Legs thwack the surface as outside sound is suppressed. Fitzroy pool carved a place in broader popular culture thanks to Helen Garner's book Monkey Grip. Credit:Joe Armao Now rise with triumph to the unmistakable cacophony of summer at the local outdoor pool. The slap and fizz of a dreaded bellywhacker nearby in the diving pool. "Oooooooh. That one'd hurt." Children plead with parents to stay a little longer. "Just one more dive dad, pleeeeaaase."

Middle-aged arms thrash the water in the meditation of lap swimming, up and down the lanes. The big pool still segregated by speed: fast, medium, slow. Fitzroy pool was nearly closed down in the late '90s. Locals fought hard to save the pool and their legacy is a popular pool with year-round operating hours. Credit:Justin McManus Old men ease themselves into the water with a wink at children hurrying out to parents holding out towels. This is our summer playground where icy-poles melt down arms and tennis balls are hurled between lunging groups of kids. Yet the future of these treasured pools throughout the state so often comes under threat. Lilian Eason Hubbard and father Leigh Hubbard played key roles in the fight to keep Fitzroy pool open and joined a mass occupation of the pool that lasted almost eight weeks. Credit:Justin McManus

Outdoor pools still offer much more than respite from the baking Victorian heat. They are vaults of deep nostalgia with their classic suburban pool blue tiles and grassy strips that stretch along the water. So why would anyone want to take away these summer oases with their memories of youth? The battle to save Fitzroy pool in 1994 is among Melbourne's most famous and hardest-fought campaigns. Credit:Justin McManus This question has troubled communities across Victoria for more than 20 years as local councils try to shut down outdoor pools. A fight with fired-up residents inevitably ensues. Residents of the Ballarat suburb of Black Hill are the latest to join this of tradition of community fight back as they campaign to reopen their outdoor pool. Closures have provoked impassioned responses from the furious to the hilarious – community protests, sit-ins to ward off bulldozers and fundraisers to find the ugliest man in town.

Community campaigners successfully overturned a decision by the City of Yarra to close Fitzroy pool. Credit:Justin McManus Yet local governments keep proposing to close outdoor pools because of limited operating hours, deteriorating infrastructure and high maintenance costs. They want to build indoor "leisure centres" instead. Yes, we are happy to have new aquatic centres with their gyms, pilates classes and chlorinated humidity. But not in exchange for the beloved outdoor pools. The Chewton community also won their fight against the Mount Alexander Shire and saved their 1950s-era outdoor pool. Credit:Justin McManus From Fitzroy to Ararat and Coburg to Yarrunga, community groups have refused to let go.

In Ballarat, Black Hill residents are lobbying local councillors and scrutinising attendance records and maintenance costs in their bid to retain their pool, which now sits closed. Children splash around at the Inglewood public swimming pool. Credit:Jason South The Save Black Hill Pool group has more than 150 members and their Facebook page has more than 2700 likes. Black Hill Community Progress Association president Stuart McKee says the pool is the summer reunion place for many young people, including his children who no longer go to school nearby. "They find their friends there every summer and reconnect with those friends," he says. "Socially it's very important."

Parents stop in after work, peeling off suits before a quick splash as summer nights slip away. Families feast on fish and chips for an evening treat. Barefoot cricket matches on the grass. McKee says residents are willing to contribute some of their own money to keep the 25-metre pool open. They insist the council should continue to manage it. Ballarat's council has agreed to a stay of execution of sorts while it reviews its "aquatic strategy" across the municipality. The pool was last open in February 2014. The council recently revealed it would build a new 50-metre indoor pool at the Ballarat Aquatic and Lifestyle Centre and voted to close down the Black Hill pool. The new indoor pool is due to open in April. Ballarat council's chief executive Anthony Schinck says the decision to decommission the Black Hill pool was not about saving money but "reallocating investment in aquatic recreation in a different way."

He says the council needs to examine where pools are located in the region in preparation for the population trends in Ballarat's growth. Outdoor pools have become a financial burden and administrative headache for many councils. Their ageing decades-old pipes and concrete have become increasingly expensive to repair. Seasonal opening hours are another argument for their closure. But it was not always so. Outdoor pools once symbolised local progress and a "cultural pre-disposition" for the outdoors, according to RMIT academic Ian McShane. In his paper, "The past and future of local swimming pools", McShane says Victorian councils built about 200 swimming pools between 1950 and 1980. That period was a grand phase for these monuments, attesting to municipal achievement.

Australia's success in the Melbourne Olympic Games helped spur this pool building frenzy, as did concerns about drownings. Outdoor pools hosted festivals and pop concerts as their popularity flourished. And councils were good at building them, McShane says. "They knew about concrete. They knew about hydraulics," he says. He says pools became part of the "urban fabric" and remain much-loved but councils are under immense financial pressure to maintain them. "We've had them for a century or more and people are unwilling to let go of them." Campaigners hoping to save pools are now looking to impressive victories in battles throughout Melbourne and country Victoria to inspire them in their fight. Fitzroy pool is among the most famous and hardest fought campaigns. In 1994 locals succeeded in overturning a decision by the City of Yarra to close the pool, which had carved a place in broader popular culture in Helen Garner's book Monkey Grip.

Lawyer turned union leader Leigh Hubbard was among the spokespeople of that campaign. He says locals were partly motivated by a feeling that social justice had been denied. "Some people can afford to take the kids in the car and go to South Melbourne but many can't," he says. Hubbard joined a mass occupation at the pool lasting almost eight weeks. Hundreds of protesters jumped simultaneously (as he describes it) into the Clifton Hill pool forcing waves of water to overflow. The stunt aimed to prove that surrounding pools could not accommodate all the swimmers from Fitzroy. "It was a very particular time when Jeff Kennett was amalgamating councils and doing things that were very controversial." Eventually the commissioners installed by the Kennett government to run the council relented. The protesters' legacy is a popular pool with year-round operating hours. And in Chewton near Castlemaine residents won their fight against the Mount Alexander Shire. The shire had wanted to build an indoor aquatic centre a short drive from the 25-metre outdoor pool in Chewton.

The promised aquatic centre was to stay open all year but locals could not bear to give up their pool that was built in the 1950s. It held too many precious memories. Chewton Pool president Rose Darling says the former operator Jimmy Lynch was well-known for marching to the water's edge and filling up his kettle while working there from the 1970s until 1999. "He was demonstrating the quality of the pool water was so good you could drink it," she says. Chewton Pool is now run by a local community committee of management although the shire does contribute some funding. But it took a long campaign before the council handed over control in 2011. Locals raised $20,000 by hosting a competition to find Chewton's ugliest man. They drummed up $80,000 in all. Darling says protesters stared down workers who had come to demolish the pool and stayed there 24 hours a day for a fortnight. There was a mass rally and campaign organisers enlisted comedian Rod Quantock to raise their profile and help with fundraising. "I think a lot of people are pretty invested in this place," Darling says. "I think they're pretty proud."

Over in Yarrunga near Wangaratta, Jenny Hart has contacted the Chewton Pool committee in the hope of emulating their success. Hart says her nearby round "free-form" pool is also facing closure by the council. She says the council wants to build a seasonal 50- metre outdoor pool attached to an indoor centre instead of keeping the Yarrunga pool open. "It's not because I want to go and swim in that pool, it's what it represents as a family place to go," she says. "I lie there with my newspaper or book and my kids can go in the water and have fun." Hart says Yarrunga pool is set to close after this summer, but she hopes the community can find a way to keep it open. Now go back to the local pool where families are lining up at the entry window on a sultry summer afternoon.

Pass through the iron turnstiles. Girls are huddled in small groups away from their parents, testing the boundaries of independence. Occasionally one of them breaks free to execute a cartwheel down the sloping grass. Teenage boys hold boisterous conversations, unable to discuss the bus timetable without bursting into profanity. Their foul language turns parents' heads hoping their young children will not take that language home with them. But they will all keep coming back and laying down new memories. They have chosen the chlorinated water despite having the bay nearby. That's because the sea belongs to nature but pools belong to us.