CONTRIBUTORS

Liz Taylor

Dr. Liz Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design at Monash University. She has previously worked in research fellowship roles at RMIT and at Melbourne University. Often using spatial and historical perspectives, her research develops understanding of long-term urban change and the role of policy settings in it. One focus has been car parking. She is the author of Dry Zones, co-host of podcast This Must Be The Place, a musician, and an enthusiast of country swimming pools. She is currently researching public swimming pools as community spaces in Australia.

Uneasy dreams: A century of change in Victoria’s public swimming pools

Posted on August 14, 2026 by Liz Taylor

One of my earliest memories is being trapped by an uncomfortably safe seatbelt into the back of a 1980s-hot family van and seeing a gigantic swimming pool come into view. This pool emerged, mirage-like, from a hazy horizon of eucalyptus trees and melting bitumen. I don’t remember first seeing the ocean, but I remember thinking the water at this place was similarly vast. Decades later, trying to place this vivid but untethered memory, I’m almost certain this was the Raymond West swimming pool – or swimming lake – in Shepparton, northern Victoria.

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