SIDNEY — It’s a place for swimmers, soakers, divers and future Marco Polo players to congregate. It’s where children learn to swim, teens get their first tan and aging parents relearn the basics of ocean swimming. And it’s a place where Sydney residents come to let off steam, get exercise and enjoy the company of friends.
The village of Sidney municipal pool opened to the public on July 6, drawing dozens of swimmers, young and old. It’s the city’s busiest season in 10 years, according to park staff. But the swimming pool isn’t always a safe haven. A police report filed on Wednesday alleges the filter building was vandalized overnight. The city will close the pool Wednesday and Thursday, park officials said.
It’s a familiar scene around the country, with a growing number of pools being vandalized or destroyed. And a recent study by Royal Life Saving found that in the next decade, many Australian community pools will need urgent upgrades to meet new health and safety requirements. The problem is especially acute in suburbs with aging suburbs, where rapid urban development means more families are moving from rural areas to densely populated suburban centres.
There are fewer than 100 rock pools left in Australia, and they’re a precious part of the nation’s heritage. These shallow, rocky enclaves — sometimes a few metres long, others 50m or more — were once the backbone of the country’s coastal swim culture. They are serene at low tide, choppy at high and often serve as a transition between land and sea, where people can test the waters before swimming in the bigger world beyond.
But in a world of cost blowouts and logistical nightmares, they are often the victims of political wrangling and a lack of governance. The Sydney rock pool project is one of the most notorious examples. It started in 2021, but the Covid pandemic, La Nina and other factors ate into construction days and a PricewaterhouseCoopers review last year predicted it would top $86m, far more than council’s original $28m budget.
But not all Sydneysiders agree with the mayor’s mayoral minute, which described the bloated vanity project as “a load of absolute bollocks”. A blogger who has dedicated her time to exploring the pools describes them as not only a swimming destination, but a social hub where people gather for movie nights in summer and to relax and release their stress in winter. They hold a ‘Dive In’ event to screen movies, and in winter they drain the pools and fill them with trout for a swimming-and-fishing experience.