Staff recall fondly the good old days of Victoria Park pool
Old Victoria Park facility was so popular its water would turn black in a week because it was usually standing room only for 'swimmers'
The old Victoria Park public pool had a glorious history of having hosted many major water sports events, but few know it also had a past of having dirt-black water and frequent chlorine leaks.
After its last day in service on Sunday, pool staff gathered to share stories of the 56-year-old swimming facility.
Former filtration plant employee Chan Moon, 92, spoke of the summer peak season in the 1950s and 1960s: "The whole pool would have turned black by the end of the week from people's sweat and body dirt."
At the time, there were neither crowd control nor breaks to clean the pool in the day, he explained.
"We had about 6,000 to 7,000 swimmers a day. It was so crowded that people could only stand in the pool and had no space to swim," he said.
The facility was Hong Kong's first public swimming pool and the last one that still used chlorine to treat its water. All other public pools in the city use ozone for water treatment.
