There's 250 lakes in Stedania,
of significance, meaning that they're of interest historically,
or they've got legends, or, you know, they're of interesting depth or size.
I'm currently on an exploration or an adventure to try and swim all of them.
My name's Sylvia Rickman-Paul.
I live in Canberra, Stedania National Park, and I'm an artist.
I've come up in the mountains today because I enjoy wild swimming.
It kind of gives you a real clarity of thought and just, I don't know,
makes you feel really refreshed afterwards.
So far, I've swam 68.
That's taken about a year, so I mean, they're quite far to get into,
so sometimes it takes me a day to walk up to them.
So yeah, I think it's going to be a long time doing them.
I go out wild swimming pretty much every day.
My favourite lake so far has been Glinda Adi, which is on Snowdon.
It's my favourite lake because the colour of the water is just a beautiful kind of azure blue.
It's depth, it's, oh, it's really hard to describe.
It has like an empty nothingness below the surface,
which is something that I crave in swimming.
I mean, I'm married to a climber and a mountaineer,
so before the mountains were about going up to the summits,
although they were about climbing pieces of rock,
but now I have little interest really in going to the summit of anything.
For me, I've discovered a whole new part of the mountains
and that's about going in and discovering the lakes
and it's taken me to totally new areas of the mountains
and that's that whole exploring thing, it's new
and it's, yeah, discovering the mountains for a totally different reason.
I think I'd really like to explore one lake, you know,
maybe over a long period of time and see how that changes.
I mean, I live really close to Climberdan
and I'd really like to explore that over a longer period of time.
So, you know, maybe repeatedly swimming in it every day,
just to almost document how it changes, I think that would be really interesting.
I mean, swimming used to be purely for fitness
and now it's really just for being creative and that exploration and documentation now,
which, yeah, I kind of prefer.
There's nothing better than kicking back in the middle of a lake
and being totally alone, you know, it's not just below the surface
but it's being above the surface as well
and knowing that you're the only person that's out there,
you know, surrounded by the massive mountains
is just an incredible feeling.
