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The Memory Pool : Australian stories of summer, sun and swimming
Smell the chlorine, taste the hot chips and feel the burning concrete underfoot as you read these stories of Australian childhoods at the pool.
Swimming is a central part of most Australian childhoods. We idealise beaches and surf, but for many kids the local pool – whether it’s an ocean, tidal or a chlorinated pool – is where they pass summer days. Pools are places of imagination, daring, belonging, freedom, friendship and romance. For some they are places of hard-core swimming training.
This delightful, nostalgic anthology brings together reflections and recollections about the swimming pools of childhood from a range of Australians of diverse ages and backgrounds, well known and not-so-famous, including Trent Dalton, Leah Purcell, Shane Gould, Bryan Brown and Merrick Watts.
Evocative, funny and sometimes bittersweet, 28 people remember the pools that shaped their childhoods. Everyone who has ever dived into their local Olympic pool, bush waterhole or saltwater baths will want to submerge themselves in this beautiful book
Swimming is a central part of most Australian childhoods. We idealise beaches and surf, but for many kids the local pool – whether it’s an ocean, tidal or a chlorinated pool – is where they pass summer days. Pools are places of imagination, daring, belonging, freedom, friendship and romance. For some they are places of hard-core swimming training.
This delightful, nostalgic anthology brings together reflections and recollections about the swimming pools of childhood from a range of Australians of diverse ages and backgrounds, well known and not-so-famous, including Trent Dalton, Leah Purcell, Shane Gould, Bryan Brown and Merrick Watts.
Evocative, funny and sometimes bittersweet, 28 people remember the pools that shaped their childhoods. Everyone who has ever dived into their local Olympic pool, bush waterhole or saltwater baths will want to submerge themselves in this beautiful book
263 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 1, 2019
11 people are currently reading
115 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
January 25, 2020
I sometimes find that when people discuss the relationship many Australians have with watery environments (chlorinated, marine, estuarine and fresh), words and phrases such as ‘iconic’, ‘typical childhood’, ‘classic’ and ‘Australian dream’ can be used in a problematic way to idealise youth, whiteness and a certain type of masculinity in our culture. Think Max Dupain’s Sunbaker, the gorgeous black and white, head and shoulders portrait taken in 1937 on the southern NSW coast. Beautifully shot, it often claims the ‘iconic, quintessentially Australian’ title even though the young man in the photo was not Australian but British. With a few subtle words and wistful reminiscing, it can seem that all Australians were young, white and male and spent their entire childhoods blissful and carefree at the pool/ beach/ river, on their way to becoming either larrikins or future members of the Dolphins Australia Olympic Swim Team.
In recent years, there has been a shift in documenting Australian history with regards to water spaces. Instead of trying to capture an all-encompassing narrative expressed by a select few voices, social histories are emerging to record stories of often disparate individuals and groups, encouraging a broader perspective on our relationship with this element and allowing the reader or viewer to observe connections (or create their own). ‘The Pool’, The Australian exhibit at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, incorporated oral histories of various identities and their connection with swimming pools to convey all sorts of pool experiences, including migrant, indigenous and queer voices. In 2019, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s two-part documentary, also called ‘The Pool’, shared a variety of stories from across the country to piece together the different ways Australians have interacted with water in the past and how they do this today. From contested spaces to today’s more accessible spaces, a wider history of pools is gaining popularity.
Therese Spruhan’s 2019 publication, The Memory Pool, continues in this direction. To quote the author, she is “interested in telling Australian history though people’s stories” (The Pod: Ocean Swimming podcast, episode 57). With her anthology of watery tales, she has achieved exactly this. Divided into seven neat sections to cover pools in the backyard, on the bay, at the beach, at your municipal recreation centre, in the suburbs, in competitions and in the country, the book presents 28 different stories of 28 individuals as they reflect upon a special childhood pool. Through this approach, she allows the stories to speak for themselves; each reflection is one more contribution to a deeper, more complex understanding of our relationship with water.
You may recognise some of the contributors: Laurie Lawrence, the legendary Olympic swimming coach, Merrick Watts of the comedy duo Merrick and Rosso, author Trent Dalton, actor Bryan Brown, gold medallists Priya Cooper and Shane Gould, actor Leah Purcell and former politician David Bartlett. The anthology also includes reflections from emerging identities such as Yusra Metwally, opinion writer and founder of Swim Sisters and artist Lizzie Buckmaster Dove, as well as tales from ‘ordinary’ Australians who recount memories of childhoods spent in, on and beside public pools, water holes, river baths and ocean pools. Pools are a great leveller and through this collection, all the stories are on the same level.
Based on recorded interviews, then re-written in the first person, Therese Spruhan has crafted each chapter to evoke the individual voice of each contributor. The older participants (the eldest was in his nineties at the time of writing), for example, have a different vocabulary for their world, compared to that of those growing up in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. Each chapter is brief but spoken in the language of contributor’s time, era and way of reflecting upon the world. It’s like being at a barbecue with a cross section of ages and backgrounds. Everyone is recounting their own experiences, in their own fashion. However, unlike at many barbecues and social gatherings, there is no shouting here; no voice is drowned out by the loudest of the group. It is a pleasure to reimagine their childhoods, understanding what their pool meant to them then, how this meaning sometimes shifted as they grew older and the meaning that the space holds for them now.
The diversity of the tales, and the individuality of each voice, make this book such a good read. You can step inside the shoes of so many different Australians: a young girl with cerebral palsy discovering how the pool gives a freedom unavailable on land; a teenage boy in Brisbane for whom the local pool was a sanctuary, a safe space away from an often insecure home life; a Muslim girl revelling in intergenerational, community fun during women-only Sunday sessions at her local pool; or a Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri woman for whom, despite the unrelenting racism in her town, “the pool was the only place …that it seemed OK for everyone to be just doing their stuff”.
It was really the tales from the less known that I enjoyed the most. Living in Western Australia, I was delighted to discover the intriguing histories of places such as Mettam’s pool at Trigg, north of Perth, Fonty’s Pool in Manjimup in the state’s south west and also that of the now closed Nedlands Baths on the Swan River. It was run by two staunch Danish sisters from 1953 to 1975 and their serious approach to teaching swimming ensured that the youth in the vicinity could simultaneously swim whilst not having fun. As a huge lover of shared swimming facilities and the benefits they can bring to all ages and abilities, I loved the chapters about community action to preserve or establish public pools.
Each chapter has a unique voice, but all are united by the sense of community that evolves in enclosed, watery spaces. Whether the edges of these spaces are sharply defined by concrete, tiles, property boundaries and right angles or naturally defined by the geography of rock pools, shorelines, riverbanks, silt and trees, all the reflections bring a sense of being enveloped by water, protected to a degree and a part of something shared. Unlike the wide, limitless ocean, these pools are a sheltered theatre for competition, adolescent yearnings and fumblings, shifting attitudes towards one’s own body, exploring limits with authority, tackling fears (both personal and physical) and better understanding one’s place in the world.
At 253 pages, this is a great gift for lovers of water and social history. It is best read beside the water, either chronologically or dipping in and out of the chapters in whichever order one chooses.
In recent years, there has been a shift in documenting Australian history with regards to water spaces. Instead of trying to capture an all-encompassing narrative expressed by a select few voices, social histories are emerging to record stories of often disparate individuals and groups, encouraging a broader perspective on our relationship with this element and allowing the reader or viewer to observe connections (or create their own). ‘The Pool’, The Australian exhibit at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, incorporated oral histories of various identities and their connection with swimming pools to convey all sorts of pool experiences, including migrant, indigenous and queer voices. In 2019, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s two-part documentary, also called ‘The Pool’, shared a variety of stories from across the country to piece together the different ways Australians have interacted with water in the past and how they do this today. From contested spaces to today’s more accessible spaces, a wider history of pools is gaining popularity.
Therese Spruhan’s 2019 publication, The Memory Pool, continues in this direction. To quote the author, she is “interested in telling Australian history though people’s stories” (The Pod: Ocean Swimming podcast, episode 57). With her anthology of watery tales, she has achieved exactly this. Divided into seven neat sections to cover pools in the backyard, on the bay, at the beach, at your municipal recreation centre, in the suburbs, in competitions and in the country, the book presents 28 different stories of 28 individuals as they reflect upon a special childhood pool. Through this approach, she allows the stories to speak for themselves; each reflection is one more contribution to a deeper, more complex understanding of our relationship with water.
You may recognise some of the contributors: Laurie Lawrence, the legendary Olympic swimming coach, Merrick Watts of the comedy duo Merrick and Rosso, author Trent Dalton, actor Bryan Brown, gold medallists Priya Cooper and Shane Gould, actor Leah Purcell and former politician David Bartlett. The anthology also includes reflections from emerging identities such as Yusra Metwally, opinion writer and founder of Swim Sisters and artist Lizzie Buckmaster Dove, as well as tales from ‘ordinary’ Australians who recount memories of childhoods spent in, on and beside public pools, water holes, river baths and ocean pools. Pools are a great leveller and through this collection, all the stories are on the same level.
Based on recorded interviews, then re-written in the first person, Therese Spruhan has crafted each chapter to evoke the individual voice of each contributor. The older participants (the eldest was in his nineties at the time of writing), for example, have a different vocabulary for their world, compared to that of those growing up in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. Each chapter is brief but spoken in the language of contributor’s time, era and way of reflecting upon the world. It’s like being at a barbecue with a cross section of ages and backgrounds. Everyone is recounting their own experiences, in their own fashion. However, unlike at many barbecues and social gatherings, there is no shouting here; no voice is drowned out by the loudest of the group. It is a pleasure to reimagine their childhoods, understanding what their pool meant to them then, how this meaning sometimes shifted as they grew older and the meaning that the space holds for them now.
The diversity of the tales, and the individuality of each voice, make this book such a good read. You can step inside the shoes of so many different Australians: a young girl with cerebral palsy discovering how the pool gives a freedom unavailable on land; a teenage boy in Brisbane for whom the local pool was a sanctuary, a safe space away from an often insecure home life; a Muslim girl revelling in intergenerational, community fun during women-only Sunday sessions at her local pool; or a Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri woman for whom, despite the unrelenting racism in her town, “the pool was the only place …that it seemed OK for everyone to be just doing their stuff”.
It was really the tales from the less known that I enjoyed the most. Living in Western Australia, I was delighted to discover the intriguing histories of places such as Mettam’s pool at Trigg, north of Perth, Fonty’s Pool in Manjimup in the state’s south west and also that of the now closed Nedlands Baths on the Swan River. It was run by two staunch Danish sisters from 1953 to 1975 and their serious approach to teaching swimming ensured that the youth in the vicinity could simultaneously swim whilst not having fun. As a huge lover of shared swimming facilities and the benefits they can bring to all ages and abilities, I loved the chapters about community action to preserve or establish public pools.
Each chapter has a unique voice, but all are united by the sense of community that evolves in enclosed, watery spaces. Whether the edges of these spaces are sharply defined by concrete, tiles, property boundaries and right angles or naturally defined by the geography of rock pools, shorelines, riverbanks, silt and trees, all the reflections bring a sense of being enveloped by water, protected to a degree and a part of something shared. Unlike the wide, limitless ocean, these pools are a sheltered theatre for competition, adolescent yearnings and fumblings, shifting attitudes towards one’s own body, exploring limits with authority, tackling fears (both personal and physical) and better understanding one’s place in the world.
At 253 pages, this is a great gift for lovers of water and social history. It is best read beside the water, either chronologically or dipping in and out of the chapters in whichever order one chooses.
September 18, 2021
If your a swimming tragic like I am, this is a little sapphire - luminous, bright blue and throwing green. I have a photo at age six on the bleak cold cobble beach at Brighton England, with blue lips, a bowl haircut and a frilly nautical one piece rooted to the freezing shore line. When I came to Australia at age eight I learnt to swim and discovered the beach and sea pool addiction thats driven me to Madeira, Portugal and Spain’s Basque Coast for more sublime rock pool swims.
I love this book and the passion of Lizzie BD’s Blue Pool story and the “in-between” vibrates clearly.
I love this book and the passion of Lizzie BD’s Blue Pool story and the “in-between” vibrates clearly.
January 20, 2020
Great book to read over a long period, the stories are short, represented thematically and very engaging. The biographies at the end help to place the speakers for readers that may be reading and asking themselves 'how do I know that name?' I particularly liked how these oral histories revealed elements of Australian societies and cultures since the early 20th century.
March 7, 2022
One of my favourite books. I read it floating on my pool bean bag one summer, letting the sweet words wash over me. Amazing.
February 24, 2020
A great trip down memory lane. The local pool was such an integral part of most country town communities. As is highlighted in many of the stories, the pool is a place where friendships are made, bodies are baked ( hopefully not these days), achievements attained, and precious time is spent with family. Anyone who has spent hours in the local pool will relate to, and enjoy, many of these stories.
February 16, 2020
Transported telepathically from one swimming locale to the next, smelling the hot chips, the chlorine, the sea, the salt, the coconut oil. Fabulous
May 8, 2023
I don’t usually like short story collections, but I LOVED THIS!! It was so good to hear other people from all over Australia swoon about pools and swimming. It made me love swimming even more which is the best possible outcome from this book. None of the stories were pretentious or gate keepy- everyone was just all golden eyed thinking about their wonderful childhood memories. Loved it. Made me feel happy. Very relatable
Oh also I liked that the stories were written from verbal Interviews. If the authors themselves wrote it, I probably wouldn’t of Vibed with all their stories as people tend to personally get a bit silly with their writing. The author did a great job capturing all their voices and keeping it down to earth and not all high falutin
Oh also I liked that the stories were written from verbal Interviews. If the authors themselves wrote it, I probably wouldn’t of Vibed with all their stories as people tend to personally get a bit silly with their writing. The author did a great job capturing all their voices and keeping it down to earth and not all high falutin
February 13, 2020
This is a nostalgic look at Australian childhoods in the mid twentieth century. All of the memories describe an innocent or more simple time when children and their families spent much of every summer at pools which were central to the life of many country towns and coastal suburbs. There is a common idea in many of the stories as they describe a world in which there were fewer distractions and limited forms of entertainment so that going to the pool and meeting up with friends was a very common recreational activity. The great advantage of this activity was that it was inexpensive and a general equalizer so that people from different social classes, ethnic groups, religions and schools could meet and swim together.
March 25, 2020
The book's title 'The Memory Pool' is very apt. Reading through the various stories brought back many memories for me. Growing up in our Australian hot summers, I spent many hours in the local pool, a neighbour's pool, or at the beach. Each story relates the joy and adventure experienced at various swimming places, especially during the summer months and school holidays. We all have our memories of summer holidays and this book brought many good times back to me. In fact I feel encouraged to improve my swimming technique again and spend more time at our local pool.
Read
January 8, 2020super cute stories
September 16, 2020
Lovely nostalgic read and great escape from everyday stresses.
August 16, 2022
Love this book- a wonderful account of the importance of pools, water and swimming in Australian culture.
September 25, 2022
A great beach holiday read and very nostalgic.
October 9, 2025
Read during the panini. Was very sad with all the pools shut!
February 13, 2024
Had a hard connection with the pool, but loved to see how Australia as a community love water indifferent ways.
June 29, 2021
There are some lovely stories in this collection about Australian swimming experiences, but others that are dull. Not everyone is a writer in this collection and it leads too many less than wonderful pieces.
March 27, 2023
This was read over summer when there was opportunity to swim at a local outdoor municipal pool in an inland regional city, and was finished whilst having a beach holiday; so was very apt. In fact I had the opportunity to swim at the Blue Pool at Bermagui, at this time just after reading the author experience of that place far from where she lived.
The editor is one of the 28 authors of these short stories about the impact of a swimming place that has been pivotal to childhood, and is about: the love of water, how swimming provides personal escape, enjoyment, a place to reflect and a site to restore the soul.
Some authors are famous Australians as swimmers or different reasons whilst others are less so. It is divided into sections with contrasting walled aquatic environments. It was lent by one of the members of our adult swimming circle who are called the Inland Mermaids. We are about to start a book club to share tales of water based adventures for which this book was a catalyst.
For lovers of active immersion in water, it is a delightful read.
The editor is one of the 28 authors of these short stories about the impact of a swimming place that has been pivotal to childhood, and is about: the love of water, how swimming provides personal escape, enjoyment, a place to reflect and a site to restore the soul.
Some authors are famous Australians as swimmers or different reasons whilst others are less so. It is divided into sections with contrasting walled aquatic environments. It was lent by one of the members of our adult swimming circle who are called the Inland Mermaids. We are about to start a book club to share tales of water based adventures for which this book was a catalyst.
For lovers of active immersion in water, it is a delightful read.
Read
August 18, 2021I read this book over the space of a few months, coming back to it when I was in the mood. I think it’s book really captured the essence of an Australian’s connection to the land and the water, it’s such an integral part of our existence so it was nice to listen different peoples recounts.
March 13, 2021
beautiful short stories about swimming, lovely.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews