The third stop in a series of literary excursions examines how the local baths in a fictitious country town became the perfect location for a crime sequel…

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SOMEWHERE IN NORTH-WEST New South Wales is a rural town I made up. Kippen, named by Celtic settlers who saw the hillsides and thought of the Highlands, sits astride a river gorge that separates flat country from uplands where graziers plough their luck into black soil.

At one end of the high street is a towering pub. At the other, a scrubby cemetery. Between them sits an authentic vintage milk bar, a classic seed-and-feed supplier, the Kippen council chambers, a retirement village, a caravan park, an old-school department store and the Federation cop shop that serviced locals for over a century before a decline set in at the turn of the millennium.

Right at the centre of town, straddling the stretch of flat, rocky ground between the main street and the river, Kippen’s Memorial Swimming Baths survived; but take a closer look beyond the blond-brick 1960s entranceway and the turquoise ripples and you’ll notice tensions just below the surface.

Watering Hole

As a regular lap swimmer in rural swimming pools since I was a kid, I’ve come to understand why these beloved community assets are struggling, and it’s not just crumbling infrastructure or cash-strapped councils. Seven decades on from the swimming boom after the Melbourne Olympics, it’s possible we’re a nation that just can’t play nice at the local watering hole.

I learned to swim at Inverell pool in the NSW New England region, and was glad to see the place’s original vintage facade – an imposing temple raised to mid-century fitness – survived a recent $24.98m upgrade. 

But despite the advantages of this brand-new facility, it was the site of a flashpoint that raised the spectre of racism very close to the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Ride, which travelled to Moree in the 1960s to highlight racial segregation at the local swimming baths. 

Public pool tensions are not exclusive to my part of the state. At Orange in the NSW Central West, security guards were brought in halfway through the 2023/2024 swimming season after reports of sustained antisocial behaviour during a free-entry trial. Hoping that bigger spends at kiosks and aquatic classes would offset increased running and maintenance costs, Orange City wasn’t the only rural local council to drop fees then quickly reinstate them due to a spike in abuse aimed at pool staff, including death threats.

Anxieties about taking a dip run deep. I witnessed the echoes of the Freedom Ride during my Inverell swimming lessons in the 1970s, when adults in my community whispered slurs about Aboriginal kids jumping the fence. Two things told me that just wasn’t true: the height of the mesh topped by barbed wire, and the absence of anyone but whitefellas at those classes.

I didn’t set out to churn all that tension into my latest rural noir, but when I realised I could make something as apparently innocuous as the local swimming baths into a setting for crime, it was too delicious to ignore.

Underuse & Neglect

These days it’s actually me who doesn’t always pay to swim. Not because I’m squeezing through the old metal turnstile like many of us did as teenagers, it’s that I often go to pay my entry fee with spare change and there’s nobody around to take my money.

Yes, I could leave the coins on the counter, and I have the option of buying a season pass; but I regularly swim when I travel and I can’t afford season passes to every pool. Hunting out the one staff member on duty is possible, but I shouldn’t have to chase the person paid to monitor the door. I just want to get into the water, do my laps, and move on with my day. If I see someone staffing the desk at the exit, I’ll give my money to them as I leave. 

I’ve dived into rural and regional council pools from Queensland to Tasmania, from the coast to the ranges. Some I remember by the shock of cold water on an October day, the wind shear across grey ripples daring me to take the plunge. Others are memorable because I’m the only one carving up the water, as though the ratepayer-funded facility is my private pool. 

What I’ve observed over the decades is that community swimming culture appears to be on the decline. Aussie kids are learning to swim less, more households have their own backyard pools, and councils are outsourcing management of swimming centres in an attempt to prevent these de-facto local waterholes returning to nature as paint peels and concrete cracks.  

Many outdoor pools close throughout the colder months, meaning November and February see plenty of competition for lane swimming between school carnivals and private events. This occasionally cranky middle-aged fella sometimes can’t get into the pool because there’s little or no communication about access. It’s no use looking at social media for updates that rarely get posted, or calling a phone number that just rings out; which is another mark against buying any kind of season pass.

But it’s this blend of underuse, neglect and decay that makes a country town pool lonely enough to be the perfect setting for a thriller.

Sorry For The Inconvenience

According to Royal Life Saving Australia general manager R J Houston, around 500 council swimming baths across the country are in need of repair or replacement. 

“By 2030, about 40% of public pools will be too old to use properly, and we will need about $8 billion to replace them,” he said.

“Communities across Australia need to use these pools as much as they can.”

Well, I’m trying, but getting my weekly swim has become a case of pot luck. Since I live 30-40km from my closest public pools, and have often arrived to see private functions have the place closed (“sorry for the inconvenience” signposted at the entranceway) or weather-related closures that have not been posted on social media, it can be a completely wasted trip.

Tensions in Orange were also managed around public/private access to the same swimming facility, when the number of entrants was limited to an indoor pool while the outdoor pool hosted the January, 2024 Swimming NSW Country Championships. For an inland city, it’s a big ask to keep the public out of the water at the height of summer.

Swimmers in the NSW Central West Cabonne Shire may be onto something with a new way of managing public pools, one which stands to provide sustainable solutions to all the trouble of the state’s swimming centres.

According to the council, the combined cost-per-swimmer at Molong pool was reduced from $40 to $15 during a trial of unsupervised access for swimmers between 6am and 7pm. Pool attendants are rostered part of the day, but outside those times users must only attend the facility in pairs, undertake an induction and crisis training, and are subject to CCTV monitoring. The experiment was so successful that Cabonne Shire tripled the sales of annual season passes.

Residents have reported more social cohesion as a result. If this approach calms things at the watering hole, lets me swim when I prefer, and gets the council closer to breaking even, I’d buddy up with someone and dive in all year.

But it’s too late to clean up Kippen Pool. It is implicated in my new rural crime thriller Dirt Trap, (out now from MidnightSun Publishing), and the locals are probably going to hate me.