By Tyler Wright
On Thursday 1 September, the Monbulk Aquatic Centre was bursting with locals for the first time since it was damaged in the June 2021 storm event.
Bay Building Services removed and repaired the damaged pool roof crushed by a tree allegedly the size of a bus, installed new conditioning ducts and tiled the pool floor.
Although the old tiling wasn’t damaged during the storm event, re-tiling of the 25 metre pool was completed while the facility was unusable.
Belgravia Leisure Area Manager Darren Allen said residents were “ecstatic” upon their return to the pool.
“The fact that we’ve got young kids coming back to do their swim lessons [and] older parts of the community; everyone’s just happy,” Mr Allen said.
“It is like a little clubhouse to the community; a lot of people will spend three or four days a week doing their activity.
And the phone calls have finally stopped asking when the pool will be open; we had at least five or 10 phone calls a day last year asking when it would open.”
Staff have been running the centre’s health club and group fitness classes from October and November last year respectively, but swimming lessons were been relocated to the Yarra Centre in Yarra Junction, Kilsyth Centenary Pool or Knox Leisureworks over the past 15 months.
Mr Allen said only 200 of the 1000 children originally enrolled in lessons continued participating, due to the distance of the centres from Monbulk.
“It was a huge chunk of the community, about 800 students, who weren’t able to swim here and do their regular lessons; so that was a huge impact,” Mr Allen said.
“The second part would be what I call our regular user group, [doing] aquatic exercise… the majority of them [being] retired older ladies.
Mobility can be an issue for ageing population, [so] warm water, gentle exercise, and the regular routine of doing that; the health benefits are extraordinary, and we know that there’s plenty of people in the community whose health went backwards because they weren’t able to undertake this activity.”
Monbulk Aquatic Centre was able to run classes out of Belgrave Outdoor Pool last summer, but did not continue this into the colder months this year.
“The final part would be our Marlin Squad… It’s been here for over 50 years.
“We were able to re-home them to Kilsyth and Knox as well, but that’s meant pretty much a two to two and a half hour round trip for parents to take their children, swim their squad lesson, come back.”
It’s been a stretch, so we’re so grateful to everyone who continued to swim, but more than anything, it’s a huge welcome back for those who have not been here for 18 months.”
Now with lap Swimming, Aqua Aerobics, GOswim, Marlins Squad and recreational swimming back on, Mr Allen expects a busy summer for 2022/2023.
“We finished with a thousand [swim school students], we [re] opened with a thousand… we don’t have much room to grow on there; our health club has the most members it’s had in years, [and] customer confidence is really strong at the moment,” he said.
“The best thing is there’s health outcomes that come with it, and the social isolation that people have had over the last few years; to reconnect in a place like this, see familiar staff and be welcomed back, it means the world to them.”
Monbulk Aquatic Centre is located at 26 Baynes Park Rd, Monbulk VIC 3793, and you can contact the centre on (03) 9756 8000 for more information on its services.
