General News
10 October, 2025
Pool integral to community
Saturday's whole-town garage sale continues a legacy of community advocacy for the pool's future dating back decades.
When it comes down to it, advocacy for Maryborough’s outdoor pool isn’t a grass roots effort, but one nurtured over decades, whose legacy is set to continue this weekend.
The community are invited to come together this Saturday for a whole town garage sale starting from Maryborough’s outdoor pool.
Although the gates will remain shut, leaving ducks as the heritage pool’s only regulars, it’s set to be the biggest crowd the pool’s seen since its closure in 2022.
Alongside food, drink and a raffle, the event will have maps of around 45 garage sales across town for a gold coin donation.
Proceeds will go to supporting the community advocacy group Friends of Maryborough Outdoor Pool Precinct (FOMOP) and the pool’s eventual reopening.
Now Central Goldfields Shire Council has secured $9 million in state and federal funding, attributed in part to the group’s efforts, FOMOP chair Duncan Bates is keen to continue the momentum.
“Our concern is that it will get sidelined by the council as a too hard project,” he said.
“We want to keep the pool front of mind for people.”
It’s a sentiment fifth generation Maryborough local Linda Wadeson can get behind.
“Anything the community does about the pool I’m behind 100 percent,” she said.
By opening her garage this Saturday she takes part in a family legacy dating back to Henry James Weir, her grandfather, and the pool’s opening in 1940.
Mr Weir used to work on the railways, Ms Wadeson said, and would often be out of work.
It was the pool’s construction, with the basins dug out by hand, that gave him and other unemployed labourers short-term work during the Great Depression.
These labourers outlined their initials in the Octagonal Pool’s hexagonal tiles. Ms Wadeson believes her grandfather is amongst them.
In the decades following, and for the rest of that century, the precinct became a hub of summer life.
“We spent every day in the summer down there,” Ms Wadeson said.
She remembers swimming in the pool, under big lights, late on a warm summer’s night.
“There was nothing like it. Especially when it rained. It was fantastic,” Ms Wadeson said.
It’s something current local kids have lost, Ms Wadeson said, and something the community is fighting to have back.
But the relatively recent closure of the precinct wasn’t the first time the pool has been threatened.
In the mid 90s, in the early years of the Central Goldfields Shire, the pool was set for closure and redevelopment.
The shire planned to close the pool citing cost and the pool’s age once the indoor pool at Pascoe Reserve was completed.
The view was that the cost of running two pools meant one or the other had to go.
The announcement caused outcry leading to a wave of community advocacy.
That’s where Ms Wadeson’s mum comes in, Laurice Weir, and the advocacy her daughter now follows in the footsteps of.
Although they weren’t met by unanimous support, the effort to keep the outdoor pool open was fostered by Ms Weir alongside two other women: Lauren Woodward and Trina Thatcher.
“She was down at the council at least once a week about the pool. They would see her and literally roll their eyes,” Ms Wadeson said.
Throughout 1996 and into 1997 a petition was formed, State Government contacted, and eventually the pool was recognised for its heritage significance as an example of the art deco era.
Ms Wadeson said Ms Weir contacted the Art Deco Organisation (formerly Society Art Deco Victoria Inc.) who listed it as a place of state significance in 1997.
Although this created no legal requirement it paved the way for the heritage listing later that year protecting the pool for decades to come.
Although Ms Weir has since died, Ms Wadeson said if her mum could she’d be right there advocating with the community.
“She would role over in her grave if she knew,” she said.
It’s a legacy that FOMOP has picked up in stride.
“It’s not surprising to me that in the past the community had to fight for it and we have to fight for it now,” Mr Bates said.
“It’s heartening to know that people still care.”
He welcomes the community to come along for the town-wide garage sale, some food, or just a community catch up.
The day starts at 7.30 am this Saturday, October 11, outside Maryborough’s Olympic Outdoor Pool Complex and goes to midday.