‘Water baby’ Wanda Mackay was born and brought up in Cromarty. Since 2002 she has been the town’s Youth Development Worker.

I learnt to swim when I was three or four, in Fishertown where I was born and grew up – at Tigh na Mara – where Uncle Peter (Wilkinson) lives now. We lived there until I was about six, and Betty (Hourston) who lived just along the road, taught me. I suppose that would be round about the mid 1970s. I don’t remember much about it, but I think it was just like she told you. She would hold me floating until I had the confidence to just do it myself.

I asked my mum about it. She said as a child I loved water from the very start. Whenever we visited any of my aunts they would put me in a basin or in the sink because I was full of devilment. I was fascinated with the water. I once put my Auntie’s good watch down the toilet and flushed it. I tried to tell her: I kept saying, “clocko, clocko”. My mum told me, whenever there was a blink of sun, I would be down to the sea and Betty would have me in the water. Betty would be in her mid-fifties. My dad used to put me in a dinghy and pull me along with a string from the beach.

When we moved to Bayview Crescent, I’d go down in front of the house where there’s a stone bit with an iron in it: a hoop or something, where an old anchor was. You could stand on this stone, the tide coming below your feet quick and stay there a bit longer till the water came over you. I’d spend all winter down there, playing, skimming stones, and in the summer I would be swimming every day. I still do. I did all the strokes when I was young. I do the breast stroke now, though I can still do all the others. I’m a strong swimmer. Still go to the pool at Dingwall, three to five times a week and do a mile every time I go. Of course I take my son Connor with me. That’s why he’s doing so well and he’s only eight. He’s been taking lessons since he was four. Last week he completed 24 lengths. Next week he’s doing his assessment for his half mile. He’s not yet as confident in the sea as I was at his age, but he’s getting there. I’m still swimming in the sea a fair distance out, regularly, from the harbour, out past the yachts and back. I did that several times this summer, leaving Connor with my mum.

At Cromarty Primary School we did lessons every year. I swam with the Brownies, with the Girls Brigade and the Boys Brigade. Any opportunity there was for swimming, I took it. In the summer when I came home from school, I would be straight into the water. When I was older at the Academy, I would come home and go straight for a swim before going to work at the Royal (Hotel). My mother would make me stand outside the back door in a basin of water because you were covered in sand.

Whatever it is about me, I don’t feel the water cold. I’ve swum from Cromarty to Nigg, and that’s one time I did feel a bit cold, in the middle there. When I go canoeing and canyoning with the young people, I will see them coming out cold after a couple of hours, with white lips, quivering, and I’m fine. I can be in the water for five hours and not feel it.

Why did I swim from Cromarty to Nigg? Because Sid (Maclean) had done it. Sid and his brother Ali Maclean had. I’m sure Rory Gunn swam it with me one of the times. We were young. We were told Sid had done it, so we wanted to do it. I did it just in a swimsuit – no vest, no wetsuit, no flippers. Took me two, two and a half hours. I was maybe thirteen or fourteen. There’d be a boat or two round you, in case you got cramp and they needed to haul you out. At the other side, to warm up? Sweeties and crisps. You don’t think about hot drinks when you’re a child.

I did the raft races, where you built your own raft, in the regattas. There’d be hundreds of people down by the seafront then.

Jim and Kate Jack ran the youth club when I was in my teens, and they organised the canoeing in the sea then. There were no child protection or safety laws that we have now, and so you didn’t have to have a powerboat out in the water. Aye, there’d be lifejackets. I couldn’t guarantee all of us could swim, but they didn’t care as long as we had lifejackets. We would take out twelve canoes and they would make twelve of us raft together and you’d play tig. And then of course everybody would tip over the canoes and you’d all fall in. That was our favourite activity. Then there’d be canoeing right round the harbour and into the bay opposite Bayview Crescent.

Later on, I can mind water-skiing from the harbour. There was two guys came over from Invergordon who would whisk us around.

They were lively days at the Royal when I worked there, from the age of 12 till 21, 22. Then there was the fishermen bringing catches into the harbour. At the Royal, the men gave us fish and we gave them beer. It wasn’t a money deal, ever. They’d have tabs for up to £20, £30. It was their dinner and their drink for the fish, which is why the hotel always had fish. Locally, it was Sid and ‘Ginga’ and ‘Totter’ that supplied everyone with fish: salmon, crabs, lobsters, many years ago before they all got caught with their nets and things tightened up.

I remember the time when all the fish was washed up on the beach which had broken loose from the fish farm. We took all the fish and sold it to the hotels in Inverness. Even the younger ones, we went after the fish. Bruce Watson, me and someone else got chased by the baillies one night out the Shore road. They got my dinghy. My own brother when he was younger used to catch lobsters, one for himself and one for the hotel.

I love salmon, lobster, crab, whelks, mussels. Christopher, my partner, says that’s a Cromarty thing because he’s not such a seafood lover and nor is my mum. My dad would get up and fry fish for his breakfast, as does Sid: mackerel, trout, the whole lot. Connor loves to go fishing with his dad when he comes home at weekends. He wrote quite a nice story about that for Cromarty Primary School. Mackerel and ‘twiddlies’. When he catches something, his dad has to eat it.

My dad Kenneth, you know, ‘Totter’, many years ago worked at Nigg. One night it was the October holidays and he and the rest of his squad were working overtime. They clocked off at eight o’clock and went to the local pub, ‘The Piggery’, until the back-shift finished. I guess it would be about three in the morning. There was a new boat collecting them that night in the harbour. Dad went on it – obviously they were all drunk – it was narrower at the bow, and dad just slipped off there, right into the water. He can’t swim. This was October and the water was baltic. He went down and came up and down a second time. The third time he went down, he didn’t think he was coming up and Brian Morrison dived in and saved his life. Later on, at Brian’s silver anniversary, my dad got up and made a speech and said he was only there because of Brian.

Aye there were times when I was growing up, risking my own life without even thinking about it. Like when I was 18 or 19, on a Friday night in The Royal, when I’d be drunk and everybody used to dare me to dive off from the tin shed, swim to the harbour beach and I would – fully-dressed, drunk, no lights or nothing out there! People would buy me a drink if I’d do it, and then when everybody had bought me one, I’d go and do it. It happened regularly. I love doing things which have an element of danger to them. The things that we used to do in The Royal and the Legion, all the time. Because I’d swum the harbour for so many years, so many times, all day every day, you know, I’ve absolutely no fear there whatsoever. When we go abroad, I’ll swim in any water: Antigua, Egypt – this year we’re going to Cuba. They’re all places I can get out swimming and the sea is always like a warm bath compared to Cromarty.

The Youth Club

The children of Cromarty, I believe, are so good at water-based activities because any child of Cromarty will take to the water at any opportunity from an early age. I work with children from other areas that are nowhere near as confident in the water. Canyoning is very extreme. I took 12 young people canyoning in the Meag Gorge, and I said, “only gladiators need apply.” You’ve got to be super-confident, because there’s rocks you’ve got to slide down, and jump into really, really fierce water, then you’ve got to swim aggressively to get yourself out of it, climb out and up at different bits. Kimberley, Katie, Catriona, Corrie, James, Chris, Calum, Gavin, Jordan, they were all gladiators. We have a full summer programme every year, a lot of challenge and opportunity. We abseiled down the Corrie Falls at Cannich.  Shiona and Fraser were petrified but they still did it, and we’ve done two-day and five-day canoeing expeditions.

I have about 40 members of the club at the moment, mostly 11 to 16, sometimes up to 18, and some of them come back as volunteers. We have a junior youth café as well.

I’m chasing funding all the time for the activities, helmets, safety equipment and all the rest of it. The summer programme costs about £12,000 altogether this year. There’s football and a lot of indoor sports and activities as well, but always half the expenditure goes on water-based activities. Every child between 4 and 18 gets an opportunity for something. Cromarty Action for Young People is a registered charity, and my part of it is working with teenagers and community-based work, trying to pull the generations together.

What’s so special about the harbour for the kids? They’re all together, know each other from school and the youth café and they go home, get their swimsuits and go straight there. There’s the boats that you’re not supposed to climb on, but you do. I remember me and Rory once dived off after a small wooden paddle boat which broke loose from its mooring and pulled it back into the harbour. Last summer (2006) there was the harbour jumps with the children all going in, thrown in inside the fish boxes, which was a stunt for the BBC Restoration Village programme about Cromarty and the East Church. It’s what you do. It’s almost bred into you. It is, it really is. You see a patch of sun and you want to be in the water.

When I feel totally stressed out, say, after a long hard week, I go for a swim, do my mile and the water’s so good, I come out so refreshed, re-energised. Sparkling, yeah.

« Back to full list of interviewees