hobsons bay city council – Williamstown Open Water Swim Coaching

Hobsons Bay City Council have released their Williamstown Swimming and Lifesaving Club redevelopment plans, in conjunction with the lifesaving club, for public consultation.

The proposed beach redevelopment plans do not increase the number of public toilets at Williamstown Beach, despite regular 30-minute queues in summer and a petition of more than 1,100 beach users. There is also no increase in the number of public showers.

This pic (below) of a long line to go to the toilet is not unusual. The proposed redevelopment plans contain the same number of toilets, no increase, so the thirty-minute wait will continue long into the future.

It looks like the existing line-up of two cold, open showers and two warm showers in changerooms will become four changerooms, no open showers. The area around the change rooms looks cramped and clearly very close to people eating at the outdoor dining area of The Kiosk.

The front lawn of the lifesaving club will be unfenced but is clearly still part of the club footprint. The club seem to be getting four hot showers for men and four for women inside bigger change rooms, so double the capacity that the public will squeeze into.

The new plans show where public swimmers meet – swimmers are pictured meeting in the green circles below! – and show how they are exposed to the wind (represented by squiggly lines).

But the plans provide public facilities that are a long way from where the public swimmers meet and there are no additional facilities than the overcrowded existing two toilets and four showers.

You can clearly see swimmers meeting in the green circles in the site analysis aerial picture issued by Hobsons Bay City Council (above).

Green circles mark where swimmers are meeting and leaving their belongings. The new public facilities are circled in red. The swimmers get a wall, a windy exposed ledge and overcrowded toilets and showers a long walk from the water and, still, next to the diners at The Kiosk.

At the major bottleneck corner, in the bottom left of the above picture, the plans propose retaining the rubbish and recycling bins next to the lawn, (despite previous HBCC plans to move them), breaking the lawn into two ledges and replacing the pool fence with a gated ramp next to an administration block wall.

The area at the corner of the carpark and the existing pool, where swimmers walk down steps to the beach or around the shared path toward The Kiosk, is a busy pedestrian and vehicle bottleneck in summer.

Swimmers access the water here and exit back to the carpark. From here they must walk 150m to the overcrowded change rooms and toilets, where they can expect to wait up to 30-minutes in summer months. None of that will change.

Here at this place swimmers meet for swim groups. Kayak groups, scuba divers, families and community groups also meet here.

Opening up the area currently occupied by the WSLSC pool to the public for shade, shelter, meeting and gathering spaces would be a better outcome for this prime piece of Williamstown publicly-owned foreshore.

High concrete walls two metres from the sea with ledges and window sills for swimmers to huddle around while exposed to the wind. This is the current plan just released by Hobsons Bay City Council.

In the picture below, the intrusive pool fence will be replaced, not by open public gathering space, but by a locked gate, a ramp and a high administration block concrete wall.