Warrnambool College Pool to Close in December and Be Demolished
A popular school swimming pool in the state's south-west will close and then be knocked down. The decision was announced without warning, and the community has responded by asking for more time.
The pool serves school swimming lessons and a club that has produced swimmers at national level. Families and coaches say losing it would leave a gap that nearby facilities cannot fill.
Image: Warrnambool, Victoria, by Smegs07 via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
The photograph shows Warrnambool, not the college pool or the rally.
What has been decided
The Warrnambool College swimming pool closure and planned demolition was announced on Thursday 17 September 2026. Pool access was cut off with the announcement, and the college community was told the pool had reached the end of its practical life.
The department and college are working together to close the pool in December 2026, with decommissioning and demolition of the facility to commence from the start of 2027. Decommissioning means shutting a facility down and making it safe before it is taken apart.
A Department of Education spokesperson said the pool had reached the end of its practical life and had become increasingly costly for the college to maintain and repair. It is the third pool in the region to close since the end of last year.
What the pool does for the town
The pool sits on college land in the Warrnambool area of south-west Victoria. Every school in the town bar two uses it for swimming lessons as part of the curriculum, which makes it the venue where most local children learn to swim through school.
The college sits inside the Warrnambool City Council area. A swim school also operates out of the pool, running classes for school-aged children through the week.
That mix is why the closure reaches beyond the college itself. The pool is used by students who are not yet confident in the water, by club swimmers training through winter, and by families booking lessons outside school hours.
The club that grew there
The Warrnambool Swimming Club president Katie Gleeson said families were devastated and that the closure came out of the blue for all of them. She told residents they were shell-shocked. She spoke at the rally to ask for more time.
Sam Pendergast, a former swimmer who represented Australia at the Youth Olympics and won a scholarship to the University of Notre Dame in the United States to study anthropology, credits the pool for his career.
He said the pool allowed the swimming club to go from one or two national level swimmers to dozens of national level swimmers. He said the facility let a very small community build a program that was competitive on a national level, and he fears future regional students will not get the same opportunity.
He said that when he travelled to Melbourne as a young swimmer, the only reason he could compete against students from the state's best resourced schools was the training the pool gave him. He told the town's paper that the decision takes that opportunity away.
The rally
More than 200 people rallied to protest against the planned closure and demolition. The rally was held on Sunday 20 September 2026 at 10am near the college pool off Grafton Road.
A petition asking for the closure to be delayed gathered hundreds of signatures as it was passed around the rally. Swimmers and parents carried signs asking for the pool to be saved.
The Barwon South West Swimming Association said the region needed the pool. Other pools at Port Fairy and Cobden had already closed, leaving the town's swimmers with fewer places to train.
What the region loses
A swim school that operates out of the pool would have to relocate its classes. The outdoor pool at the town's aquatic centre closes in April, so the college pool has been the option for the colder months, when club swimmers do most of their training.
That combination is what worries families. Losing a winter training base is a bigger problem than losing a summer one, because competitive swimmers train through the cooler months and the nearest alternatives are already busy.
One parent of swimmers at the pool said there was no suitable alternative in the community, because the remaining facilities are already under pressure. For some families, driving to train in Melbourne would be the only fallback, and the trip takes hours each way. Para-swimmers preparing for national competitions would be among the hardest hit, because they rely on regular pool time with coaching.
School swimming lessons are the other half of the loss. When every school in a town but two depends on one pool for its curriculum lessons, closing that pool pushes those lessons onto a facility that is already carrying its own bookings.
What happens next
The pool closes in December 2026, and decommissioning and demolition of the facility commence from the start of 2027. Between now and then, the swim school and the club need somewhere else to go.
The club wants the timetable pushed back so a replacement plan can be worked out. Nothing has been announced to fill the gap, and the region has already lost two other pools.
Warrnambool sits on the coast at the western end of the Great Ocean Road region, and swimming is part of how families there use the water. Club members train across the year, and surf lifesaving and open water swimming both draw on the same base of confident young swimmers that a town pool helps produce.
Where things stand
The department's position is that the pool is at the end of its useful life and increasingly costly to repair. The community's case is that the timing leaves no room to arrange a replacement, and the club wants the closure pushed back so a plan can be made.
The club and families have asked for more time to prepare. The pool is due to close in December 2026, with decommissioning and demolition of the facility to commence from the start of 2027. No alternative training arrangement has been announced, and the town's remaining facilities are already stretched.
For more on the region, start with the Victoria local guide.
Works Cited
Hynninen, Eden. "Ballarat and South West Victoria local news briefing: Monday, September 21, 2026." ABC News, 21 Sept. 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-21/ballarat-and-south-west-victoria-local-news-briefing/107175190.
Baker, Sophia. "'Not sure what we're meant to do': swimmers left adrift by shock pool closure." The Standard, 20 Sept. 2026, https://www.standard.net.au/story/9353615/warrnambool-college-pool-closure-sparks-community-rally.