Queensland making a splash
Memorial pools and the body politics of reconstruction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2016.28Keywords:
public modern memorial pools, cultural identity, democratic and social space, 1955-1965Abstract
In April 2015, The Pool emerged as the winning proposal for Australia’s exhibition at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. Creative directors Aileen Sage and Michelle Tabet explained that the pool was ‘a lens through which to explore Australian cultural identity’ and ‘aptly represents a distinctively Australian democratic and social space’. In Australia, the public pool was popularised in the post-war period, particularly in Queensland where it offered relief from the long, hot and humid summers. Although Brisbane already had several floating baths along the Brisbane River from the mid-nineteenth century, large-scale, in-ground pool construction in the state did not start in earnest until the mid-1950s, when the personal and social benefits of recreational time with family and friends became well established. In Queensland, as elsewhere in the country, the government encouraged the construction of swimming pools, and many became memorial pools, dedicated to those who had fought to defend an Australian ‘way of life’. Their design was to reflect the civic and social foundations of the initiative, and in Queensland architects took delight in all the opportunities it afforded. The result was a widely diverging collection of predominantly humble and economical structures that were rarely ordinary or dull. Analysing three key pools that were constructed in regional Queensland between 1955 and 1965 — in Rockhampton, Mackay and Miles — this article draws out some of the defining features of Queensland’s modern memorial pools, and highlights
how this typology became the quintessential ‘Australian democratic and social space’.
References
The Pool was an installation built in the Australian pavilion for the 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture. This installation, a shallow, angular pool surrounded by wooden decks, was to stimulate critical engagement of architects in a broader public debate about the civic and social value of the spaces they create. See Linda Cheng, ‘Creative team revealed: Australia’s 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale’, Architecture Australia, 21 April 2015, http://architectureau.com/articles/creative-team-revealed-2016-venice-architecture-biennale; Amelia Holliday, Isabelle Toland and Michelle Tabet, ‘The Pool: Inside Australia’s pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale’, Architecture Daily, 29 May 2016, http://www.archdaily.com/788471/the-pool-inside-australias-pavilion-at-the-2016-venice-biennale.
‘The Pool: Architecture, culture and identity in Australia’, Australia’s exhibition at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, http://wp.architecture.com.au/venicebiennale/australian-exhibitions.
‘The Pool: architecture, culture and identity in Australia’.
We would like to thank Paul Sayer for the detailed information he provided on war memorial tax deductions.
The concept of ‘reconstructing the body’ is explained in great detail in Ana Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the body: Classicism, modernism and the First World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). The ‘Modern bodies’ section in this article draws on Carden-Coyne’s introduction (pp. 1–21).
Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the body, p. 8.
Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the body, p. 7.
From a cultural-materialist theory viewpoint, the body is constructed: it responds to shifting cultural norms and values. The relation between the body and the arts is thus complex, and has shifted over time as well as across different artforms. In literature studies, it has, for instance, been noted that modernist writing privileges the lived and experiencing body. Ulrika Maude, for example, posits that ‘modernist literature resists the body’s reduction to mere text or code, insisting instead on the body’s fleshy, visceral nature’: Ulrika Maude, ‘Modernist bodies: coming to our senses’, in Corinne Saunders, Ulrika Maude and Jane MacNaughton (eds), The Body and the Arts, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Such studies that focus on the relation between the body and different forms of art in modern times abound. A comprehensive overview of these studies is, however, beyond the scope of this article.
Christine Schmidt, The swimsuit: Fashion from poolside to catwalk (London: Berg, 2012), p. 21.
Geoffrey Batchen, ‘Max Dupain: Sunbakers’, History of Photography 19(4) (1995), 349–57.
Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the body, p. 10.
Helen Graham, ‘Annette Kellerman: Australia’s million dollar mermaid’, Spirit of Progress 3(1) (2002), 14–15.
Graham, ‘Annette Kellerman’, 14–15.
Glynis Jones, ‘Speedo: From underwear to outerwear’, in Ann Stephen, Philip Goad and Andrew McNamara (eds), Modern times: The untold story of modernism in Australia (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2008), pp. 70–5.
Speedo archive, Speedo subject files, Speedo Historical File, 2001/92/1-2/7, cited in Jones, ‘Speedo’, p. 73.
Schmidt, The swimsuit, p. 24. An interview with Paula Stafford has been published in Janet Crawford, ‘Paula Stafford: Leisurewear’, Brisbane Modern Magazine 3 (2009), 19.
Schmidt, The swimsuit, pp. 25–6.
The history of swimming in Queensland is documented in detail in Reet A. Howell and Maxwell L. Howell, The genesis of sport in Queensland: From the Dreamtime to Federation (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1992).
Newspaper articles as far afield as Warwick and Charters Towers reported on the dangers of the Brisbane River: ‘Attacked by sharks whilst bathing’, Warwick Argus, 30 November 1880, p. 2. Even by 1950 the Brisbane River was still deemed unsafe for swimming: ‘Sharks make Brisbane River dangerous’, Northern Miner, 17 January 1950, p. 3.
Howell and Howell, The genesis of sport in Queensland, p. 158.
‘Bathing’, Moreton Bay Courier, 6 January 1849, p. 3.
Howell and Howell, The genesis of sport in Queensland, pp. 56–7.
‘Public baths’, Moreton Bay Courier, 13 December 1956, p. 2. The fixed bath that had been built in the late 1840s was destroyed by vandals in 1853, leaving city-dwellers without a bathing facility for several years.
‘Floating baths’, Moreton Bay Courier, 18 April 1857, p. 2.
Howell and Howell, The genesis of sport in Queensland, p. 158.
By the early 1920s, ideas were regularly mooted for enhancing the floating baths’ flood resistance by developing methods to tow these structures to flood safe stretches of the river: ‘Removal of swimming baths’, Brisbane Courier, 25 February 1925, p. 6.
In 1928, for instance, the flooded Brisbane River tore the floating Metropolitan Baths from its moorings and swept it downstream: ‘Floating baths adrift in the Brisbane River’, Barrier Miner, 21 April 1928, p. 1. The Brisbane Courier subsequently reported that baths that were washed away at the beginning of 1928 would not be rebuilt until at least the following summer, and whether it could even be undertaken at that time would depend on the city’s financial position. See ‘Not this year: New floating baths’, Brisbane Courier, 20 September 1928, p. 8.
‘Spring Hill baths’, Brisbane Courier, 10 December 1886, p. 6.
‘Baths for Ithaca’, Telegraph, 15 Apr. 1916, p. 10.
‘Dalby swimming pool complex’, Queensland Heritage Register, https://environment.ehp.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=602564.
Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the body, p. 4.
See Hannah Lewi and David Nichols (eds),Community: Building modern Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010).
Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the body, p. 8.
Hannah Lewi and Caroline Jordan 2011, ‘Commemorating and enhancing the everyday’, in Lewi and Nichols, Community, pp. 200–36.
Income Tax Assessment Act 1915.
Income Tax Assessment Act 1927.
Lewi and Jordan, ‘Commemorating and enhancing the everyday’, p. 211.
Lewi and Jordan, ‘Commemorating and enhancing the everyday’, p. 207.
Income Tax Assessment Act 1942.
Income Tax Assessment Act 1973.
‘Modern swimming pool for Rockhampton’, Evening News, 5 April 1934, p. 12.
During the inauguration of the Dalby pool, the Minister for Public Instruction, Mr F.A. Cooper, reportedly stated that ‘no other town in Queensland had such a modern and so splendid a swimming pool’ (‘Example to other towns’, Morning Bulletin, 16 November 1936, p. 9).
‘£25,000 swimming pool wanted for Rockhampton’, Telegraph, 16 November 1937, p. 20; ‘Swimming pool for North Rockhampton’, Morning Bulletin, 15 February 1938, p. 5; ‘Proposed swimming pool at Rockhampton’, Daily Mercury, 21 September 1938, p. 9.
In Townsville, the construction of the memorial baths did commence in 1941, during World War II, in spite of considerable public opposition. See ‘Tobruk Memorial Baths’, Queensland Heritage Register, 20 January 2016, https://environment.ehp.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=601575. See also Lewi and Jordan, ‘Commemorating and enhancing the everyday’, pp. 210–11.
‘Monument time’, Morning Bulletin, 19 October 1946, p. 4.
Lewi and Jordan, ‘Commemorating and enhancing the everyday’, pp. 210–11.
‘Queen competition to aid memorial pool appeal’, Morning Bulletin, 19 November 1954, p. 15.
‘Queen competition to aid memorial pool appeal’, Morning Bulletin, 19 November 1954, p. 15.
A.E. Hermann, ‘Floating and public baths’, Developments of Rockhampton and District, Book 1 (Rockhampton: Central Queensland Family History Association, 2002), cited in Lewi and Jordan, ‘Commemorating and enhancing the everyday’, p. 210.
Drawings for the main change room building are dated 1957; the canteen and grandstand drawings are dated 1961. These drawings are held in the B. Bullman Collection of E.A. Hegvold at Rockhampton City Library.
Alice Hampson 2006, ‘Eddie Hegvold and Central Queensland’s mid-century modern’, Time and place: Queensland’s cultural heritage newsletters, 14, 5.
Russell Gibbins designed the entrance building; the council’s works department was responsible for the pool and ancillary works. See ‘1924 council talk of pool’, Daily Mercury, 16 December 1963, p. 3.
‘Swimming pool’, Daily Mercury, 20 November 1963, p. 3.
‘Pool open . . . and his duty ended’, Courier-Mail, 16 December 1963.
‘Swimming centre opened’, Daily Mercury, 16 December 1963, p. 2; ‘Pool open . . . and his duty ended’.
‘Swimming pool opening’, Daily Mercury, 14 December 1963, p. 4.
‘Swimming centre opened’, p. 2.
‘Open pool Dec. 14’, Daily Mercury, 26 November 1963, p. 2.
Alice Hampson and Janina Gosseye, ‘Healthy minds in healthy bodies: Building Queensland’s community, one weatherboard at a time’, in John Macarthur, Deborah van der Plaat, Janina Gosseye and Andrew Wilson (eds), Hot modernism: Queensland architecture, 1945–1975 (London: Artifice, 2015), pp. 237–61.
‘Official opening $154,000 Miles swimming pool’, Chinchilla News, 9 March 1967, pp. 1, 4.
Announcing the official opening of the pool in March 1967, the Chinchilla News stated that this feat represented ‘the culmination of a number of years of effort on behalf of the public who raised money towards the project’ (‘Pool opening big event Miles history’, Chinchilla News, 2 March 1967, p. 1).
‘Pool opening big event Miles history’, p. 1.
‘Official opening $154,000 Miles swimming pool’, p. 1.
‘Pool opening big event Miles history’, p. 1.
‘Pool opening big event Miles history’, p. 1.
Malcolm Edward Just and Eric Meisenhelter were architects from Toowoomba. From authors’ phone interview with Malcolm Just’s daughter, Christine Wildman, 24 November 1999.
‘Official opening $154,000 Miles swimming pool’, p. 4.
