was a pinnacle diver did not belong to that childish group. I then turned to taking up swimming seriously.
To us growing up in Box Hill the Surrey Dive was and always will be absolutely bottomless. In 1968, a year of the great drought, the Council drew off such huge quantities of water to maintain its sports grounds and public gardens that the water level of the Dive was drastically reduced and eventually the Council decided to use it as a rubbish tip, filling it with earth and building refuse until the Dive was completely filled, pummelled, levelled and eventually grassed as a recreation area. How that covered the memories of many a Box Hill boyhood.
Every summer’s day, my mind would automatically turn to the forbidden waters of The Surrey Dive as I used to make my way home up Bank Street, along the railway line to the top of the hill and to No. 5 Miller Street, Box Hill, a great city which was still a village, where the adults were kind and where the children grew up responsibly.
GORDON MOYES
