Mackay Memorial Swimming Centre is a heritage-listed war memorial and swimming pool at 2 Milton Street, Mackay, Mackay Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Russell Gibbins and built in 1963. It is also known as Mackay War Memorial swimming pool. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 26 June 2020.
History The Mackay Memorial Swimming Centre opened in December 1963 as a "living memorial", a war memorial which combines remembrance with community amenity. It honours all those from the Mackay district who lost their lives fighting in World War I or World War II. This public asset was constructed with an Olympic-sized pool, children's wading pool, an entrance building, and a plant building, set in generous landscaped grounds. A war memorial mural made of Italian glass mosaic tiles is set into the front wall of the entrance building. The place has a strong and ongoing community association, and is important in demonstrating the historic pattern of war memorial swimming pool construction which peaked in Queensland during the 1950s-60s.
Mackay, part of the traditional land of the Yuwibara people,Public Map, Queensland Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, https://culturalheritage.datsip.qld.gov.au/achris/public/public-registry/home, accessed 18 February 2020. was surveyed in 1863 and developed as the centre of a major sugarcane-growing area. Following the devastating cyclone of January 1918, Mackay enjoyed a period of substantial growth. In 1938, the Forgan Bridge replaced an 1880s bridge across the Pioneer River, and in 1939, the new Port of Mackay was opened. Queensland's first bulk sugar handling terminal opened at this harbour in 1957.Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy (DNRME) Survey Plan M912, 1863.
Despite its growth and prosperity, the citizens of Mackay waited until the 1960s for a public swimming pool. Earlier proposals, either for swimming enclosures in the Pioneer River or baths on land, were made from at least 1879, but none came to fruition. A local boat builder offered to construct public baths upon the river bank.Mackay Mercury and South Kennedy Advertiser, 4 October 1879, p.2 Other proposals included salt water baths at the corner of Victoria and Carlyle streets (c.1909), and a river pool (enclosed with war surplus torpedo netting), just upstream of the north end of the Sydney Street Bridge (1924). The demand for a public swimming facility was driven by a desire to escape the summer heat (while avoiding crocodiles and sharks), safely teach children to swim, and to attract tourists.'Public Swimming Baths', Daily Mercury, 20 February 1909, p.4'Public Baths for Mackay', Daily Mercury, 19 May 1909'Proposed swimming pool', Daily Mercury 12 February 1924, p.7'Mackay swimming baths', Daily Mercury 3 February 1931, p.4). One option utilised by keen local swimmers was a swimming hole on the north side of the river between the river wall and Cremorne. IT was an old swimming hole, located in the river downstream from the north end of the Forgan Bridge and previously silted up, but had been scoured out again by floods.'Swimming baths wanted', Daily Mercury, 12 November 1926, p.7 (Cremorne "pool" dangerous when tide coming in)'Cremorne bathing sheds', Daily Mercury 12 October 1934, p.8'Old swimming hole', Daily Mercury 21 March 1946, p.2
Sea bathing was popular in Western culture from the late 18th century, for health and hygiene reasons. Competitive swimming also developed during the 19th century, and increased in popularity in the early 20th century. In 1896 swimming was included in the modern Olympic Games (men only, until 1912), and in 1908 the Federation Internationale de Natation (FINA) was formed to standardise the rules for swimming, diving and water polo and ensure the direction of Olympic Games competitions for those sports. Swimming was given further impetus by the 1924 Olympic Games held in Paris, where an 8-lane pool measuring 50 metres in length by 20 metres in width was specially constructed at Tourelles for swimming events This set the Olympic standard for pool length.
In Queensland, swimming for health, recreation and sport has a long history. In 1849, a bathing house (for private subscribers) was erected in the Brisbane River at "the Government Garden" in 1849. In 1857, a floating timber bath was moored to the bank of the Brisbane River at South Brisbane (almost opposite the end of Queen Street); it was .'The Bath', Moreton Bay Courier, 10 March 1849, p.3'Domestic Intelligence', Moreton Bay Courier, 14 February 1857, p.2, and 18 April 1857, p.2. In 1886, the Spring Hill Municipal Baths opened as the first in-ground public baths in Brisbane. In 1910, the first state school swimming pool in Queensland was opened at Junction Park State School in Brisbane. Brisbane's Fortitude Valley Baths, on the site of the earlier Booroodabin Baths (1901), were rebuilt in 1925–26 to the Olympic standard length, and subsequently replaced in 1985.'Municipal baths officially opened', Brisbane Courier, 1 March 1926, p.15 The Dalby Olympic swimming pool opened in Dalby in 1936 and was Queensland's first pool outside Brisbane. Australia's gold medals in swimming at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics increased interest in the sport, and in the construction of swimming pools.
Mackay also sought an Olympic-sized pool. In late 1944, the Mackay City Council (MCC) employed architect Dr Karl Langer to design a town plan, and his May 1945 plan included a swimming pool near the centre of Mackay, as well as swimming pools in several of the six neighbourhoods he envisaged. The central swimming pool was planned on the block north of Alfred Street, between Gregory and Wood Streets. A neighbourhood planned for west of Milton Street and north of Shakespeare Street was also to include a pool just northeast of the Mackay General Cemetery, but this was never developed.'Civic Survey: planning Mackay for the future', Daily Mercury, 16 November 1944, p.2'City Council's Town Plan for Mackay', Daily Mercury 20 June 1945, p.4.
The MCC, however, preferred the current site of the Mackay Memorial Swimming Centre for a freshwater swimming pool. In 1947, Langer provided coloured perspective drawings and sketch plans for a pool, "to be constructed on the area at the end of Victoria and Gordon streets, with the entrance opening on to Milton Street". The site was expected to cover "when reclamation is completed".'Council authorises plans for cemetery, Olympic pool', Daily Mercury 10 October 1947, p.2. This land was previously part of a "Reserve for a Public Park and Recreation Ground", declared in 1881 at the western end of the Mackay CBD. In 1918, 3 acres (1.2ha) of the southern part of this land was gazetted as a separate "Reserve for Shire Council Purposes" (later gazetted as a "Reserve for Municipal Purposes" in 1919, but the northern section of this was reincorporated back into the south end of swimming pool site when Portion 388, of 4 acres, 2 roods and 33 perches, (1.9ha), was surveyed in 1948. The 1948 survey plan included a road easement drawn over "Alligator, or Dump Creek", along the western side of the pool site and a "rubbish dump" was indicated on the east bank of the creek, in the northwest corner of the current pool site. A 20-year-old railway fireman had been fatally mauled by a shark while swimming in Dump Creek in 1939.Queensland Government Gazette, Volume XXIX, 1881, p.1013DNRME Survey Plan M9114, 1881.Queensland Government Gazette, Vol CXL, 1918, p.2095Queensland Government Gazette, Vol CXII, 1919, p.933DNRME Survey Plan Ci1369, 1948'Shark attacks swimmer', Central Queensland Herald, 21 December 1939, p.47'Shark victims' funeral', Daily Mackay, 23 December 1939, p.8).
Langer's 1947 perspective drawings included a long, low entrance building, with a hipped roof and an observatory balcony overlooking a rectangular 50m pool to the west, with a narrow, rectangular wading pool south of the 50m pool. A cafe at the southern end of the entrance building overlooked a dance floor/skating rink and a sound shell. Langer's entrance building included a filter room at its northern end. There were also garden plots and palms, three tiers of seats for spectators on the west side of the 50m pool, and an artificial beach. The description of Langer's pool complex in the 1947 article largely matches the (undated) copies of his drawings of a rectangular pool design. The MCC resolved that Langer should proceed with working plans for the pool.'Council authorises plans for cemetery, Olympic pool', Daily Mercury 10 October 1947, p.2
The push to construct a swimming pool received a boost at a public meeting in March 1950, when a committee was formed. The meeting was called under the sponsorship of the Australian Natives' Association and including delegates from the Tourist Development Association and the Lifesavers' Club. It was noted that 25% of the district's school children could not swim and that tourists also needed facilities.'Swimming pool project receives fresh impetus', Daily Mercury 3 March 1950, p.2. By July 1950, when plans were approved, Langer's design had evolved to include an L-shaped pool. The pool would have underwater lighting, tiling of the guttering on the water line and edges of the pool, and a diving tower at the west end of the short arm of the L (north end of the pool).'Plans of new pool received', Daily Mercury 25 July 1950, p.2'Overseas steel for city's pool', Daily Mercury 26 July 1950, p.2 By 1950, the Mackay City Council had been seeking approval for the pool from the Queensland Government "for several years". However, the full concept never came to fruition, as the MCC was unable to borrow funds for the project. In June 1952, the new Labor city council cancelled Langer's project.'Pool plan axed', Daily Mercury, 14 March 1952, p.2'Olympic Pool for Mackay', Townsville Daily Bulletin, 7 April 1952, p.1'Doctor Langer sacked', Daily Mercury, 24 June 1952, p.2'1924 council talk of pool', Daily Mercury 16 December 1963, p.3.