The Memory Pool

Swimming is a central part of most Australian childhoods. We idealise beaches and surf, but for many kids the local pool - whether it's an ocean, tidal or a chlorinated pool - is where they pass summer days. Evocative, funny and sometimes bittersweet, almost 30 people remember the pools that shaped their childhoods.

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Swimming is a central part of most Australian childhoods. We idealise beaches and surf, but for many kids the local pool – whether it’s an ocean, tidal or a chlorinated pool – is where they pass summer days. Pools are places of imagination, daring, belonging, freedom, friendship and romance. For some they are places of hard-core swimming training. This delightful, nostalgic anthology brings together reflections and recollections about the swimming pools of childhood from a range of Australians of diverse ages and backgrounds, well known and not-so-famous – including Trent Dalton, Leah Purcell, Shane Gould, Bryan Brown and Merrick Watts.

Evocative, funny and sometimes bittersweet, almost 30 people remember the pools that shaped their childhoods. Everyone who has ever dived into their local Olympic pool, bush waterhole or saltwater baths will want to submerge themselves in this beautiful book.

The Memory Pool is a collection of 28 personal stories that take thereader into the inner worlds of childhood and teenage years at thelocal pool.
Story-tellers include Bryan Brown, Trent Dalton, Shane Gould, AshleyHay, Daniel Kowalski, Laurie Lawrence, Leah Purcell, Merrick Wattsand many more from locations all over Australia.
Will resonate with readers who remember high-diving, sunburn, wettowels and pine-lime splices
Joyful and celebratory but sometimes sad and writers remember thepool as a place of escape from troubled homes
It’s like Humans of New York meets Places We Swim, but inbeautifully written words
Therese Spruhan has interviewed writers, actors, championswimmers, and everyday pool-goers and chapters are presentedseamlessly in their own words