People who have lived in Healesville for many years are well aware of the ‘Olympic’ public pool in Queens Park, opened in 1964.
It is still widely used today especially for school ‘swimming carnivals’.
The indoor public pool, the Jack Hort Memorial Pool on the Healesville High School campus, is also a popular venue for swimmers.
However, those of a more mature vintage well remember their more basic predecessor, the George S. Matthews Memorial Baths constructed in 1922, and donated to the community by his wife in his memory.
G.S. Matthews was a well-known and respected business owner as well as a shire councillor.
The pool, situated in the north-east section of Queens Park, in the vicinity of today’s ‘Sound Shell’, was fed by constantly flowing water from the adjoining Graceburn through a pipe in a small weir in the creek.
Not surprisingly, the pool’s water was very cold and very murky.
Former swimmers were familiar with it in the days before chlorination, claiming ‘you couldn’t see its bottom’.
There was substantial spring-diving board, and a smaller pool for toddlers.
The changing-rooms were of a very basic nature, and by today’s standards the whole set-up was rather primitive but was an improvement on the ‘swimming hole’ in the nearby Watts River used previously.
For many years, the baths and the sports oval were supervised first by Mr R.G. Cartwright and then by Mr Brown who lived on site.
Their other task was that of council gravedigger.
The Matthews concrete baths served the town for many years, but by the ’60s was clearly outdated, but they continued to be used until the opening of the new ‘Olympic’ pool in 1964.
The old pool was filled in, the fence and dressing sheds demolished, and the weir destroyed… and a new era for swimmers in Healesville began.
