Ocean swimming... with Brendan Cullen

Brendan Cullen is training to swim the English channel (smh.com.au/national/nsw/broken-hill-sheep-farmer-trains-to-swim-the-english-channel-20200330-p54f6r.html) , but what makes his journey exceptional is that he is a sheep farmer from Kars Station, east of Broken Hill in NSW, and is about 350 km from the nearest coastline. Four mornings a week, Brendan swims in the murky waters of Lake Pamamaroo and Lake Copi Hollow in the Menindee Lakes, where he can't typically see more than 20 centimetres in front of his face (video (dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/brendan-cullen-trains-to-swim-the-english-channel/video/64f2df2a457ab5d49b061b9119be152d) ). And there's not a lot of open water in the desert!

Brendan already has some major swimming achievements under his belt, such as swimming for 8 hours non-stop (facebook.com/watch) , and he an ambassador for lifeline (nswfarmers.org.au/NSWFA/Posts/The_Farmer/Community/Broken_Hill_farmer_helps_turn_the_tide_on_mental_health.aspx) , raising awareness and money for mental health.

Songs in this episode - all licensed under a Creative Commons License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) :

• Broken - dikomm (soundcloud.com/dikomm/broken)

• Hill - Valance (soundcloud.com/realvalance/hill)

• Broken - Mind Over Mayhem (soundcloud.com/mindovermayhem/broken)

• Hill - Damien Bronieki (soundcloud.com/dmk_prod/hill)

• Broken - trifonic (soundcloud.com/trifonic/broken)

• Sapphire - Tobu (soundcloud.com/7obu)

Image from Jacinta Cullen / smh (smh.com.au/national/nsw/broken-hill-sheep-farmer-trains-to-swim-the-english-channel-20200330-p54f6r.html) .