We walked up and down to the North Sydney Olympic pool today. It is hilly in North Sydney and because our apartment is by the water everything is uphill! The pool was built in 1936 and hosted the Empire Games in 1938. In those days distances were in yards. The pool reached its heyday in the fifties and early sixties with 13 world records set in 1959 at the pre Rome Olympics Australian trials. The whole pool is divided into lanes with different categories, fast, medium, slow, slow with crawl.. Having decided on our lane we started swimming only to discover the water was salty, apparently the water is made fresh for competitions which ceased 20 years ago.