Bling Bling, Great Barrier Reef Masters Games 2025

Report by Kylie Lane, President & Caz Makin, Publicity Officer

The 2025 Great Barrier Reef Masters Games were held from 29 May – 1 June 2025 at the Tobruk Memorial Pool in Cairns, Queensland, attracting around 220 swimmers and over 30 volunteers. In its seventh edition, the GBRMG is held every two years and is popular amongst masters-aged athletes from around Australia and overseas.

A total of nine women from our club (Ann, Brenda, Catherine, Caz, Donna, Katrina, Kris, Kylie, Liz) let their hair down to attend this fun and relaxed event hosted by Masters Swimming Queensland.

A total of 141 individual GBRMG records were broken, including some that were set for the very first time in specific age groups for those strokes/distances. These included the 45-49 200m and 400m Butterfly by Kylie and the 65-69 400m Backstroke by Liz.

Our ‘endurance’ swimmers broke some existing records or set brand new club records: Brenda: 75-79 age group: six existing records and one new record. Katrina: 55-59 age group: 400m Breaststroke, 400m Backstroke; Kris: 60-64 age group: 200m Backstroke.

We had two women’s relay teams in both the 4x50m Medley and 4x50m Freestyle events. The ‘young guns’ team (Katrina, Kylie, Kris, Ann) managed to secure 3rd place in both events, seeing Ann in a nail-biting finish in the medley relay. The ‘old guns’ team (Brenda, Catherine, Donna, Liz) placed 5th in the Medley relay and 3rd in the Freestyle relay. Caz, who wasn’t included in the club relay teams, offered her sprinty services to some other ‘rando’ teams instead.

Our “medal man” Pete, volunteered his time over the three days at the medal table, where he handed out a staggering number of medals to the Tuggernaong swimmers who completed 72 swims, which produced a total of 40 individual medals: 11 Gold, 22 Silver, 7 Bronze, plus 3 relay bronze.

With 577 points, we came 1st from 40 clubs in the women’s overall point score and 5th from 52 clubs men and women combined.