On 26 January 1931, a cheeky boy named Mervyn Knowles piled into a '23 Buick with his parents and siblings, and drove from the family home on Mugga Way to the brand new Manuka Pool.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Today, you can find that same boy swimming in the cool waters of the much-loved Canberra icon.
He arrives promptly at 7.45am and is in the water to swim laps by 8am.
"I used to do 36 laps in half an hour," the 94-year-old said.
"Now I'm down to about 16."
Merv and the other Knowles kids were lucky enough to score a sneak preview of the pool in the early days of 1931.
"There was only one lot of sheds finished at that point so they had boys swimming in the morning and girls in the afternoon," he said.
"We were lucky to get in before anyone else did."
Summers in Canberra in the 1930s and early 1940s were all about Manuka Pool for the many children growing up in the relatively new suburbs of Red Hill, Forrest, Kingston and Griffith. The Knowles kids would count down the days to the pool opening every October long weekend, and literally swim every single day until it closed on the Easter weekend.
Merv's older brother Lindsay Knowles was a champion freestyle swimmer, and Merv remembers more than 500 locals packing the pool on Wednesday nights to watch Lindsay race against arch rival Bill Dullard.
"I was always supposed to be as good as [Lindsay] but I never was," Merv said.
"He was terrific.
"He and Bill Dullard were the two friends but rivals - sadly, they were both killed during World War 2.
"When the older boys went into the army I was left here - so for two years I was the junior champion!"
Merv remembers the old diving tower, and the days before the tiered seating was installed when huge gangs of boys would stand on the edge of the pool in trunks that had tops zippered on ("you weren't allowed to wear just the trunks.")
A child's season pass cost 10 shillings and six pence, somewhat less than the $200 paid by Canberra kids in 2017.
Little Merv Knowles grew up to be the Australian Trade Commissioner to South Africa, Indonesia and Greece. He married the woman of his dreams, Beth Fisk, the sister of outstanding sporting talents Freddy and Noel Fisk, who grew up on Arthur Circle.
The couple had two small children - Carol and Jeffrey - and had moved homes six times within Australia and overseas before deciding to make Canberra their permanent home again in the early 1960s.
"We came back here after Jakarta - the second time - and the kids said 'where do we really live?'," he said.
"Because one was born in Sydney and one was born in Melbourne and I said well we really live here, in Canberra!
"They said 'where's our house?' and I said 'we haven't got one yet!'"
The family moved into a home in Forrest in 1963 and young Carol and Jeffrey would - of course - pack a beach towel and their togs and spend their summer days at Manuka Pool. Their father would join them and has spent every summer swimming at Manuka Pool ever since.
Today, Merv swims with a group of older swimmers known as the "Coneheads" (so named when two cheeky teenagers walked past them and one said "I wonder what those coneheads are talking about"). The group gathers each morning in a corner of the pool known as Philosopher's Corner to debate current affairs and interesting topics, among them Fibonacci theory.
He said he's pleased fellow residents of some of Canberra's oldest suburbs are calling on the ACT government to implement a long-awaited conservation management plan to protect Manuka Pool.
"It's a treasure," he said.
"I like it the way it is - it's unique. It is as it was back when it was built."
