Unsung icons: The Kreepy Krauly The legendary pool device
COMEDIAN DAVID SMIEDT TAKES AN IRREVERENT, BUT APPRECIATIVE, LOOK AT THE CLASSIC THINGS THAT DEFINE YOU-BEAUT AUSSIE LIFE
Back in 2002, a bunch of graduates from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab launched a new product called the Roomba. It was an ingenious blend of a robot and vacuum cleaner. Using cleverly placed sensors and wheels, this device could traverse your floor space devouring dirt like a newly ousted Love Island contestant on a paparazzi opportunity. And when it came close to a wall, it merely turned around and trundled off in a new direction. Despite the marketing hype of so many late-night TV commercials, many Aussies were nonplussed. We’d seen a version of this device before. Only ours worked underwater. Going by the mildly terrifying name of the Kreepy Krauly, it first hit the market in 1974 in South Africa and went on to become so ubiquitous that all such devices became generically known as “creepy crawlies”. Like all tissues are sometimes referred to as Kleenex.
Speaking of being damp when used, the Kreepy Krauly, like so many South African émigrés, ended up in Western Australia, where a bloke called Terry Jackson knew a good thing when he saw one. At that stage, Tezza was the MD of a company manufacturing above-ground pools, but he had no need to test the water on this particular accessory. He leapt in by refining the first-gen design of the immaculately named inventor Ferdinand Chauvier. Upping the original’s reliability, the Australian-designed KK was launched in 1976 and soon spread to pools from Bungendore to Bundaberg.
Its genius was that is was powered by the pool’s filter and effectively supercharged said suction. Throw in a jumble of flexible plastic tubes, a voracious central unit that feasted on leaf litter and algae with the greed of a distant relative at a wedding open bar and you had a piece of the future right there in your kidney-shape.
When they first arrived in Australian yards, the KK was almost as much of a status symbol as the pools in which they operated. Many an Australian dad – whose domestic remit was pool care and the barbecue because his wife did everything bloody else – could be caught staring appreciatively, beer in hand and wonder in his bloodshot eyes, at this ’70s technology as it tirelessly went about its sparkling business. Why bloodshot? Because the only thing left to do once the KK had completed its rounds was to over-chlorinate the water in the pool to the point where every swimmer emerged squinting as if they were staring into an eclipse.
The marketing teams behind the KK didn’t miss a trick when shilling their wares to a blokey demographic for whom there was no such thing as too many gadgets. Gone was the dainty business of a net on a pole for scooping up errant foliage. In its wake were models that went by aggressive names – and we aren’t making a single one of these up – such as the Dominator, the Prowler and the Tiger Shark. Despite every piece of logic and visual confirmation to the contrary, once the idea was in your young head, it seemed entirely possible that there was one of these ferocious carnivores in your pool. Somehow, it had made its way from the vast Pacific Ocean to your Frankston freeform, just waiting to chomp into an unsuspecting limb.
What has all this to do with KK? Ask us that after one of its octopus-like plastic tendrils brushed against your ankle. Or worse still, when the goo-slicked underside of the scalloped rubber sucker made contact with flesh, prompting the kind of involuntary shriek most often associated with hordes of lovestruck teens at a Harry Styles concert – which in turn transformed into hilarious Christmas stories about that time you were attacked by the pool equipment.
On a less mortifying note, when the olds weren’t looking, the KK could function as quite the plaything. The tubes could be twisted into an underwater dive course or configured into a diving circle where points were awarded for a clean entry with no plastic contact. No pool noodle? No problem. Simply wrap a KK coil around your waist and sink like the approval rating of a politician whose idea of uni good times was going to a party in black face.
Unlike many of the items celebrated, eulogised and lionised in this column, the KK and its slithery descendants remain with us. Out back, stalking the blue depths for anything that nature cares to throw at it. And if you listen carefully, you can still hear its “tuka-tuka-tuka-tuka-tuka” heartbeat whose knocking doggerel became as much a part of the summer soundtrack as cicadas, mozzies and Bill Lawry exclaiming, “He’s got him – yes”.
“MANY AN AUSTRALIAN dad COULD BE CAUGHT STARING APPRECIATIVELY, BEER IN HAND, AT THIS ’70S technology”