Like many Australians, rivers, beaches, lakes, streams, ponds, billabongs, and weirs loom large in my most treasured childhood memories.

Even as an adult the pull of water is so strong I've taken to cold water swimming for the first time in my life. Getting pummelled by winter dumpers on the Newcastle coastline is much more enjoyable than it sounds, I promise.

I was in Canberra a few weeks ago, working on a story for Voice of Real Australia's new podcast, and I found myself on the banks of Lake Burley-Griffin, which is where many of my earliest aquatic adventures took place.

If you wander past the yacht club and down a dusty single track, after a short while you'll come to the rope swing. Summer days in Canberra are usually still, and the windless air hangs heavy on your body.

The swing is looped around the branch of a vast, wizened old gumtree, sagging with age. The bank rises quite sharply, but the best launch pad is still a couple of metres from the water. That's the nervy part - if you slip, you fall onto the rocks and exposed roots. Best avoided.

I never did fall badly, and I never met anyone who did, but there were always myths and legends - the kind that spring up on the shores of waterways around the world - of the hideous, career ending injuries inflicted upon those who'd come before.

It was not a silent, airless summer day when I was in Canberra. It was howling with a frigid winter wind, and the grey, threatening sky meant we didn't stay out long. But I've moved away now and may never swing again (we didn't swing that day), and it was nice to think for a moment about how that lake and that swing will figure into the memories of all the kids and teenagers who've come before and since my time in the sun.

Back a bit closer to my new home in Newcastle, and while working on a different story, I spoke to a resident of Lake Macquarie who said she'd never let her grandkids swim in the lake.

Like me, Lee Rogers' childhood took place mostly in the water - swimming, boating and fishing on the lake. But now she knows too much, she said.

She was at the lake that day, not reeling in 'the big one', or checking the rigging on her sail boat, but testing the water for heavy metals her and other locals fear could have leached from the nearby coal-fired power station.

As far as Australian stories go, that one is achingly sad. Our entire narrative as a country is centred on water. What would you do if that inheritance evaporated?

Our Voice of Real Australia podcast launches today. To find out more on the issues around coal-fired power and Lake Macquarie, listen below or subscribe on Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast app. Voice of Real Australia's Podcast will bring together people, stories, and ideas from around the country.

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