As a Melburnian, Fitzroy Pool is my ‘third place’. Where’s yours?

Our first summer in Collingwood was saved by the Fitzroy Pool. We hadn’t yet worked out we could put an inflatable pool on the roof deck of our apartment and the endless concrete horizon was doing our heads in. We needed a swim.

The pool was a kilometre away, through backstreets. Towels slung around shoulders, we’d scuff off in thongs and shorts. Pay eight bucks to get in, find spots on the tiered seating and while away a pleasant few hours.

Serious swimmers cut laps while my husband and I stuck to the pool’s mucking around zone. I’d float on my back, and he’d drift me around in his arms while we debriefed on the day and people watched. Always stunning men there. We’d warm up on the hot concrete, eyes closed, listening to the world, then hop back in.

Instead of feeling povo for being a regular at a public pool in my 50s, I felt cool. Friends had their own backyard pools lined with gardenia hedges. I had community. A social feast hangout.

Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip meant so much to me when I was 19, living in a Carlton share house and feeling the beautiful, terrible bite of first love and responsibility. Now here I was, decades later, looking at the “Aqua Profonda” sign – hand painted around 1954 to warn Italian migrants of deep water – thinking of Nora and Javo. Surrounded by randoms, part of something, feeling really alive.

The unlikely joy of that vibe came back to me with a fabulous story in this masthead about the “third places”, an idea coined by US sociologist Ray Oldenburg that refers to where we spend our time in home cities and towns.

His theory is our first place is where we live, our second where we work. The third is somewhere communal, public, relaxed, peopled by locals but welcoming to blow-ins. By Oldenburg’s definition, these third places must be egalitarian, wholesome and encourage conversations and social mixing. Where anyone can feel comfortable.

They’re places that make a local community more cohesive and liveable. A particular cafe or bar. A barber. A library. Not the whole of Melbourne’s laneways or the entire sweep of Sydney’s Bondi Beach. They have to be personal.