10/03/2026
This year's U24 saw some wonderful stories of love played out. Stories that showed love in all its myriad guises.
Here's another one....
A Journey That Comes Full Circle
In 1941, at just seventeen years of age, my father enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy from Fremantle, Western Australia. He was soon posted to the Pacific Fleet, serving aboard HMAS Launceston, a minesweeper that sailed the South China Sea during some of the most challenging years of the war. Those experiences shaped his resilience, his discipline, and his deep sense of duty.
While on leave in Williamstown, he met the woman who would become my mother. Their connection was immediate and enduring. After the war ended, they married and made Williamstown their home. Although he had been born and raised in Western Australia, he never returned there to live. Instead, he built his life in Victoria, travelling back west only occasionally for work and to visit his beloved mother and sister.
Fast‑forward eighty‑five years, and life has woven an unexpected but heartwarming thread back to his beginnings. My third cousin Olivia, from Western Australia, has entered the 2026 U24 swim. She has travelled to Melbourne with her mother Gia (my second cousin) and her grandmother Lyn my first cousin and the daughter of my father’s sister Elaine. Olivia’s partner Jordan, who will be her paddler, is also with them.
For the first time in decades, branches of my Western Australian family are together again in Melbourne. They are spending a few days sightseeing, sharing stories, and reconnecting with relatives at a reunion that feels like a gentle echo of the journey my father made all those years ago.
In a way, their visit closes a long, quiet circle: from Fremantle to Williamstown, from wartime service to family legacy, from the past to the present. All thanks to the U24 swim.
It’s a reminder that family lines may stretch across states and generations, but they never truly break.
Rod Seeber
