Can we afford not to have a pool? (#800)

The family Holden sits in the carport most of the time these days.  Jim can’t drive any more.  It seems like only yesterday that is keen eyesight, agility and fast reactions were legend on West Australian hockey fields.  Not now though. 

Jim has always believed in staying trim and he knows that maintaining fitness is the way to go.  His health carers have advised him to swim three times a week if he wants to stay out of aged care.

He’s alone and fiercely independent.  But he realises that to act on the medical advice he’s going to need help from others.

Fortunately Jim is blessed with good friends.  There’ll always be someone who will drive him to Albany and back so that he can swim for his life.  But he’s too nice a guy to let others pay the bill.  If his mates are going to drive him to the swimming pool, he’ll pick up the tab.

He consults the RAC website and finds that his near-new Holden costs him 86¢ per km to run.  For him the return trip to Albany is 108km and costs $93.

Surely not!  Well … he pauses to add up the costs of insurance, licence fees, depreciation, fuel, maintenance, etc.  As much as he doesn’t want to believe it, he can’t find any holes in the RAC analysis.

He’s losing heart now.  

He’s an age pensioner.  With full supplements he receives $749 each fortnight.  Six trips a fortnight are going to cost him $558 and will leave him with $96 per week for everything else.

Jim simply can’t afford to stay fit by swimming if he has to pay for the travel himself – and he certainly won’t let his mates pay.  He realises that it’s not a question of who pays – the costs are real whether it’s his car, his mate’s car, a government car or whatever –it would cost somebody.

He wonders how many others there are like him in Denmark – so he digs out the Shire’s Needs Assessment Study (2009) and finds that swimming is the third most popular non-organised activity (walking comes first) and that in a population of 5,000 there’d be roughly 1100 who swam at least once per year.  

If they all drove to Albany in cars like his, the community would be feeding the oil, automobile, insurance industries about $105k each year in travel alone (without car pooling) … for one trip each per year!  

Just a couple of trips a month for all these people equates to $2.5M.  For three trips a week … let’s not go there!

The Demark community can’t afford not to have a pool.

Cyril Edwards, DACCI, denmarkpool@gmail.com and http://www.denmarkpool.blogspot.com.

Year-round swimming worth the fight (#799)

Bells Beach is Victoria's most famous surfing beach and one of the world's great surfing breaks. The excellent break is due to a combination of clean waves, that have refracted around the Otways, and particularly a gently sloping limestone reef off the southern point that produces one of the world's best right-handers. It can handle anything from 1.5 up to 7 m.

Surf Life Savings’ ‘Australians for Life’ website gives Bells a hazard rating of 6 on a scale of 1-10  … that is “Moderately hazardous”.  Manly (N Steyne) and Surfer’s Paradise are also rated 6/10. These rating refer to the beach and surf conditions – not potentially dangerous marine life!

In comparison, Ocean Beach rates 8, “Highly hazardous” – along with Anvil Beach and Ratcliffe Bay.  Back Beach (rating 9) is considered “Extremely hazardous”.  Peaceful Bay is rated 3 i.e. “Least hazardous”.

Denmark residents are extremely fortunate to have such a dynamic Surf Life Saving Club patrolling the township’s closest beach at peak times.  However, the lifeguards are volunteers and the beach cannot be patrolled all the time.  Residents who believe that Denmark doesn’t need a swimming pool because it has the ocean might pause to think of the safety angle. 

What counts as moderately or highly hazardous for a healthy teenager does not apply across the spectrum of ages.  Almost any water space is hazardous to a toddler, but even for life-long swimmers the personal hazard rating goes up as the body ages.  Some senior swimmers become noticeably tentative in even quite mild surf.  Waves that once would have thrilled may now spill; bodies that once bent with ease are now more likely to be less flexible and more prone to nasty tumbles.

Tolerance to cold winds also seems to decrease with age.  For all but the hardiest, young and old, the season for ocean swimming is short.

 

Yet, paradoxically, the health benefits of swimming are even more relevant when ageing bones become brittle.  High impact and weight bearing exercises become less attractive … and our bodies naturally shy away from them.  Aquatic exercise … and particularly regular aquatic workouts – become increasingly important.

And the importance of early childhood development of water skills cannot be overstated.

This is why DACCI believes it’s worth the agonisingly long drawn-out battle to see that Denmark has its own year-round heated indoor swimming pool.  If we want a safe and healthy community it’s a price worth paying.

It seems like a no-brainer to us!

Cyril Edwards, DACCI, denmarkpool@gmail.com and http://www.denmarkpool.blogspot.com.

Shall we .. or shall we not?