A multicultural morning at the Granville Pool

It was the tiles that drew me to Granville Pool; 1930s hexagonal-shaped with a border in red and chequerboard blue and white. Bruce discovered them when he swam there after work, and a few days later I was heading west along Parramatta Road to Sydney's fourth oldest Olympic pool after Enfield, North Sydney and Bankstown (RIP).

As I parked the car I noticed a group of older people doing tai chi near the original entrance pavilion. The instructor, an almost 70-year-old Chinese-Australian man said they were there every morning at 7.30. "You should come and join us," he said.

I thanked him for his invitation and headed to the pool's newer modular glass entrance where I read that Margaret Whitlam swam 100 yards of breaststroke at the official opening in 1936 and in the 60s local boy Paul Hogan was part of a comedy diving troupe.

When I asked the woman on the front desk what was left of the original complex, she said all the pools have been retiled and done up and the 50-metre has been turned into a 25-metre. "But along the side wall they've kept a few of the original tiles."

Inside I couldn't see much evidence of the 1930s art deco style except in the blonde and red brick entrance building and change rooms, which architects' Rudder and Grout designed as a walled compound. Just as I was about to ask a lifeguard where the tiles were I spotted them underground in the plant and equipment room. A sign on the glass said I was looking into the deep end of the 1936 Olympic-sized pool where the 10-metre diving tower and a water slide used to be.

They reminded me of the tiles at Enfield Pool except for the mottled red edge, an individual touch at Granville Pool.  I took photos of the surviving lanes 3,4 and 5 and then sat on a bench by the 25-metre pool where I met two sisters about to start their stroke correction class. They told me they learnt to swim at Guildford Pool when they first came to Australia in 1978 as refugees from Laos. "You should go there," they said after I told them about my interest in pools. "Lots of refugees and migrants learnt to swim there."

I left them to start their class and moved into the 50-metre pool as boys from Granville Boys High streamed in and sat on the grandstand near the 'John Devitt Swimming Centre' sign, honouring the local champion who won gold at the 1956 and 1960 Olympics.

I watched the board-shorted boys start their lessons and then pushed off for the first of my 20 laps. When I finished one of the Laotian sisters joined me in the pool and we stood in the shallows and continued our chat. She said her family lived in Villawood Detention Centre when they first arrived in Australia and then they settled in Cabramatta. "My parents are still there. Just us kids have moved around a bit."

I asked her why she and her sister don't go by their Laotian names. "Because we got teased too much. We got sick of it," she said.  She said racism used to be more subtle but now it was in your face. "People come up to me and say, 'go back to your own country'. My younger cousins who were born here say, 'This is our country'." She said some people in her family are a bit scared and timid but she doesn't let people get away with saying things like that and always responds in some way.

I left her to swim some laps and headed to the change rooms where a group of Lebanese women were preparing for their lesson. They told me they were into their third term of lessons and now they could swim freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke. They said in Lebanon there was the beach but no pools, and the focus there was on going to school.

"But now we are here, there's no reason why we should be the only ones who don't swim at the beach. Just because we are Muslim and don't show our bodies, there is no reason why we can't swim. And it's so relaxing," they said.

On the way out I spent time looking at the historical display and read that at the opening on 10 October 1936, Mayor JS Fielding called the pool, 'a wonderful possession for Granville'. He hoped it would be 'a place where the adult population will find recreation and the children of today and tomorrow will be able to learn the art of swimming and life-saving under the best possible conditions'.

At a cafe in Granville's main street I told a waitress about my experience at the pool, where people from all different nationalities were leaning to swim. "That's good when they try and learn the culture of here, rather than staying in their old ways," she said.

On the way back to the car, I stopped outside Granville Boys High and read the school motto, 'Safe Respectful Learners' and thought of my father's annual Christmas Day speech where he always ended with the same words: "We should be thankful we were the lucky ones to be born in Australia."

In the deep end at almost 80-year-old Enfield Pool

Fear, that's what I feel, just for a moment when the depth of the water in a pool drops suddenly. I experienced this the other day when I visited Enfield Pool for the first time. I was swimming along and then all of sudden a line appeared across the white tiles and the depth dropped from one metre to three metres.  A bit further along I was in even deeper water with the bottom of the pool five metres below.  I think it is the suddenness of the drop that startles me.

I had the same experience at North Sydney Pool and more recently at Maryborough Pool in the Central Goldfields area of Victoria. What connects these pools is that they were opened between 1933 and 1940. North Sydney and Enfield share the same architects’ Rudder and Grout, who also designed Bankstown (1933) and Granville Pools (1936).

The reason for the five metre depth was because they all originally had diving towers.  At Enfield Pool, Sydney's first Olympic-standard chlorine pool, there is an original poster from the early days advertising diving lessons with Harry Tickle. “Diving and swimming taught scientifically by Harry Tickle, ex-Australian and NSW Diving Champion,” the poster says. There are also old photos of the Australian High Tower Championships that were held there in 1954-55. Looking at the height they were diving from I can see why the pool had to be so deep.

When I used to swim at North Sydney Pool during the mid to late 1970s, only the 1-metre springboard was still in action. Although never a great diver I remember going in a couple of diving events at school swimming carnivals. After awhile I gave it away and concentrated on the swimming races, leaving the diving competition to more skilled competitors like our friend Cathie-Anne.

There's not many diving boards left at pools these days as they have become Occupational Health and Safety (OH and S) issues. At Northbridge Baths where I swam as a child, the tough boys hung out near the diving board.  They’d lie on the concrete with their bikini-clad girlfriends and smoke cigarettes. Then they’d have competitions to see who could do a bomb off the bright blue springboard and get closest to the concrete wall without hitting it. If my memory serves me well there was an accident or two?

The area where the diving board used to be at Northbridge Baths.

Leichhardt Park Aquatic Centre, which was opened in 1960, still has its diving tower because it’s in a separate pool. It is strictly controlled and only open at certain times. A year or so ago when I was at the pool with my now 13 and 11-year-old nieces, the older one became fixated with diving off the tower. When it eventually opened she couldn’t get up there quick enough. Her sister and I were a bit more tentative. I eventually jumped off the three-metre platform but I can’t say it was a pleasant experience. My niece, on the other hand, enjoyed it as she was relaxed and that’s what it’s all about. My younger niece spent an hour jumping and diving off the one-metre springboard and had a very enjoyable time.