Free pools draw bigger crowds

By Rohan Aldous

Dec 29, 2022

Community effort: This was the scene at Lockington pool in 2019 when residents rallied at the pool in protest at its planned closure. A recommendation to close its outdoor pools was again put forward by Campaspe Shire Council in January 2022 but communities fought back. In a test on usage, entry to the pool for the 2022-23 season is free. Photo by Campaspe News

Numbers of swimmers across Campaspe Shire Council’s public pools have boomed this summer following a campaign to ensure they stayed open.

Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content

Swimmers in the shire can now enter any of the council’s six operational outdoor pools for no charge this swim season.

While the seventh outdoor pool at Rochester remains closed due to flood damage, swimming pools at Rushworth, Colbinabbin, Lockington, Tongala, Stanhope and Kyabram have all been operating with no entry charge since November 26.

Council, in a recommendation to decommission the pools in January 2022, had offered the concerned communities reimbursement to the tune of five years of operational costs.

At Kyabram and Rochester that represented in excess of $1 million, while the figure was generally around the $500,000 mark at Stanhope, Tongala, Rushworth, Colbinabbin and Lockington.

All seven communities fought strongly, however, to ensure the pools were saved and continued to be operational.

A decision on the future of the pools, for the 2023-24 season, will not be made until October.

The response by the public to the decision to open the pools for free this summer has been enormous.

While exact numbers were not available from council, conversations with regular pool-goers and life-saving staff suggest that attendance is at least five times what it was in the 2021-22 summer swim season.

In recent seasons the outdoor pools have attracted only a handful, sometimes up to a dozen, swimmers on a regular basis.

This summer, with the heavily promoted free entry to the pools, the numbers are regularly 50-plus.

Some of these new patrons are using the supervised swim facilities instead of seeking other swim environments such as rivers and irrigation channels.

This year’s decision to allow free entry to the shire’s pools cost council $88,000. It managed that cost by opening the pools two weeks later than usual, and the season will end on the Labour Day weekend in March.

During 2021-22, council-operated pools spent several days with the doors closed due to lack of staff.

An off-season recruiting campaign, supported by the likes of Stanhope’s community pool committee, is designed to prevent that from happening this summer.

Pools in Campaspe Shire do not open unless the temperature is expected to be at least 25℃, with the forecast taken from the Bureau of Meteorology website.

During the school holidays the opening hours are from 1pm to 8pm.

Early morning opening hours at Kyabram and Rochester are 6.30am to 8am.