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| 'Strip down to your budgie smugglers': diving into Australia's obsession with the pool | 'Strip down to your budgie smugglers': diving into Australia's obsession with the pool |
| (2 months later) | |
| In 1965 the Australian Freedom Riders, including the Indigenous activist Charles Perkins, took 10 Aboriginal children – then banned from swimming outside school hours – to the Moree Artesian Baths in New South Wales. | In 1965 the Australian Freedom Riders, including the Indigenous activist Charles Perkins, took 10 Aboriginal children – then banned from swimming outside school hours – to the Moree Artesian Baths in New South Wales. |
| It was a sweltering day but Perkins – fending off shouts of “scabby black niggers” and “dirty abo” – was told “darkies” were not allowed in. In response, he blocked the gate and a three-hour standoff ensued until, finally, an agreement was made: pool access would be restricted based on health, not race. The children swam, unopposed, for the first time. | It was a sweltering day but Perkins – fending off shouts of “scabby black niggers” and “dirty abo” – was told “darkies” were not allowed in. In response, he blocked the gate and a three-hour standoff ensued until, finally, an agreement was made: pool access would be restricted based on health, not race. The children swam, unopposed, for the first time. |
| That the most celebrated crusade in Australian civil rights took place not at a government institution but at a pool is revealing. From billabongs to beaches, this is a country of swimmers; and pools, whether wild bush waterholes or man-made chasms where Olympic dreams are chased, form a cornerstone of our national identity. | That the most celebrated crusade in Australian civil rights took place not at a government institution but at a pool is revealing. From billabongs to beaches, this is a country of swimmers; and pools, whether wild bush waterholes or man-made chasms where Olympic dreams are chased, form a cornerstone of our national identity. |
| And now, the Australian pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, which opened this month and remains until November, is asking how, exactly, the pool holds so much pull in popular culture. | And now, the Australian pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, which opened this month and remains until November, is asking how, exactly, the pool holds so much pull in popular culture. |
| At the heart of the $250,000 installation is a small indoor pool. Visitors can get their toes wet, lounge on specially designed chairs, or, using headphones, listen to stories told by eight cultural figureheads, including the swimmer Ian Thorpe, the writer Christos Tsiolkas and the art curator Hetti Perkins, daughter of Charles. | At the heart of the $250,000 installation is a small indoor pool. Visitors can get their toes wet, lounge on specially designed chairs, or, using headphones, listen to stories told by eight cultural figureheads, including the swimmer Ian Thorpe, the writer Christos Tsiolkas and the art curator Hetti Perkins, daughter of Charles. |
| Alongside its glossy accompanying guide – The Pool: Architecture, Culture and Identity in Australia – the pavilion addresses how great design can give back to the community. The Sydney architects spearheading the project, Amelia Holliday, Isabelle Toland and Michelle Tabet, have dubbed the pool a “Trojan Horse”: beneath its frothy, sensual surface the trio can sneak in more socially pertinent questions. | Alongside its glossy accompanying guide – The Pool: Architecture, Culture and Identity in Australia – the pavilion addresses how great design can give back to the community. The Sydney architects spearheading the project, Amelia Holliday, Isabelle Toland and Michelle Tabet, have dubbed the pool a “Trojan Horse”: beneath its frothy, sensual surface the trio can sneak in more socially pertinent questions. |
| Pools in Australia range from the wild and the dramatic – the ferocious salty seas crashing over Bondi Icebergs; the bridge looming larger over the North Sydney Olympic pool – to the contained and domesticated. The land of the scorching sun has the highest pool ownership per capita worldwide: more than 1.2m private pools already exist and a further 30,000 are installed every year. | Pools in Australia range from the wild and the dramatic – the ferocious salty seas crashing over Bondi Icebergs; the bridge looming larger over the North Sydney Olympic pool – to the contained and domesticated. The land of the scorching sun has the highest pool ownership per capita worldwide: more than 1.2m private pools already exist and a further 30,000 are installed every year. |
| Perched on the edge of the ocean, often in dazzling enclaves, rock pools hold particular sway over public imagination. In the picture book Alphabetic Sydney, the letter “O” stands for ocean pool. A ditty runs: “What do you dream of while dozing at school / Diving deep down in a green ocean pool? / Swim with the mermaids in pink bathing caps / Wrinkled and leathery, doing their laps.” | Perched on the edge of the ocean, often in dazzling enclaves, rock pools hold particular sway over public imagination. In the picture book Alphabetic Sydney, the letter “O” stands for ocean pool. A ditty runs: “What do you dream of while dozing at school / Diving deep down in a green ocean pool? / Swim with the mermaids in pink bathing caps / Wrinkled and leathery, doing their laps.” |
| “Australians are a water people,” says the author Anna Funder, one of eight contributors to the pavilion’s accompanying publication. “We live on the very edge of a vast continent. I hunger for a pool, like I need oxygen. I think it’s primal.” | “Australians are a water people,” says the author Anna Funder, one of eight contributors to the pavilion’s accompanying publication. “We live on the very edge of a vast continent. I hunger for a pool, like I need oxygen. I think it’s primal.” |
| This is a country where Jaws was recently screened – where else? – in Sydney’s Andrew “Boy” Charlton Pool (the audience bobbed up and down on lilos) and where the Australian Women’s Weekly pool cake recipe is a national treasure. Where Olympic champions such as Ian Thorpe, Murray Rose and Dawn Fraser have fuelled the nation’s pride and where the pools of Indigenous nations are considered both nourishing and spiritual – waterholes, it is said, are sanctuaries for both the souls of the dead and the unborn. | This is a country where Jaws was recently screened – where else? – in Sydney’s Andrew “Boy” Charlton Pool (the audience bobbed up and down on lilos) and where the Australian Women’s Weekly pool cake recipe is a national treasure. Where Olympic champions such as Ian Thorpe, Murray Rose and Dawn Fraser have fuelled the nation’s pride and where the pools of Indigenous nations are considered both nourishing and spiritual – waterholes, it is said, are sanctuaries for both the souls of the dead and the unborn. |
| On a practical level, pools hold pride of place in public life. Like a plaza in Italy, they act as an arena for old and young, rich and poor, to gather together; they are an important equaliser. As pavilion creator Tabet points out: whether you’re Tony Abbott or Joe Bloggs, “you all strip down to your budgie smugglers”. | On a practical level, pools hold pride of place in public life. Like a plaza in Italy, they act as an arena for old and young, rich and poor, to gather together; they are an important equaliser. As pavilion creator Tabet points out: whether you’re Tony Abbott or Joe Bloggs, “you all strip down to your budgie smugglers”. |
| In European cities, pools are relegated to inferior positions: the majority are buried underground, dismal holes drowned in chlorine and shrouded in unremarkable architecture. In New York pools are places of conflict: Funder, who lived in the US before moving back to Sydney, describes all public pool patrons being forced to wear white T-shirts – a measure to prevent gang activity. | In European cities, pools are relegated to inferior positions: the majority are buried underground, dismal holes drowned in chlorine and shrouded in unremarkable architecture. In New York pools are places of conflict: Funder, who lived in the US before moving back to Sydney, describes all public pool patrons being forced to wear white T-shirts – a measure to prevent gang activity. |
| In Australia, by contrast, pools are heightened to a sublime status, a way to enjoy – and contain – the treacherous but beautiful coastline without submitting to its dangers. Funder describes the pool as a kind of church. Sydney’s Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre, designed by Harry Seidler, appears to her like a “cathedral”, its majestic sweeping ceiling resembling great towering waves. | In Australia, by contrast, pools are heightened to a sublime status, a way to enjoy – and contain – the treacherous but beautiful coastline without submitting to its dangers. Funder describes the pool as a kind of church. Sydney’s Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre, designed by Harry Seidler, appears to her like a “cathedral”, its majestic sweeping ceiling resembling great towering waves. |
| Like a religion, the concept of the pool has been both divisive and inclusive. In the 1950s, the same era when Aboriginals faced segregation in public pools, the Fitzroy swimming pool in Melbourne made history for welcoming new immigrants flooding in from Europe. Manager James Murphy painted the words “Aqua profunda” in capital letters over the deep end – a (albeit poorly translated) measure to prevent Italian children from getting out of their depth. Now heritage listed, the letters still stand there today. | Like a religion, the concept of the pool has been both divisive and inclusive. In the 1950s, the same era when Aboriginals faced segregation in public pools, the Fitzroy swimming pool in Melbourne made history for welcoming new immigrants flooding in from Europe. Manager James Murphy painted the words “Aqua profunda” in capital letters over the deep end – a (albeit poorly translated) measure to prevent Italian children from getting out of their depth. Now heritage listed, the letters still stand there today. |
| If a public pool is a place for everyone, then the private pool is a marker of social status and wealth. In Tsiolkas’ novel The Slap, the flawed, obnoxious Harry buys a house with a gleaming pool overlooking Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne. Diving in he cries: “I am the king of the world” – but his is a hollow world and, rather than being transcendent, the splash of water merely marks empty excess. | If a public pool is a place for everyone, then the private pool is a marker of social status and wealth. In Tsiolkas’ novel The Slap, the flawed, obnoxious Harry buys a house with a gleaming pool overlooking Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne. Diving in he cries: “I am the king of the world” – but his is a hollow world and, rather than being transcendent, the splash of water merely marks empty excess. |
| Seemingly a place to relax and unwind – to stretch, to sunbathe and to swim – the pool promotes the “lucky country” as beautiful and easygoing, a place where body is king, health paramount and water sacrosanct. In reality, it also reveals faultlines. | Seemingly a place to relax and unwind – to stretch, to sunbathe and to swim – the pool promotes the “lucky country” as beautiful and easygoing, a place where body is king, health paramount and water sacrosanct. In reality, it also reveals faultlines. |
| If the concept of everyone’s right to leisure time seems enshrined in Australia’s easy-go-lucky ethos, it is not a right enjoyed equally. Perkins made history at the Moree baths in 1965; his daughter Hetti continues to fight to provide pools for remote Aboriginal communities, which are key to reducing the skin infections and eardrum perforations that still plague Indigenous children in the outback. | If the concept of everyone’s right to leisure time seems enshrined in Australia’s easy-go-lucky ethos, it is not a right enjoyed equally. Perkins made history at the Moree baths in 1965; his daughter Hetti continues to fight to provide pools for remote Aboriginal communities, which are key to reducing the skin infections and eardrum perforations that still plague Indigenous children in the outback. |
| So what’s the future for the pool? The environmentalist Tim Flannery, another Biennale contributor, flinches at the prevalence of these bright blue rectangles of water in suburban backyards. He sees the way we have approached building pools as “a bit like our approach to the colonisation of the land as a whole”. | So what’s the future for the pool? The environmentalist Tim Flannery, another Biennale contributor, flinches at the prevalence of these bright blue rectangles of water in suburban backyards. He sees the way we have approached building pools as “a bit like our approach to the colonisation of the land as a whole”. |
| “What we’ve done is dug a hole in the backyard, filled it with water and chemicals and [we] think that’s a great outcome,” he says. “But it isn’t. It uses a lot of water, exposes us to high levels of chlorine. We can learn a lot from the way billabongs work – these beautiful waterways that remain pristine and full of life and clear.” Flannery, for one, turned his own pool in Sydney into a frog pond. | “What we’ve done is dug a hole in the backyard, filled it with water and chemicals and [we] think that’s a great outcome,” he says. “But it isn’t. It uses a lot of water, exposes us to high levels of chlorine. We can learn a lot from the way billabongs work – these beautiful waterways that remain pristine and full of life and clear.” Flannery, for one, turned his own pool in Sydney into a frog pond. |
| If the azure waters of Australia’s pools demonstrate its confidence, its brashness, and its love of the outdoors, then it’s also a sign of vulnerability, of an attempt to harness the wild and the wet. The pool is one way for a nation to expose itself, to strip bare, to peel away complex layers. As Helen Garner reports in her book True Stories, “Everyone’s the same down here, even the punks, once they get their clothes off.” | If the azure waters of Australia’s pools demonstrate its confidence, its brashness, and its love of the outdoors, then it’s also a sign of vulnerability, of an attempt to harness the wild and the wet. The pool is one way for a nation to expose itself, to strip bare, to peel away complex layers. As Helen Garner reports in her book True Stories, “Everyone’s the same down here, even the punks, once they get their clothes off.” |