Monday 21 January 2008

Homebush Aquatic Centre

Above: The leisure pools
Above: Outside
Above: The leisure pools
Above: Competition diving and water polo pool
Above: Competition pool (I did my laps here)
Above: The competition pools - diving/water polo and main pool
Above: The competition pool, with inflatable because it's school holidays

Above: leisure pools and th second lap pool (warm down pool during competitions)
Above: Cafe on second level
Above: Ben (on right) and his friends
Above: leisure pool and river run

Visited here today for Ben's birthday. A terrific facility thanks to the Olympics. Two 50m pool, one 8 lane, one 10 lane, diving pool, and freeform play pools with rapid ruver run, water slide etc.

The facility also has gym and fitness centre, sauna, steam room, spa pools. There's swimming classes, training squads, all day lap swimming, cafes. You can book childminding, hosted kids' birthday parties, massage and a triathlon club.


I don't think many people from outside Australia realise how deeply public swimming facilities penetrate the Australian psyche. To use this facility it cost us $28.80 for 3 adults and 4 kids for all day. I've paid more than that for a single session at a European pool. We get a bit purse-lipped if pool entry gets anything beyond about $5-$6 in an indoor heated centre, $3-4 outdoors. Generally swimming pools are one of the community facilities, along with libraries, parks etc which local government maintains (they are NOT however responsible for education - that's a state government level responsibility).

3 comments:

Earthmom said...

This facility is awesome and looks like Ben had a great time on his birthday. (I wish they have more olympic size pools like this in KL where I'm from. *sigh*)

Anonymous said...

Nice looking set up, thanks for the great pics.

Is it just me, or are there no lifeguards on in any of the pics? I would have thought there would have been alot more and highly visible?

At our pools we wear red and yellow and we stand out very easily.

Anonymous said...

Above: The competition pool, with inflatable because it's school holidays

^ that pic has some i think. They seem to be in white. On opposite sides of the pool, maybe one male and one female?

They'd have LG's i know, wish i worked there!

Great site. So many people love pools and swimming, thanks!