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The pool in the western NSW town of Walgett will remain closed this summer, with council finding it was unsafe and beyond repair.
Walgett Memorial swimming pool will remain closed this swimming season, with council ruling it unsafe and beyond repair. Member for Barwon Roy Butler wants the state government to conduct an audit of local pools to avoid more closures.
As the weather turns, residents of inland Australia begin flocking to their local pool for the start of the swimming season. But with a scorching summer looming, residents of Walgett in western New South Wales will not be taking part in the seasonal ritual. Walgett Shire Council says building a new pool is simply beyond the capacity of a small rural council to fund alone.
It leaves few options for cooling off for Walgett parents like Katrina Marshall and her two boys aged 17 and 14.
"It's going to be a very boring summer. ""We're always forgotten, we're a little town in the middle of nowhere, we don't exist in Sydney unless kids are stealing cop cars," she said. Sixty years on and the pool is showing its age. It closed again in April, before the end of last season, after council deemed it unsafe.
Walgett's mayor, Jasen Ramien, said the council did not want to close the pool this season, but it had no choice.
"The decision to close the Walgett pool was one of the hardest decisions this council has had to make," he said. "We didn't want to close it, but the reality was the pool had reached a point where it was no longer safe. " The council will focus on building a replacement pool instead of investing up to $1 million in short-term repairs that were not guaranteed to last, according to a NSW Public Works inspection.
In a letter to NSW Premier Chris Minns, Cr Ramien described the pool as the backbone of the community.
"It is one of the few places in our town that offers relief from the heat, but also relief from boredom, disengagement and isolation. The Walgett Shire Council has requested up to $420,000 from the state government to provide a free daily bus service from Walgett to the Collarenebri swimming pool. Former Olympic swim coach Laurie Lawrence is worried the bush faces a generation of kids who can't swim due to aging pool infrastructure.
"It could be a generation, particularly in the country areas where kids, because they have a lack of pools, don't get to enjoy the water, don't get to stay safe," he said. Many council-run pools were built in the 60s during the golden era of swimming.
National Drowning Report 2026 by Royal Lifesaving Australia found drowning rates were double for those from the most disadvantaged areas and nearly triple for regional residents and nearly quadruple for remote residents compared to major cities The member for Barwon, Roy Butler, has called on the state government to audit pools across the state.
"I've spoken to the minister for local government, and the minister for sport about doing an audit of those pools, and I've also taken it up with Royal Life Saving Australia … to get them to pull together a report that prioritises pools so then government can prioritise allocation of funds," he added.500 pools nationally would need replacing , or require "significant repairs" to the pool shell within the next 10 years, at a cost of $8 billion. Ian McShane, an associate professor at the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT in Melbourne, has been following the deterioration and closure of public pools for over 15 years.
"It would be a loss of an important recreational function. "Local public pools are one place where anybody, regardless of who you are and your social status, can mix. ""Families would be reluctant to move to areas that don't have good social infrastructure. " Dr McShane said he wants to see pools classed as critical infrastructure, alongside roads and energy networks.
"I think the three levels of government should get together and agree that these are important community places and closing them can really have a significant personal and social impact on communities, particularly small communities. "
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