Not Drowning, Waving.

Summer. Most Australians love it. It means long balmy evenings, late evening BBQ's and jovially boisterous drinks with family and friends, the sound of leather and willow colliding on cricket fields around the country. It's Christmas and New Years, holidays and relaxing, heading to the coast, lakes or local swimming pools to cool down after 30°-40°c days. It's part of what most Australians would say is one of the defining pieces of our national psyche. We love the water, we Aussies. We laud our Olympic swimming stars, we preach to kids the importance of water safety from a young age and start learning to swim from an even younger age. The water, be it the beach or the local swimming pool is one of our most treasured cultural icons for a relatively young country that is still finding it's culture and true identity. Yet this summer in my hometown of Ararat, something has been missing. Our outdoor swimming pool has been shut for the summer and is in danger of being lost for good.
Friday the 3rd of February was a typical late January/early February evening in Ararat, the weather had been in the mid to high 20°c range during the day, meaning that the evening was ripe to be enjoyed. There was the usual plethora of walkers, families enjoying picnic dinners at Alexandra Gardens by the lake, kids on their bikes making the most of the extended daylight hours. A few of the Ararat Eagles footballers were having a casual preseason kick around on Alexandra oval, where they were soon to be joined by around 1500 other people, located around the grand old Olver stand. These 1500, myself included, weren't there to watch the lads get into their preseason football routine however. We were there for one reason: to save our outdoor pool, to show a council who had let this Olympic sized swimming facility fall into decay that yes, we cared. To show community pride and spirit, a welcome sight in a town that is sometimes bogged down in the negativity of some of the residents.
As I walked around the oval with my friends Jon & Hanna, I ran into one of my oldest friends, Phil, and his young son Blade. We had the usual obligatory chit chat, how's work, were your holidays good, that sort of thing. I then said to Phil how great it was that he came down to support the cause. What he said next struck a cord in my mind. "How could I not? That pool was a part of our childhood, it helped make us who we are. I don't want my kids to miss out on some of the great experiences I had there."
I thought about Phil's words as we sat in the grandstand listening to the rally organizer speak. I had never thought like that before, the pool had always just been there and to be honest I hadn't swam there for years. My initial outrage was more based on the fact that the pool was a true community achievement, built in the 1950's by a big group of local volunteers (including my grandparents). It truly was a structure for the people by the people and upon completion was handed over and entrusted to the Ararat City Council, under the assurance that they would maintain the pool in good condition. It was something that the community should've been truly proud of. Did we, the citizens of Ararat, take it for granted? Perhaps. But we never thought we'd see a summer where the pool would be empty of water and closed indefinitely. I'm sure the original builders would never have imagined that would've happened either. Now however my mind was wandering not to my grandparents and the other people who got the pool built, but what it meant to me and my childhood/adolescence.
The more I thought about Phil's words, the more the memories came flooding back to me. My grandmother taking me to the pool when I was only very young, keeping a watchful eye on me as I splashed around the shallow end, not letting me back in the pool for half an hour after I'd eaten a icy pole on my break from the water. My cousins from Melbourne and I walking down on a hot summers day, change jingling in our pockets ready to cool down on a typically scorching January afternoon. It was swimming lessons every term one and term four right through school until about year ten. I was not/am not/will never be a strong swimmer, but being left out of the 'advanced' swimming group always stung me. As I grew older, it was heading to the pool with my friends during those awkward years between the ages of 12-14. We would swim sure, or perhaps try and get into the usually long line for the diving board, but more often than not it was our premium spot to sit under the trees on the grassy hills and chat about music, movies, school, tv and of course girls. It was where we would oh so awkwardly approach the girl we liked to ask out, or not go through with it because the public rejection in front of our peers and more importantly in front of the object of our affections and her friends would be like a form of social suicide. That didn't stop us from checking out the girls walking past though, stirring our adolescent hormones, especially when a woman who'd probably now be called a MILF would swim laps in her white bikini,it was like a late Christmas gift to a group of 15 year old boys! It was the site of my favorite high school day, our swimming sports in year 12. I didn't even enter the water,it was the carnival type atmosphere, we being in our final school year were allowed to have our stereos blasting out our music (a curious mix of punk, ska, metal, grunge, hip hop and electro. You could go from Propaghandi to The Prodigy to Reel Big Fish to Xzhibit in four songs) and to cook ourselves up a BBQ and dress as crazily as we liked. It summed up what the pool meant. It wasn't just a place to learn to swim or splash around on a hot summers day. It was our village green. It was our meeting place, where we could socialise out of our school uniforms and free from the constraints of bells, classes and teachers. It was part of what molded us into the people we became, good or bad. Many an important decision was made there over a can of coke and a bag of BBQ chips.
It was another summertime status quo that when daylight savings came, you could hear the excited chatter of the next batch of kids experiencing what we did, listening to the music blasting through the crackly old sound system that was in place, only interrupted by an occasional foreboding voice booming over the PA saying "you in the black shorts, out of the pool!" or something similar. But the pool is silent. Closed due not just the councils neglect, but also due to us taking it for granted. But we need the outdoor pool. We need it so that our kids can swim, flirt, socialise and grow just as we did. We need it so that the efforts of all those good men and woman of a bygone era's work for future generations wasn't in vain. We need it because all good communities need a place to socialise, excercise and watch the world go by. If we lose the pool, we'll be losing part of ourselves, part of the town spirit, part of the town history.
The pool must stay.