Public swimming pools are expensive but too important to lose | Peter Goers

It used to be a required activity for all Aussie kids. Now it’s for the rich and the poor are drowning, writes Peter Goers.

If you can swim, you never regret a swim. I swim therefore I am. I can’t wait to flop into the crystalline, chlorinated water of a swimming pool or walk into the briny, shiny sea.

Swimming is the only physical activity at which I’m proficient. I have a fear of moving balls coming towards me – contrary to popular belief.

These days I may do a few freestyle strokes but mainly I just bob around like a cork, wallow like a hippo and do the odd underwater somersault.

As we age our swims get shorter and our bathers get bigger. No man over 35 should wear budgie smugglers and nowadays my bathers are so modest they could’ve been designed by the Taliban.

We are an island nation – girt by sea and pissed by lunch – and we are a nation of swimmers. We are the most successful swimming nation in the world – competitively. We are daughters and sons of beaches.

Our lifesavers are the most revered and attractive Australians.

Teens jump of the jetty at Glenelg Beach during a hot day in Adelaide. Picture: AAP Image/Kelly Barnes

Most baby boomers were raised on beaches and in swimming pools as confident swimmers, surfers, jetty jumpers and we went brown as berries in the harsh sun, we had zinc cream noses and after a long day in the water our parents wrapped us lovingly in a fringed, striped Dickie’s beach towel as we sucked on a Bush Biscuit or a strawberry Snip and went home, tired and happy – to have our sunburn relieved by slices of tomato or calamine lotion.

Now our kids flail and fail in water.

My generation was shamed for a screw kick in breaststroke or if we swam overarm/freestyle/Australian crawl with our heads out of the water.

Most kids now have shockingly inept swimming strokes and skills – if they can swim at all. They thresh and thrash the water.

For many generations we had the brilliant Learn To Swim program (which I taught for 10 years) and every school-age child had two weeks of free swimming lessons every year all over the nation. No privatisation has ever done what it promised – cheaper and better.

VacSwim is privatised, shorter and charges kids.

Private swimming lessons are expensive, the schools’ beach programs are patchy and so we have an aquatic apartheid.

Poor kids are more likely to drown than rich kids.

Drowning rates have increased in recent years by 16 per cent.

Immigrant children are at particular risk and I salute the Surf Life Saving Association, Royal Life Saving Society and private organisations, such as Immanuel College, which subsidise swimming lessons for immigrant kids.

Public swimming pools are crucial. We seem to lose more of them than we get.

They are very expensive to run but essential. The exceptional Salisbury Council has built a glorious aquatic centre promptly, but the Payneham Pool has been closed for redevelopment since 2022 and won’t reopen until 2026.

Beach goers at the popular Glenelg beach. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ Roy VanDerVegt

The Mannum Pool (in a safe federal Liberal seat) has closed through lack of federal funding but the Noarlunga Aquatic Centre (in a less-safe federal Labor seat) will be redeveloped with $5m of federal funds.

Country towns often struggle to keep their pools financially afloat and yet their pools are beautiful and invaluable.

The best of which is the peerless Naracoorte Swimming Lake – one of my sacred sites. We need our public pools more than ever because of high-density living, increased population and increased need for exercise.

It’s almost impossible to use your phone or play computer games while swimming.

Make sure your kids can swim and swim properly and have good water skills and judgment. If they can tread water they will never drown.

We must all be able to rejoice in the life aquatic. To dive, swim, splash, gambol, bomb and even indulge in horseplay and thrill to the healing enjoyment of mastery over an alien element – water.

Support your local pools, go to the beach and swim between the flags.

Encourage and cherish the ability for everyone to enjoy the water safely and to share our eternal summers not drowning but waving.

Email:peter [e-mail] Follow @Busbygoers

Adelaide councillor Henry Davis. Picture: Supplied

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