Myra Young was only 11 in December 1961 when Dunlop Park pool first opened its doors on Brisbane's south side, but her memory of that day is as crystal clear as freshly filtered water.
It was Christmas come early — she and her friends were among the first to make a splash in Corinda's new pool on December 22.
The following day, children were allowed in for free to thank the community for donating money toward the construction cost.
"The only pool that we used to be able to go to was Toowong, so we'd get the train and it was a small pool," Ms Young said.
They had been eagerly watching progress on the new pool for months.
"The day it opened we all arrived and I don't know who was first in but I think we all raced in and got in pretty quick," she recalled.
Almost 60 years to the day since the opening of Dunlop Park, Ms Young was poolside again, smiling and laughing as she remembered how much smaller her world seemed back then.
"We didn't have any rich kids. We were all middle-class earners. Everybody was equal.
"We didn't have a car until I was 13 and my daughter said to me one day, 'How did you get around?' I said, 'Well I rode my bike'.
"And she said, 'But how did you go to people's places for dinner?'
"I said, 'You didn't. You never, ever did that. You might at Christmas time, a group of people might come over and you'd throw some sausages on a barbecue, which would have been two Besser bricks and an old top that had rusted and you'd just clean that off."
Backyards were bigger in those days, but private swimming pools were almost non-existent.
Brisbane City Council had stipulated that 10,000 pounds needed to be raised through public donations by the Wacol to Chelmer Memorial Swimming Pool Association.
The money was duly raised and it gave people a sense of involvement and ownership.
Dunlop Park Memorial Swimming Pool quickly became a social hub for young people in Corinda and surrounding suburbs — in its first full year of operation, the pool registered 133,451 visits.
Not bad in a city with a population of about 640,000 at that time, although the pool did have three sessions per day back then.
Brisbane City Council film of the city's newest pools shows that by 1966 they were a huge attraction for the city's youth.
Dunlop Park is one of four pools — three in Brisbane and one in Redcliffe — built as memorials to local residents who gave their lives in World War II. Many other memorial pools were built elsewhere in Queensland around the same time.
After years of horrific images from the war, there was a renewed focus on physical health and swimming was regarded as a way to strengthen both mind and body.
Ms Young loved the water and she was one of the kids who started training every day at Dunlop Park.
"They formed a swimming club, so all the local kids used to come here on a Thursday night," Ms Young said.
"At one stage there, counting the learn-to-swim kids, there were 600 members.
"Then it was all the local kids from all the local schools, because none of the schools had pools either and very, very few homes had pools.
"Then, you got to know a lot of the other kids from other schools, so it became the hangout then on Saturdays and Sundays."
Out of the river and into the bath
Since long before there was running water, underground sewers or even electricity in Brisbane, people have been keen to escape the sub-tropical heat with a cool swim.
In the 1800s, the Brisbane River was clear and clean, and was the obvious place to take a dip and have a wash.
Trouble was, most people could not swim and death by drowning was common.
There was also the ever-present threat of shark attacks.
Brisbane's first public pool — known then as a swimming bath — was built at Spring Hill and opened in 1886.
Ithaca Pool opened in Paddington in 1916, with the now-defunct Davies Park Swimming Bath opening at West End in December 1921, then Fortitude Valley Municipal Swimming Bath in 1925.
But by the 1950s, the city's growing population was crying out for more swimming pools.
The beach a long way off
The local pool was an oasis in the city in the 1960s, when a trip to the beach was a major expedition.
Ms Young said it was a three-hour drive from Brisbane to Coolangatta.
"It was one lane down and one lane back. Everyone left at about four in the afternoon and it would be bumper to bumper … and then it could be five hours to come home.
"The cars would boil, you'd see them on the side of the road."
Ms Young said Dunlop Park's attendance — and its bottom line — was boosted by the fact that the manager closed the pool whenever he took breaks for lunch and dinner.
Then he charged people again to come back in.
"It cost you 20 cents [in the morning], then 20 cents in the afternoon. Then it would close again at four o'clock and he would have his dinner and open again in summer at six o'clock until eight o'clock.
"So if you came three times a day it was 60 cents a day, which was a lot of money – my mother used to limit us as to what time we could go."
The lack of heating played havoc with those social gatherings, because the pool would close from May to September.
"That was a lifetime for everybody because you didn't get to meet people if you weren't coming here, so it was incredible."
Ms Young moved out of the area after she married, but then returned 16 years ago to live once more within walking distance of the Corinda pool — and this time found herself working as a swim teacher.
Her face lights up as she recognises the familiar face of Dunlop Park staffer, Karen Mogg.
They give one another a hug.
"When I came back, I honestly don't know how I got involved here.
"I think it was Karen."
They ran into one another at a party.
"I just said, 'I used to swim here and everything' and she said, 'We're looking for teachers'.
"It was a bit of a joke, particularly with my sisters, they said, 'Oh good God you were there when you were chasing boys and now you're teaching their grandchildren to swim'."
Dunlop Park is marking its 60th birthday this week with a gold coin donation session tomorrow — with all proceeds being donated to the local RSL club.
