Pool’s closure hurts

IT is a sad day when a community asset as significant as a swimming pool is forced to shut its doors.

For families on the Bellarine, the sudden closure of the Portarlington pool at the weekend will create headaches, as they try to rearrange swimming lessons for their children at other regional pools.

The closest public pools are on the other side of the Bellarine Peninsula, at Ocean Grove and in Newcomb at Splashdown. There is also a swimming pool affiliated with Portarlington pool at Breakwater, where kids can continue their swimming lesson term, at no extra cost.

So while the extra driving distances to different pools will no doubt be annoying for parents and vexatious for schools on the Bellarine, which have traditionally made use of the Portarlington pool for annual school swimming programs, it will probably be manageable.

For other community members — many of them senior citizens — who enjoy regular water aerobics at the Port pool, however, the loss is probably a much deeper one.

The pool has served as a meeting place for many members of community. A place where people have come together to exercise and catchup and chat: As much a social venue as it has been one for physical fitness, rehab after injury or illness and maintaining general health.

Places like these are at the heart of community and not easily replaced; and that is something that may not overly concern the Melbourne-based businessman who owns the facility.

But it is why the community fought to save the ageing and increasingly dilapidated pool when it was last under threat of closure in December 2015.

That time around there was a passionate local councillor in Lindsay Ellis to spearhead the campaign. This time, there are no councillors, no campaign and, it appears, no chance of saving Port pool. Here’s hoping the people who have frequented the pool find another place which meets their needs, because community counts.