By Alan Attwood
First published in The Age on October 14, 1994
Doing the backstroke down Fitzroy Pool’s memory lane
After the last of the laps I’d try a few dives off the board, wet feet splatting on the steps going up. And then down, down into the water, grey in the fading light, to breaststroke along the bottom and surface near the ladder at the side. I’d cling on to the top rung, water dripping from my hair, watching the guys from the office get ready to close up. I loved the way they coiled the hoses in concentric circles, like a snake waiting for the sun.
The Fitzroy pool in 2017.Credit: Gary LaPersonne
Outside I’d unchain the bike from a parking meter on Alexandra Parade, with all its traffic flowing off the freeway, and cycle up the Princes Street hill into Carlton. Then round the south end of the cemetery and swoop down Gatehouse Street past the kids’ hospital. By the time I was back home in North Melbourne, my hair would be dry again.
This was more than 10 years ago. I was younger and fitter and sillier then. To ride to Fitzroy and back made little sense. The North Melbourne pool, next to the Arden Street ground where the Kangaroos still played home games in winter, was closer. So were the City Baths, which were also warmer. But I’d go to the Fitzroy Pool, which the new mega-council now wants to close, shutting the gates on a piece of my past.
Fitzroy residents vented their feelings when they gathered in the emptied pool in 1994 to protest its planned closure.Credit: Michael Clayton Jones
I’d go to the Fitzroy Pool late in the evening, getting on towards nine, giving thanks for daylight saving. Often I’d be the only one there.
Eighteen, 19, 20 – arms heavy as lead before a few laps, never more than a few, when it all felt effortless.
It was the only full-size pool I knew of in the area. The North pool, the City Baths, the Carlton pool off Rathdowne Street – all of them were just play pools. Places to go on inner-suburban sunny days to splash about a bit, meet friends or just sit on a towel spilling sauce from the sausage roll on the paperback novel you were reading.
But Fitzroy was a serious pool. A swimmer’s swimming pool. The water unheated. You gasped when you first got in but once you got moving just felt wonderfully alive. The old bloke who looked after Fitzroy was proud of his water. You’d see him testing it with his little bottles and gauges. You could swim without goggles without a problem.
From the outside, it looked like nothing much. Bare brick. Nothing to soften the facade. Anyone who never did more than pass in one of the thousands of cars going by every day would never have guessed what lay beyond the brick: the big pool; the board; the Aqua Profonda sign at the deep end made famous in Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip; the bit of grass at the other end where the Greek and Italian grannies, fully clothed, gathered on the hot summer afternoons to keep count of screaming, splashing kids.
Fitzroy swimming pool, 1981.Credit: Peter Mayho
It was an unpretentious crowd. Beautiful people were seldom seen.
Nobody sniggered at daggy, baggy bathers; nobody seemed to be going to gyms or working on tans. The setting made the place more special. Near the freeway, a tram-ride from the city, with the factories of Fitzroy and Collingwood just a few blocks away, you could stand with your feet in cold water and look up at the perfect blue sky and pretend you were anywhere at all.
I haven’t been there for years. I shifted across town. Swapped chlorine for salt. I had no idea that the Fitzroy Pool is now part of a fitness centre. Maybe the old guys in the office have gone; perhaps the water is heated.
When I heard news of the old pool’s impending closure I remembered all those late-evening laps – finishing with a bit of wayward backstroke, water splashing in the eyes – and then I thought about seasons.
There was something I’d try to do every year. Have the last swim of summer. Seemed like it all happened at once: daylight saving ended; summer became autumn; the pool closed for seven months or so. It was part of the year’s cycle. You tossed the togs in a drawer and hunted out tennis shoes.
There was never a last time; a leave-taking. I moved and never went back. But I understand why the local residents are upset. Pool people are protective – of their lanes, their lifestyle. And it’s another kick in the guts for Fitzroy: the footy team’s gone; the local council is gone; now the pool is going.
The City of Fitzroy is the City of Yarra. Perhaps that’s where the pool people should go. The Yarra. Because it will be harder to get a swim in the city.
Editor’s note: The Fitzroy pool was saved from demolition by community action in 1994.
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