By JESSE GRAHAM
THE ISSUE of Healesville Indoor Pool’s financial struggle has motivated residents, with an action group forming and lengthy letters being sent in search of a solution.
Healesville resident Liz Patterson sent the Mail a 1600-word letter last week, discussing the benefits of the Jack Hort Memorial Pool and the need to keep it open to the public until a new facility is built.
Ms Patterson’s letter follows recent headlines about the 24-year-old pool, which could see its doors close in the next 12 months due to rising maintenance costs and a $50,000 deficit.
In her letter, Ms Patterson urges the buck-passing to stop, and for the community and the Yarra Ranges Council to collaborate on a solution.
She wrote that, when she moved to town eight years ago, she taught lessons at the pool, and that swimmers came from far and wide to experience Healesville’s heated pool.
“My students came from as far as Gruyere, Yarra Glen, Castella and Narbethong,” she wrote.
“When the pool still opened at 6am on three mornings a week, there was a group of women who would drive from Kinglake to swim before heading to work.
“Two were battling their weight and one had chronic pain. The pool can no longer afford to open early, and I often wonder if they still swim.”
Ms Patterson said that, despite the pool “running on a shoestring” and going to “rack and ruin” cosmetically, the staff had maintained high standards when it came to water quality, hygiene and service.
She wrote that the current issue of the pool was an issue of “health, well-being and social justice”, and said the expectation of the high school footing the bills of the pool should stop.
Meanwhile, residents angered by the cuts to hours at the pool have been working to form an action group, with many people “ropeable”, according to Healesville’s Helen Campbell-Drury.
Ms Drury said the aim of the group, and her aim personally, was to help get the pool back open seven days a week, to its original hours, until a new aquatics centre opens.
Healesville Pool Manager Ross Ilsley told the Mail last week that the pool, despite its cuts, had had a large attendance over the recent weeks, with 300 visitors each weekday – including school groups – and between 70-90 visitors on Saturday mornings.
“Unfortunately, this won’t last as the weather cools down,” he wrote in an email.
To read Ms Patterson’s letter in its entirety, see below:
An open letter to the Yarra Ranges Shire Council & the Healesville Community
By Liz Patterson
THE buck passing about Healesville’s indoor pool needs to stop and a solution needs to be found. The issue is one of access and equity, and the Yarra Ranges Shire Council needs to take responsibility for its citizens’ health and wellbeing.
Yes, Mark Varmalis (Shire Council, quoted in Mountain Views Mail, 21 January), the Jack Hort Memorial Pool is and has been Healesville High School’s responsibility. It was built thanks to community and Rotary Club fundraising in the 1980s and has been kept afloat by the high school ever since. But in that time it has served the entire community, not just the high school and, as such, has come to be regarded in popular opinion as a shire facility.
A new indoor aquatic facility in Healesville sounds wonderful. The Jack Hort Memorial Pool staff and patrons alike would welcome a new and improved pool. But until that is a reality, the Yarra Ranges Shire Council should be stepping up and ensuring that the facility that’s given them an almost free ride for 25 years is repaired and adequately maintained.
Adverse possession laws allow you to claim land you have occupied for less than half that time. Surely the Council owes an ‘adverse debt’ of gratitude to a facility that has continuously and uninterruptedly been regarded and used as a town facility?
The diverse population using Healesville’s indoor pool comes from well beyond our town. When I moved to Healesville in 2006 I taught swimming at the pool, and my students came from as far as Gruyere, Yarra Glen, Castella and Narbethong. When the pool still opened at 6am on three mornings a week, there was a group of women who would drive from Kinglake to swim before heading to work. Two were battling their weight and one had chronic pain. The pool can no longer afford to open early, and I often wonder if they still swim.
As of this week, the restricted opening hours will mean that anyone working a nine-to-five job will find it near impossible to swim on weekdays. This simply isn’t good enough. The people of Healesville and surrounds should be able to access a community pool as the urge or need arises. For every person who swims religiously there are probably ten in this town who have used the pool or will do so if their health or circumstances change. In the eight years I’ve lived here I’ve used or witnessed almost every facility and program the pool has to offer. I swim laps before or after work, I’ve done the evening Aquarobics classes for years, I’ve done the morning Aqua classes since I’ve been on maternity leave, and now I take my baby along to swimming lessons. I’ve done plenty of people watching and, whilst there’s always a handful of steadfast regulars, the thing I love most about swimming is that people come and go as needs arise or motivation strikes. The ever-changing clientele of the pool proves that the ability to swim serves you well throughout your life. You can do it as a child, and as an adult. It’s a ‘go to’ exercise for people who are injured, pregnant, and overweight or who need to be gentle with their body as it ages.
Hence we should do all we can to ensure that children in this area are taught to swim well enough to not only save themselves, but to benefit their health and wellbeing throughout their lives. This requires regular practice, at a convenient location. In 2014, students from eight schools in the wider Shire will attend swimming lessons at the Jack Hort pool. I have been teaching at local primary schools and attending these lessons since 2007, and every year I am shocked at how many weak swimmers there are in the late years of primary school. So many children in this area have not had enough, if any, private lessons so the swimming lessons they receive during school time are invaluable.
So, Mr Varmalis and friends at the Yarra Ranges Council, a feasibility study investigating the viability of a shining new aquatic facility in Healesville is all good and well – but it does nothing for the people who need access to a local facility now. A few years is too long in a child’s window of opportunity to learn to swim, it’s too long for a person who’s battling to maintain or improve their health, and it’s too long for a person trying to manage the effects of aging on their body.
You might argue that people from Healesville and even further afield can access the Shire’s facility in the O’Shannassy Ward at Yarra Junction, but there are more than fifteen thousand people in the Ryrie Ward who deserve better than that. One of the biggest hindrances to regular exercise is a lack of motivation – and it’s doubly hard to get motivated if you have overcome the tyranny of distance before you even dip a toe in the water.
Motivation aside, the extra travel would not be an option for many people due to time or transport constraints. Children will miss out on private lessons because their parents cannot fit in the extra driving time. Closing the Healesville pool would most likely herald the end of the Healesville Junior Swimming Club. And no one wants to see Ryrie Ward students missing out on valuable classroom teaching time because they’re being bussed to Yarra Junction and back for the school swimming program. Ease of access to facilities is essential for both health and education in this instance.
Ross Ilsley, the pool manager, acknowledges that numbers using the pool have declined in recent years – especially since the RACV Country Club was revamped. The RACV is no doubt a popular facility in its own right, but the extent of the middle-class flight is probably in no small part due to the fact that the Jack Hort pool has been running on a shoestring and cosmetically has gone to wrack and ruin. There are tiles missing and slippery bits on the floor, the heater switch in the women’s change room is broken and the racing clock’s stuck. Yet behind the crumbling facade, Ross and Chris and Helen and all of the wonderful staff at the pool have, to quote an animated fish, ‘just kept swimming’. They’ve maintained high standards of water quality, hygiene, service and a great sense of community.
It’s a community that anyone can join. And that’s really the crux of the issue. We live in a climate where swimming indoors is preferable nine or ten months out of the year. And if the Jack Hort Memorial Pool is allowed to close and the RACV becomes the only option in town, we are excluding great swaths of our population from what has been a quintessentially Australian and egalitarian activity. I can’t picture the whole Healesville Scout troop cramming into the ‘RA’ pool on a Wednesday night, or the junior footy boys doing Aqua classes with the nanas while their trainers sit and jeer on the side, or backpackers in their glam Euro swimwear being allowed to pay to swim there just so that they can have a shower.
To the Healesville community I would say, if the preceding sentence makes you shudder, then join the RACV but fight to keep the Jack Hort Pool open to keep the rabble out of your club! If it makes you smile – and it should – it’s because this dripping wet patchwork of people is what a fun, vibrant community pool is about. People from all walks of life having fun and being active. We should all – RACV club members included – pay attention to this issue and make some noise before it’s too late, because we should want to live in a community where everyone can enjoy access to a well-maintained pool.
Let’s face it – the people who need our pool most are not going to join the RACV or travel regularly to Yarra Junction. On the Yarra Ranges Council website you can read that “ Analysis of individual income levels in Healesville and Surrounds in 2011 compared to Yarra Ranges Council area shows that there was a lower proportion of persons earning a high income (those earning $1,500 per week or more) and a higher proportion of low income persons (those earning less than $400 per week).” (Yarra Ranges Council via profile.id). The aged pensioners, people on disability pensions, children whose parents can’t afford or just aren’t interested in pursuing swimming lessons, the working poor – they’re the ones who stand to be most affected, and they need the broader community to stand up on their behalf.
This should be more than just a story about a rundown pool fading away. It’s an issue of health, wellbeing and social justice – and ultimately the Council should be paying to look after its ratepayers, rather than expecting that funding designated to high school students’ education will do so. The $50,000 needed for maintenance is surely a drop in the bucket of the money the Shire has saved by not providing or maintaining its own facility over all these years.
Drowning’s often silent. But anyone who swims (irrespective of where), anyone who’s ever thought that they should swim more, anyone who was taught to swim, who swam at one stage, or who wishes they could swim, anyone who works to improve the health of our community, anyone with children, and anyone who simply fancies themselves as community minded or a person of conscience should start waving their arms and yelling to save our indoor pool – before it’s too late.
