I'm in my late 60s and am personally sick of waiting for years for our promised pool. 

Pensioners do get help with their rates, rego, power bills, council help etc., but our health and mobility is what makes life worth living.

I, along with with about a dozen other Kangaroo Flat citizens, make the 25km round trip to the Eaglehawk pool, summer and winter, two or three mornings a week to join about two dozen others from all around the city for aqua aerobics.  

Not only does this exercise keep us moving without pain or strain on our joints, it gives us social contact and saves us amassing huge chiropractic bills.  

The smaller warm pool is also a marvellous help with rehabilitation after surgery or with other complaints, such as arthritis, but we need another heated pool for our suburb and this region.

How often do we have to have the rug pulled from under us?

First we had the possibility of a new pool dangled in front of us when the ice-skating rink was in trouble and it was suggested that a new facility could be built next to our new indoor pool so the cooling of one could offset the cost of heating the other. Sounded very sensible, but obviously too hard for the council, so we lost Victoria’s only regional ice-skating rink.  

Next, Kangaroo Flat was going to have a beach at Crusoe Res. An access road was made, a gate installed, and all we needed was a couple of tonnes of sand to be trucked in, but then they decided that Kangaroo Flat really was going to get a new pool! Well, stop the beach, Kangaroo Flat couldn’t possibly have both!

Instead, six or seven years later, we now have a great deck and a pontoon, with rocky ground, no shade, no seating, no sand, a portable toilet 400 metres away from where you and your children are swimming, and a very inadequate car park and entry access.

Thank goodness Jack Lyons is “pushing” for our pool on behalf of most of us in this neglected suburb of Bendigo. 

It is long overdue and is certainly wanted and needed by many, young and old.

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