The Memory Pool by Therese Spruhan

Author:Therese Spruhan [Therese Spruhan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742244655
Publisher: NewSouth Publishing

MERV KNOWLES

A bonzer brother at Manuka

When architect Walter Burley Griffin designed Canberra, he envisaged a swimming baths for Australia’s new capital city, but when five-year-old Merv Knowles moved there in 1928, there was no pool. His water-loving father wasn’t happy with the limited options for cooling off in the bush capital’s hot summers and joined with other public servants to campaign for a proper pool. Three years later, when the swimming pool at Manuka was officially opened, eight-year-old Merv was one of the first to dive in.

When we arrived in Canberra from Melbourne in 1928, the only swimming we had was two swimming holes on the Molonglo River, one near the Kingston Powerhouse and one at Acton. Dr Cumpston, who was the Director-General of Health and lived near us at Forrest, had the water tested at the Powerhouse and said, ‘My kids are not going to swim in that.’ So, he and Dad (Sir George Knowles, who in 1932 became head of the Attorney-General’s Department) decided to get organised to get a pool.

They wanted a 55-yard pool and in the original plans it was, but when the Depression got in the way the government wanted to reduce the size. Dr Cumpston, Dad and other public servants involved in the pool campaign got into a bargaining situation with the government but it didn’t do them any good. They decided on 33 and a third yards – 100 feet in length and 40 feet wide – and we ended up with six lanes instead of eight.

It was officially opened on 26 January 1931, but my sister Jean and brothers George and Lindsay and me, and the Cumpston kids, were allowed in for a swim a couple of weeks before it opened. There was only one dressing shed completed then – the boys’ one – so they let the boys in the two families swim in the morning and the girls in the afternoon.

At the official opening we all gathered just outside the pool. There was nothing around it, no lawn, no fence, just a paddock, so the pool entrance looked rather grand in that stark environment, like a much smaller version of Parliament House, completed four years earlier. The words ‘THE SWIMMING POOL’ were inscribed in block letters across the top of the cream-coloured brick building, and on either side of the glass doors were columns like smaller versions of something you’d see in ancient Rome.

I was eight and I remember it as a great day as we finally had somewhere good to swim. Arthur Blakeney, who was Minister for Home Affairs and lived on Mugga Way, not far from us, performed the opening and then we were all allowed to swim. The pool was set up in a way that you went in through the entrance into the boys’ or girls’ change rooms, and before you entered the pool area you walked through a footbath with a shower over the top. You couldn’t come into the pool any other way, so fair enough, we were all washed before we got in.

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