Manuka Pool

When it officially opened on Australia Day 1931, Canberrans did not call it Manuka Pool. They called it “The Swimming Pool,” because it was the only public pool in the entire capital. Before architect E.H. Henderson’s Art Deco pavilion rose from the paddocks, residents made do with swimming holes in the Molonglo, Cotter and Murrumbidgee rivers.

Built partly by Depression-era sustenance workers for £10,000, the pool was originally supposed to be twice as grand: 61 metres long, heated and equipped with hot showers and sunbathing areas. Economic reality cut the proposal in half. What survived was a compact Federal Art Deco landmark decorated with shell motifs, wave-patterned stained-glass fanlights and vertically fluted entrance columns.

The pool first admitted swimmers on Christmas Day 1930, before its dressing rooms were finished. Because only the men’s facilities were ready, boys and girls initially swam at separate times. Its peculiar 100-foot by 40-foot dimensions remain unchanged, a Depression-era compromise preserved in concrete. What began as Canberra’s only swimming pool has endured as one of its clearest reminders of the modest, improvised capital the city once was.