AAA<\/p>\n
Marianne Bonnay\u2019s pale blue eyes sparkle. She\u2019s talking about her six-days-a-week swimming ritual at Newcastle\u2019s Merewether Ocean Baths, which shimmer just metres away in midday sunshine.<\/p>\n
Autumn is almost gone, and Bonnay, 55, is exhilarated that the ocean and air temperatures are dropping \u2013 alongside the number of fair-weather swimmers. The frigid water, which might seem foreboding to some, is hypnotically alluring to her, swelling and splashing in a come-hither way. If not for the piping takeaway coffee and toasted sandwich in her hand, you get the sense she would abandon you for the cold sea at any second.<\/p>\n
\u201cWinter is my favourite season,\u201d says the petite geologist in her thick French accent. \u201cI love to feel the brain freeze that makes you forget everything and forces you to be \u2009in \u2009the moment. Then, when getting out, the recovery time: your toes white, and fingers that need a bit of warmth to resuscitate. Hot shower, hot car and hot drink. You feel so energised.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like most sporty folk, Bonnay\u2019s rigid swimming regimen is her \u201cme\u201d time, a necessary escape from the mother load and life\u2019s stresses. \u201cI am brutally reminded of the reality when I come back home,\u201d she says, rummaging through her handbag to retrieve her phone which has, as if on cue, pinged with a text message from her daughter, who shares her mother\u2019s attention with five brothers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ocean is my happy place,\u201d Bonnay concludes, between rushed mouthfuls of lunch, \u201cbut it took a lot of work to forgive. The ocean took the one I loved<\/a>. Everything went wrong at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n A long time prior, young Bonnay was one of three children to farmers Nicole and Louis-Joseph, growing up in a small village close to Villers-Bretonneux in northern France. \u201cLiving on a farm meant living to the rhythm of nature and hard working around harvest,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n Landlocked in her early childhood, it took three attempts for her to learn to swim, the first time in the cloying confines of a chlorinated indoor pool. \u201cI was 10 when, on a trip to the city to see my cousins, we went to the swimming pool,\u201d Bonnay says. \u201cI had my first experience of swimming in floaties, and I mean the big fat one you put around your waist. I just loved the feel of the water.\u201d<\/p>\n About a decade later, she was working in a summer holiday job at a bank and was briefly offered adult swimming lessons, which allowed her to nail the basics of breaststroke. Her final and most successful attempt came at the age of 28 in Quebec, Canada, thanks to the patience of her Australian-born husband, fellow geologist Stephen Dick.<\/p>\n Three years earlier, while researching her PhD in mineral resources, Bonnay had met him in his home town of Newcastle at a dinner party, an encounter she recalls as largely humorous. (He could barely understand the conversation due to her accent.) \u201cHe offered me an Australian bottle of wine, which was a nice surprise,\u201d she says. \u201cI took it with me back to Canada the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n The pair reconnected two years later when Bonnay arrived in Alice Springs to collect more field data as part of her PhD, for which she was trying to gain an understanding of \u201cfelsic magma in the continental crust\u201d. Dick was assigned by their employer as her helper, sharing opinions and insight but also manning a jackhammer to sample metamorphosed rock specimens.<\/p>\n A year later, they wed by the ocean in Newcastle before Bonnay, by then pregnant, returned to Quebec to write up her doctorate. \u201cI got pregnant during our honeymoon, but I had to write my PhD,\u201d she says. \u201cStephen joined me after three months, then we decided to come back to Australia to have the baby.\u201d<\/p>\n Before then, though, notwithstanding the bitter winter, the couple used to visit the public swimming pool near their Quebec house. \u201cStephen liked swimming every night and he patiently taught me freestyle,\u201d Bonnay recalls. \u201cIt was slow progress because I was pregnant, but soon enough I was able to swim 50 metres. When we got back to Australia, he carried on teaching me in our local Olympic pool. Swimming outside was liberating for me. I was nine months pregnant then, but I felt no weight in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n After the arrival of her first-born, Bonnay was drawn to the pool to get fit, and continued to swim as she and Stephen added five more children to their brood. \u201cI swam three days a week to start with and more in summer,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was an activity we all enjoyed as a family. We took the kids very early on in the water. We signed on for a family pass which was overused. I particularly loved swimming when I was pregnant, as you feel the weightlessness.\u201d<\/p>\n On April 12, 2016, Bonnay and her husband and their large clan were enjoying a seaside holiday at ruggedly beautiful Boomerang Beach, a favourite holiday spot for generations of Novocastrians, when life took a tragic turn. On an overcast day, Bonnay recalls that the ocean at the unpatrolled beach looked mercilessly choppy, but the waves weren\u2019t particularly big.<\/p>\n Standing on the shore, 53-year-old Stephen saw his 13-year-old son get swept into a rip, and immediately went to his aid. The couple\u2019s 14-year-old son leapt in to help, only to get carried away by the current, too.<\/p>\n Related Article The younger son later told a television reporter that his father found him in the water and pushed him back to shore \u2013 \u201cSwim,\u201d he said, \u201cgo to Mum\u201d \u2013 and then he was gone. \u201cI didn\u2019t get to say thank you,\u201d the boy told media. \u201cHe saved [us], he\u2019s my hero.\u201d<\/p>\n Ten years on, Bonnay wears her grief like her necklace, bearing a French gold coin featuring the bust of Marianne \u2013 her name, but also a figure representing liberty and the French republic. Her father gifted her the necklace when she was 20 and, when Bonnay lost it two decades later, Stephen replaced it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems like yesterday and like a million years ago,\u201d she says now. \u201cI still feel the pain and the tragedy. I saw the three of them being taken by the sea and struggling. No one at the beach. No phone. Just me and three kids holding hands, screaming for help.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the two boys got out, helped by Stephen, I felt relieved, but Stephen did not seem to be able to come out. He was floating away with his face down. Then a surfer came to get him out, but it was too late. He was exhausted from saving the boys and had drowned,\u201d she says. \u201cI was robbed of my life and my happy family.\u201d<\/p>\n At 45, Bonnay felt traumatised, her world torn apart. \u201cStephen was, first of all, my best friend and my soulmate,\u201d she says. \u201cTogether, the world seemed liveable and simple. We supported each other by unconditional love.\u201d<\/p>\n An earnest man and a loyal friend, his nickname was \u201cBP\u201d (for the global fuel giant\u2019s slogan: \u201cThe quiet achiever\u201d). \u201cHe was an amazing and dedicated father and I always felt safe in his presence,\u201d Bonnay says. \u201cHe had a powerful presence or charisma with a quiet nature, a sarcastic humour, and was always looking after others.\u201d<\/p>\n The couple\u2019s workplace, friends, community and Surf Life Saving Australia threw their support behind Bonnay and her six children. A commercial television program even renovated her backyard after being contacted by a friend, among many random acts of kindness (work colleagues and friends also organised a food roster for six months).<\/p>\n But the ensuing years were a blur of fatigue and tearing grief that threatened to overwhelm her daily. Prescribed antidepressants by her GP, Bonnay instead found her own way, mixing meditation with swimming to counter perpetual physical pain and hurt.<\/p>\n \u2018I felt like myself again after all these years of feeling lost after my husband\u2019s death. I felt freed.\u2019<\/p>\n Marianne Bonnay<\/p>\n \u201cSwimming was my only coping mechanism, a place where I could scream underwater, cry and fight the vision of Stephen dying in front of all of us,\u201d she says. \u201cI increased my pool swimming to five days a \u2009week to survive. Swimming indoors or outdoors, it did not matter as long as I had childcare available.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s almost inconceivable that Bonnay would return to the ocean, let alone make a beeline for it every day, but the arrival of COVID-19 upended all logic. The Olympic pools suddenly closed, leaving the ocean baths as the only option. Sliding into the sea six days a week was a visceral revelation. \u201cI felt like myself again after all these years of feeling lost after my husband\u2019s death,\u201d she says. \u201cI felt freed.\u201d<\/p>\n While her children found the mere sound of the surf distressing enough, Bonnay helped them confront the \u201ccruel reality\u201d in her own methodical, pragmatic way.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ocean and beach life are part of living in Australia. There was no escape,\u201d she says. \u2009\u201cIt took small steps, each weekend: first driving past the ocean, then parking and getting out of the car, then walking along the foreshore on concrete, then a longer walk to the breakwater.\u201d<\/p>\n Eventually, she took them back to the beach, always setting up between the flags and beside the lifeguards. \u201cIt was excruciating for me, my heart was pounding each time they were going in the water,\u201d she recalls. \u201cEach time they were going a bit far, I screamed for them to come back.\u201d Her reactions eventually deterred them from going to the beach with her, so she made them promise to always swim near the lifeguards.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, on her mornings alone in the Merewether Ocean Baths, Bonnay learnt to conquer her own trauma and overpowering anxiety of the ocean by swimming in the ever-changing conditions: choppy, windy, wavy, high tide, low tide, currents, and all the different water temperatures.<\/p>\n \u201cSwimming is my morning pill,\u201d she says. \u201cI never question myself, I wake up, put my swimmers on, drive to the baths, watch the sunrise or jump in the water \u2013 or vice versa, depending on the time of the year. If I don\u2019t swim, my day is missing something.\u201d<\/p>\n A keen rock-climber, runner and biker in years gone by, swimming trumps them all in her 50s, first because it\u2019s non-impact \u2013 apart from a scratch or two if she\u2019s washed out of the concrete confines there by a rogue wave \u2013 but also because her daily ocean obsession feels keenly now like a metaphor for life. \u201cLike a box of chocolates, you never know which flavour you\u2019re going to pick,\u201d she says. \u201cEvery day is different at the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n Every swim, however, begins with that same sense of rejuvenation and discovery. \u201cRemember, I leave home early, I have not talked to any of the teenagers or young adults at home, so when I get to the baths the day is still new!\u201d she says, laughing. The scent and sound of the water rouses her before she plunges in. \u201cI feel like I am at home,\u201d she says, inhaling loudly.<\/p>\n Assessing the conditions, she adjusts her swim stroke accordingly, negotiating the roll of the ocean at high tide (when the waves crash in and getting out of the water can be tricky), or gliding across the generally flatter surface at low tide, depending on the wind.<\/p>\n Now repartnered with Dan, her \u201clifeline and my sunshine\u201d, Bonnay enjoys the magnanimous temperament of ocean swimmers who unwittingly played a core role in her recovery. \u201cWe all swim or dip at the baths, no matter if you are CEO, professor, tradie, 20 years old or 90, unemployed and finding your own way in life,\u201d she notes. \u201cThe baths are free and for everyone, without discrimination and with acceptance. There is a social tacit bond, and you see people at a specific time.<\/p>\n \u201cI have the privilege to know the 4am shift, the 5am shift and the 6am shift. You swim next to each other, look after each other and have a chat about the ocean or the beach. Nothing more. The magical start of the day is to be protected and cherished. You respect the fact that people do not want to talk about their jobs, but you listen if they want to talk about what is important to them. You do connect more with some people, and it sometimes leads into friendships.\u201d<\/p>\n Winter looms large as we speak, but Bonnay is a fan of what Danish scientist Dr Susanna S\u00f8berg describes as the \u201ccold-shock response\u201d \u2013 the rush of endorphins that fill a swimmer as their body reacts to the cooler seasonal temperature, \u201cthat cold snap every time you jump in\u201d, before the brain and body start to adjust and relax.<\/p>\n Bonnay says she sometimes swims \u201cin survival mode\u201d when the ocean baths are rough and her adrenaline is high. \u201cYou get out completely energised and exhausted by the battle,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Related Article On one recent morning there, the sky was aglow with red and pink, and the beach packed with people capturing the moment on their phones. \u201cI had the privilege to be in the water, and it felt like swimming in the pink-reddish clouds. Unforgettable,\u201d she says. \u201cEvery conversation was about how stunning the sunrise was. The connection between people was palpable.\u201d<\/p>\n Her close friends know she swims, too, and so often she goes through her morning fielding questions \u2013 \u201cHow was your swim today?\u201d or \u201cDid you swim in that cold?\u201d \u2013 which is a nice way to start any interaction.<\/p>\n Bonnay looks up and apologises \u2013 she has errands to run, including a dash to the supermarket and collecting her youngest son from school for a dental appointment.<\/p>\n \u201cI do love my children unconditionally and will always be there for them, but they are beautifully emotionally consuming,\u201d she says in her matter-of-fact way. As a primary carer myself, drawn to the ocean every day to find peace from my tween and teen, I tell Bonnay that I am staggered by her resilience in dealing with tragedy, then raising six children alone.<\/p>\n \u201cI am not sure about resilience, I just take one day at a time and, when a problem arises, I try to dismantle it into small, manageable issues that I can tackle better,\u201d she counters, adding that she sees a psychologist who \u201cbrings a different light on myself and is the best\u201d.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s important to make sure you take time to do things that you love, as you need to feed that energy back to others.\u2019<\/p>\n Marianne Bonnay<\/p>\n In times of crisis, she prioritises mindfulness<\/a>, and focusing on her breathing. Grateful for her partner, a reliable network of friends, and her children for navigating grief with her, she actively tries to find joy in her surrounds: be that a peaceful sunset or a tasty meal or a shared conversation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important to make sure you take time to do things that you love, as you need to feed that energy back to others: children, people having difficulties or even happy people,\u201d she says. \u201cEnjoy the little thing. Most of all, enjoy the time with the people you love. Be nice to each other and at the same time honest and truthful. Listen.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article As Bonnay flits off, high tide hits the baths and I watch some teenagers leap onto a concrete seat to narrowly avoid being washed into the brine. Their faces light up just like Bonnay\u2019s when she is near this magical place.<\/p>\n A few days later, we cross paths at Merewether Ocean Baths again. I can see her trademark hot-pink cap across from my lane and later, in the primitive change room, we are whipped by gusts of cold wind as we shower and fumble our way back into clothing.<\/p>\n When I thank her for her candour, Bonnay flashes a warm smile. \u201cHopefully it will help someone!\u201d she says, cheerily. \u201cOr convince someone that swimming could be their solution or respite.\u201d<\/p>\n Get the best of Good Weekend delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Sign up for our newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Bonnay](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/9fc8dcee435e8c761e3bb3ea66442fd704523e05.jpeg\")
Bonnay with her husband and soulmate Stephen Dick in 2002. She was drawn to swimming when pregnant with her first child.Courtesy of Marianne Bonnay<\/p>\n![\"Stephen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0057b3ed6d1729c80aea9f411d93844f7d11121d.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Bonnay](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/99acb8e7f2a337c9cfb7bddf847589bb088e71a6.jpeg\")
Bonnay in a place that always brings rejuvenation and discovery: the ocean baths.Penelope Green<\/p>\n![\"\u201cWhen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/d6a44920fcd156741ba4d8295689b3f27e4e319e.jpeg\")
\u201cWhen I get to the baths, the day is still new,\u201d Bonnay says of her early-morning start at the ocean pool.Penelope Green<\/p>\n![\"Kate](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/86605aab851e50440726b0685a0945ec451fad81.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\u2018It](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/9a01f29c00e147bff68bb59462e3b546d5477a72.jpeg\")
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