They met every day at the pool for years – until the coffee cup ‘incident’

5 days ago 5

Indigenous art dealer Adrian Newstead, 77, and performer/quizmaster Russell Cheek, 73, met at their local swimming pool 17 years ago. They’ve swum there every morning ever since – except when Adrian was banned.

“When you talk to Russell, you have his undivided attention,” Adrian says. “He listens, he gets your story. It’s very endearing.”

RUSSELL: I was introduced to Adrian in 2008 at the Bondi Icebergs swimming club cafe by a mutual friend and we got on immediately. I thought he was a very cultured individual who could talk to anyone about anything.

We started having coffee together every morning after a swim. Neither of us was ever afraid of cold water. The pool temperature can be 16 degrees and we’ll still say it’s beautiful. That’s code for, “It’s frickin’ cold but doable.”

I love Adrian’s engagement with life. He has lots of energy and belongs to this incredibly artistic circle. He takes his swag out to Balgo [in Western Australia] and Yuendumu [in the Northern Territory] and sleeps under the stars. He even has a fire pit in his backyard, so when artists come from the desert they feel at home.

In 2016, he was invited to Paris to show a collection of Indigenous Art Brut. His ability to get things done is just insane. He went to the outback and gathered all these paintings in next to no time. I speak French, so Adrian invited me along to interpret for the exhibition. We had the best time, hanging out in the cafes of the Marais.

Very little about him annoys me, but he does like to complain about his ailments. I just take it all on board. And he’s really bad at texting, especially if he’s travelling. I’ll write to him and won’t hear anything back for four or five days.

He’s got a temper. Last year, new management at the Bergs cafe introduced paper cups, which are bad for the environment and horrible to drink coffee out of. So Adrian brought down his stoneware Tiwi mug. This new manager told him, “You can’t use that because of OH&S.” Adrian said, “I’ve never heard anything so f---ing lame!” The incident got reported to the board and they banned him from the cafe, club and pool for a year. It was eventually commuted to the first day of winter swimming.

‘Adrian often wonders why we never see people in their 80s or beyond swimming here … We’ve vowed to go on for as long as we possibly can.’

Russell Cheek

We don’t disagree about much. We talk about footy and cricket, and art. We exchange views on how beautiful and resourceful the women around us are, and we talk about politics. On election night, me, Adrian and Dave Faulkner from the Hoodoo Gurus got together for a meal and we got Labor over the line.

We also talk about swimming. Adrian’s wife, Anne, says he can’t swim properly because his legs are too far apart, yet we swim at pretty much the same speed. We do 20 laps every day. We get in the water at 6.47am and we’re out by 7.25am. In a race over 50 metres, I’d win, but not by much.

I’m always in lane one, he’s in lane eight. He swims with the breaststrokers and the also-rans. Adrian often wonders why we never see people in their 80s or beyond swimming here. It’s a question we can’t answer. We’re not promised tomorrow, but we’ve vowed to go on for as long as we possibly can. It’s such a tonic.

In Paris in 2015, with Adrian’s wife, Anne.

ADRIAN: It was Russell who encouraged me to swim regularly. We didn’t do it so early originally, but now we get out of the pool as the sun’s coming up.

Russell’s a loper. I can look down at the pool with 50 people in it and recognise him instantly. He’s got a gimpy shoulder from a skiing accident. It doesn’t slow him down, but it makes for a unique style.

He’s a people person. When he wants your attention, he’ll reach out and touch your arm, which I hate – it’s so annoying! – but it’s just him wanting to connect. When you talk to him, you have his undivided attention. He listens, he gets your story, he never forgets your name. It’s very endearing. And he has a very empathetic nature. Jon Lewis was a well-known photographer living in Kings Cross with a terrible form of dementia. We found him a place to live in Bondi and would help him dress in the morning and get him down to the pool. He’d follow Russell everywhere. When he passed in 2020, we spread his ashes in lane one.

Russell’s vainer than me: he’s fastidious about his clothing and he has a collection of badger-hair shaving brushes that are very important to him. And he’s into fragrance as well; this isn’t something I like.

Russell was a penurious actor who’d been in plays with people like Geoffrey Rush and David Wenham. And he was a founding member of the Castanet Club [a performance troupe that started in the 1980s in Newcastle]. He was flat broke when he went on Sale of the Century in 1993 and won the $142,000 jackpot. It saved him because he was able to afford his Bondi flat.

‘[Russell] was flat broke when he went on Sale of the Century in 1993 and won the $142,000 jackpot … He was able to afford his Bondi flat.’

Adrian Newstead

You’d think he’d be a polymath who’d thrash me in the Good Weekend Quiz. No, no, no. He’s not very good at science, whereas I have an agricultural science degree, and he’s not very good at geography except for knowing all the capital cities. I later found that he trained himself to press the Sale buzzer before anyone else.

He loves sport. When he won Sale of the Century, he took home a set of golf clubs and he’s still using them. He always beats me at golf. We usually play on a Thursday morning while the pool’s being cleaned and refilled.

He’s utterly devoted to his dog, Miranda. It got so lonely during COVID-19, it jumped off the f---ing first-floor veranda and broke its hip. Russell spent nearly $10,000 fixing it up and had to carry it up and down the stairs – and it’s not a light dog – three times a day so it could pee.

Russell is a Francophile. He went to the Lecoq School [of physical theatre in Paris] and studied performing. He’s into clowning. I hate clowns. I think they’re weird and mischievous and creepy. Can I picture him in clown make-up and the big shoes and everything? Yes, of course I can.

We spend the best part of every day together. He asked me, “Can you ever imagine a time when we won’t be able to do this?” I said, “No.” The fact that he goes down to swim at that time of day every morning encourages me to do it, too: we enable each other.

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