Next weekend the Lorne Surf Life Saving Club will stage the Pier to Pub swim for the 40th time. This annual event is now deeply entrenched in the heritage and culture of Lorne. This year 5,300 swimmers will compete in the event. The official event was first staged in 1981 but had its beginnings as far back as 1954. The following is an extract from Alleyn Best’s history of the Lorne SLSC , “With Sand Between Our Toes”.
Alleyn writes, “According to Lorne club life member Henry Love, the Pier to Pub swim has its origins in a legendary but farcical race following a state carnival held at Lorne in Easter 1952. Over a few drinks at the Pacific Hotel, Lorne members Henry Love, Ian (Basil) Hunt and Lance (Scraggs) Huxley challenged Torquay members Jeff Emerson, Owen Yateman and John (Sos) O’Sullivan to a swimming race from the end of the Lorne pier to the beach at the Lorne Angling Club (where the Pier to Pub swim starts today). Henry Love and John O’Sullivan laid a bet on the outcome. Word went out about the race – Lorne and Torquay clubs were great rivals – and a crowd gathered around 6.00 pm to watch. Shortly after diving into the water, Henry Love heard someone yell, “Yateman, they’re pissed and going the wrong way!” referring to himself and ‘Sos’, since while the rest swam to the nearby beach, he and ‘Sos’ had agreed to swim to the main Lorne beach. Yet half-way there, ‘Sos’ was floundering and Jeff Emerson who by then was walking with the others along the path to follow the two swimmers, jumped in and pulled ‘Sos’ out of the water. Henry Love swam on but then his swimming togs came off. He arrived on the beach naked but modestly covered himself with his hands. After receiving clothing assistance, everyone, including many onlookers, went to the Lorne Hotel to celebrate. The novelty of a competitive swimming race from the pier to the Lorne beach, then walking up to the Lorne Hotel where the winner would buy the beers, was not lost on other club members.
In 1954 Henry Love, Mac Campbell and Peter McIntyre swam it in earnest, with Henry Love winning but’ … not a length between us’, as he recalled. Similar fun races were held on and off over the following years. Another version edging closer to the truth of who first thought of an official Pier to Pub swim comes from Kai Scully who led the Ladies Auxiliary from the late 1960s. Kai tells of the day she and Paul Lacey and Clyde Whitehand were sitting on Lorne beach at the end of a carnival in January in the mid 1970s, looking up at Scotchman’s Hill and reminiscing about the times when hessian was placed on the beach and the public were charged 4/- (four shillings, now 40 cents) for entry to watch the events but all the cheapskates went up the hill to watch and “… never paid a cent!” Paul then asked Kai, “How long do you think it would take swim from the pier to the club?” Kai replied, “Half an hour?” Paul then went with Peter Danby of the Lorne Hotel to swim it and see how long it took. After the swim, Paul said to Kai that he thought a swim like that would be a good end to a surf carnival. Then a year or so later when the event was getting started, it became known as “Pier to Pub” not “Pier to Club’ as first thought.
The Pier to Pub’s real origins as a formal event, however, grew directly out of a discussion around the Tiller family dinner table that was attended by Paul and Heather Lacey, in the late 1970s. Paul Lacey had spent his early years in the surf lifesaving movement as a member of the Surfers Paradise Surf Club. There he competed successfully in ocean water swims held in Queensland during sixties, before relocating to Melbourne and joining Lorne SLSC. Paul made the astute comment that Lorne had the perfect setting for an ocean swim of its own. The distance (approx 1.2km) from the pier to the beach offered a straight-line course in a sheltered situation, and natural amphitheatre of the hill provided an ideal opportunity for spectators.
Soon after, Paul wrote to the club’s committee; mid 1980. The committee agreed and so the first official Pier to Pub Swim was held in January 1981. Paul provided the guidance for running the swim that in its first year attracted around 100 entrants some of whom were rounded up from the beach. Two clubbies went up and down asking if anyone wanted to be in it. Interested people walked around to the pier. When the signal was given, they jumped from the top of the pier and swam to the beach. The winner of that first swim was declared a dead heat after good friends and Lorne club members Wayne Sweeney and Matthew Brown contrived to cross the finish line together but well clear of everyone else.”
Whether you are competing or watching on Saturday, spare a moment to think about the origins of this wonderful chapter of Lorne’s history.
