Pool Battles: Save Sunshine Pool

Photo from Save Sunshine pool

The Sunshine community in Melbourne lost their 50 m Olympic pool and had it replaced by a 25 m outdoor pool and indoor leisure pool.

The Save Sunshine Pool lobby maintains a website at www.savesunshinepool.com

Sunshine is in an area with one of the highest youth populations, and least swimming facilities in Victoria.

The following transcript is from a 2006 ABC Radio program

Suburban pools running dry
Tuesday, 11 July 2006

Reporter: (Online) Florenz Ronn

Presenter: Jon Faine


The Sunshine pool has been out of use for a number of years.

Lovely lazy hours by the local swimming pool might become a thing of the past around some suburbs in Melbourne. It’s the middle of winter, but the heat is currently on at two suburban pools. There are even some splashes of colour and a sprinkling of activity surrounding the two latest pool controversies.

If you happen to be driving around Oakleigh, you’re likely to see a lot of blue plastic bags and ribbons tied to fences, letterboxes and shopfronts, as a sign of support for keeping their pool. A 24-hour picket is currently operating at the Sunshine pool in protest of its council’s decision to cancel the proposed redevelopment of their Swim and Leisure centre.

Over the years, some suburban pools have been allowed to deteriorate to the point, where it is now claimed that they are unhealthy and uneconomical to repair. But if no money is spent on infrastructure, then it becomes expensive to maintain, after which time it’s not economically viable.

The Monash Council has recently voted in favour of closing their ageing Oakleigh pool and re-developing the site. Oakleigh is part of the Monash Council and the Oakleigh residents claim that the Monash Council is too Waverley centric, which has lead to the colourful, if unusual, display. And across the other side of Melbourne, the Brimbank Council is to demolish the outdoor pools in Sunshine.

When 774’s Jon Faine suggested to the spokesperson for the pool action group in Sunshine, John Hedditch, that it was a matter of money, he agreed, adding that: "I think it is money, but it’s also to do with culture and attitude. This community has got sixty per cent of its people on low income and petrol prices are through the roof, people are working, they haven’t got the time. School kids can’t get on trains and buses and travel to all these out of area pools to have a swim after school. These pools aren’t deep enough for our teenagers or our schools. We haven’t had a school carnival here for fifteen years."

Melbourne has seen several battles over swimming pools over recent years. In North Melbourne, Fitzroy, Oakleigh, Footscray, and now in Sunshine, ratepayers are saying that they value the community pools far more than Councillors seem to realise. Pakenham have just saved their 50 metre outdoor pool. "You don’t have to be Einstein to work out the community wants the pool open, it’s our job to open it," one Packenham Councillor has been quoted as saying.

"If you don’t provide community infrastructure and give kids something to do, it’s not surprising that they get up to all sorts of mischief. There’s a link and our council (Brimbank) just doesn’t get it," concludes John Hedditch.
In Oakleigh, for example, pool supporters say that their pool is the only place where teenagers can go in the summer - apart from Chadstone Shopping Centre. The group protesting the Sunshine pool closure quotes the affect it has on local businesses. The outdoor pool was once a summer bonanza for local businesses.

"When we are continually being warned about obesity in our children, I find it hard to believe that access to the wonderful exercise of swimming is being limited by the closure of public pools," commented one of our listeners. Another perceives more political reasons, saying that: "I can't help but think that the changes made to local government by the Kennett government are now literally changing the makeup of many local communities."

Pool battles: Fitzroy Baths

Photo 2010 by John Pratt

"There is nothing more democratic than the public swimming pool."

- Annette Kellerman, Australian swimmer whose life was immortalised by Esther Williams in the film Million Dollar Mermaid.

Under the Kennett government in Victoria, many public facilities wrre closed as cost-saving measures. Fitzroy Baths, which featured in a reasonably iconic Australian novel, Monkey Grip, by Helen Garner, was one thing which was saved from closure by a determined community campaign.

There was an ABC Background Briefing radio program about it. You can read the transcript here.

The opening of Fitzroy Baths, 1908, from Pictures Australia

Hotel pools Part 1 :Melbourne

From time to time I'm lucky enough to stay in hotels with really nice swimming pools.

OK, I admit it: I seek out hotels with great pools.

Here's a selection of some of the best, starting in Melbourne.

Crown Metropol, Melbourne

This wins, hands down "best rooftop" AND "best indoor" pool. It's light, airy, with great views. Who would have thought a rooftop city pool could be so glamorous, yet a proper, full 25 metres for some serious exercise.



Park Hyatt, Melbourne

Until I met the Crown Metropol, this one had my "best indoor hotel pool" award. I love the aesthetics, the Roman pool feel, and also that's it's a full 25 metres, so a real pool, for real exercise swimming. Open til late, and early, the perfect attending-a-meeting availability.



Melbourne Short Stay Apartments

Pretty good indoor pool here too.






When he was seven or eight, Ben thought the pool at the Saville Suites was pretty good!

Pool cards : Melbourne Olympic swimming stadium

This one is cheating a bit. Not really a postcard. It's a swap card. Mum saw Dawn Fraser winning a gold medal here at the 1956 Olympics.

From Wikipedia: This pool was the first fully indoor Olympic swimming venue in an Olympic Games and is the only major stadium structure from the 1956 Olympic Games with the facade intact. It is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.

After redevelopment in the 1980s, the venue became the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Centre and later The Glass House.

The luxury vehicle manufacturer Lexus bought the naming right to the venue in 2004; as the Lexus Centre, it no longer served as a public stadium, instead being used by the Victorian Institute of Sport and the Collingwood Football Club as a sports administration and training facility.

On 21 November 2009, Collingwood Football Club announced publicly on the official AFL website that Lexus would no longer continue to maintain the rights of naming the centre. Lexus announced in a statement that "the branding exercise had achieved its marketing objectives and was no longer a priority in its marketing strategy", hence ending a six year naming rights deal between Lexus and Collingwood.
In March, 2010, Collingwood announced that Westpac bank was the new naming rights sponsor of the centre.

Helen Pitt - They never told me ... I wasn't a champion (Sydney Morning Herald 12 Jan 2011)

Above: My Safe Swimmer Certificate, 1967. Seemingly lost are my "Intermediate Star" and "bronze Medallion" awards!



The following piece appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald's Summer section on Wed 12 January 2011. I couldn't find it on-line to link to, so quote it in full here.

I love this article because I identify with a few points in it:

• Though I never swam competitively, I have had a lifelong love of swimming, since I stood a little way off from kids who were being taught in private lseesons at the local pool, and followed what they did and taught myself
• I too see swimming as "therapy' and swim through all sorts of emotional turmoil. It clears the mind in a meditative way and sometimes a solution will find its way into my head
• I had parents who never believed in limiting their daughters and encouraged their every endeavour. There was no sense of girls being limited in my house!

They never told me. . . I wasn't a champion

by Helen Pitt

"Like many Sydneysiders, Olympic swimming coach Forbes Carlile taught me to swim. One whiff of a heated, chlorinated pool today takes me immediately back to the indoor pool in the backyard of his Ryde home, where he and his wife, Ursula, taught legions of us tadpoles, dolphins and turtles to master our strokes. He's of course best known for his star student, Shane Gould - whom he coached to triple Olympic gold medal status and who is the only person to hold the world record in all freestyle distances from 100 metres to 1500 metres. I doubt he'd even remember but I remember him and his shock of jet-black hair following us up and down the pool. My Carlile-endorsed two laps of dog paddle certificate took pride of place on my bedroom noticeboard for many years.

Thanks to the benefit of a backyard pool, swimming became my favourite sport - the only one I was ever any good at. I made it to the area and district school finals in freestyle and breaststroke on several occasions. Not only did it become my sport; swimming became my preferred form of therapy. There's no sadness I haven't been able to swim myself out of; there was no homesickness a few laps of Australian crawl wasn't able to cure during the many years I lived outside this country.

As the big man of swimming, Mr Carlile, who turns 90 this year, said, 'to swim well is an asset for life." It's an asset that has certainly served me well.

But he also said something on our last day of swimming lessons that I didn't hear. I must have been barely six. As I was getting out of the pool, he gave a deep sigh and said to my mother: "Take her home - she's as good as she's ever going to get."

My mother never told me this. She wasn't going to let my swimming career be eclipsed by his dire predictions. Instead, she let me loose on the backyad swimming pool, cheered me on at every swimming carnival and packed our tiny Morris Mini Minor with other young swimmers to go to swim meets all over Sydney where we could compete and display our prowess. I've often wondered if she did this to spite him, though I doubt it. She was just never a woman who was going to let her daughter be told anything that was in any way self-limiting or had the words "this is as good as you are ver going to get."

It wasn't until I hit my 40s and had a lifetime of swimmign cerificates to vouch for my competence in the pool that my mum told me what Mr Carlile had said. Frankly I was shocked and glad I didn't know at the time. I have often thought to write to him tell him he was wrong: I did become a better swimmer.

I don't blame him, though. I was probably pretty hopeless when he trained me. I've come to see this story as less of a random comment, or maybe, a joke from an exhausted swim coach and more a parable on parenting: don't necessarily let the experts tell you about the talents of your child; instead, stand back and let them show you. And never underestimate the power of finding something you love and practising to improve. Which is how it's been for me and swimming; it's been one of the most enduring love affairs of my life.

As I watch my mother slip into an Alzheimic fog, forgetting names, dates, places and people, I know there are many things she'll never be able to tell me now. But I've become grateful for the things she purposedly never told me. Sometimes, being a good parent is about the things you don't tell your children. "

Below: Malvern Baths in 1927. Little changed 40 years later when I earned the Safe Swimming Certificate there.

Below: Mum would sit on this grass or one of these benches when I was very young - 4, 5 - cavorting in the water. Later, by the time I was 8 or 9 I was going to the pool with my friends on our own. As the best swimmer, I was often "in charge".

Caulfield Swim Centre, Melbourne

I used to swim here sometimes when I was a child. When I visited in October 2006, it was being readied for summer. One of the few pools I know which still has a diving pool and boards. Most have been removed for safety, or rather fear of litigation, reasons.

Melbourne Short Stay Apartments

A very attractive pool and outside area.
Shower and toilet area off the pool entrance (from the gym area - you can also get in from the outside)

A grey and rainy day, so a major attraction is the fact that it is enclosed.
View from the outside area.

Good for a hotel / short stay pool (although there are permanents living in the apartments as well). OK for lapping in with the usual proviso of kids and families, and it gets very choppy. Full marks for being indoor, and therefore all-weather. There's a small shower/toilet area (only one person at a time can use it) , and a gym

St Kilda Sea Baths

Unfortunately I didn't have time to stop for a swim, but both the pool and cafe looked fantastically inviting.

Website
More info: Swimmers Guide
Category: Public (but pricey for casual vistors) - Sea water

Melbourne City Baths

These beautiful Edwardian Baths started off as public baths (for bathing) and urinals. After dereliction, and closure in 1899 they were re-designed and re-opened, including two swimming pools, in March 1904. Men and women had separate entrances (the signs are still seen on the facade), and there were first class baths upstairs, and second class in the basement.

There were also Turkish and vapour baths, a Jewish ceremonial bath - Mikvah bath and a laundry.

Mixed bathing was introduced in 1947.

In the 1980s, in disrepair, they were nearly closed, but were saved in 1983 by a public campaign and $4 million refurbishment.





More information: Website; Centenary Celebrations; Swimmers Guide Category: Public