The pool is a summery delight for swimmers and a smart move from the mayor.

Last week I walked through Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter, commando and braless.

After smugly setting off that morning for my second swim at the Karanga Plaza pool, dubbed Browny’s Pool by mayor Wayne Brown, I realised I’d made the mistake of leaving my underwear for the day in the car after driving there with my togs already on.

I had a brief panic in the dinky red-speckled changing shed that alarmingly resembles a magician’s closet in which one might be made to disappear, then decided all I needed to do was match the audacity of the pool itself. Heeding the warnings about seabather’s eruption, I peeled off my wet togs, pulled on my shorts and t-shirt and marched confidently to my car past morning commuters sucking on their coffees.

Despite being surrounded by water, it wasn’t until late last year that Auckland got its first open-air seawater harbour pool. After years of nurturing the small amount of pride the beautiful Parnell Baths allow us and looking over the ditch jealously at Sydney, a city of many sea pools, Auckland has finally added the couple of inches in stature that come with getting something ambitious, attractive and decidedly urban, done.

In full view of a city alive with people, industry and marine activity, swimming in the pool exposes you in the best way. I felt very free swimming in Browny’s pool. My first trip to the pool was on Christmas day with my family. We trekked over Te Wero on that overcast day and threw our bodies, stuffed full of ham, into the water. While there has always been plenty to do in Auckland, the idea of being able to cool off without a trip to a beach on Christmas day felt like a redefinition of leisure in the central city and our relationship with the water surrounding us. The water was warmer than it had been in the sea over the summer, which I assume is science, and while it’s not crystal clear, it’s perfectly pleasant, and I didn’t emerge slicked or smelly.

Swimming laps in the pool was a revelation. I debated whether to wear goggles and a cap for fear of looking too much like an indoor swimmer. In the end, with no qualms about swimming in the harbour despite having never done it before, I decided I didn’t need to see clearly in it, just in case.

In big cities worldwide, people walk down the street with their laundry. They find the green spaces they don’t have because they live in apartments in communal spaces like parks. With its sprawling suburbs, in some ways, Auckland has locked the communal, mundane and necessary parts of life out of view and out of the central city. Amenities like supermarkets have only been added to the central city in the last two decades, finally recognising that people live there and like to make and eat food occasionally. To have a place where it’s free to swim for exercise, another sometimes mundane necessity, in a city where you’re unavoidably among other people feels like an extension of that recognition. Being in your togs in the middle of town and walking to the car braless is completely normal, actually.

The mayor has claimed the pool as an achievement, ostentatiously lending his name to it. He was inspired by Aarhus Havnebadet, the world’s largest seawater bath,  after a visit to Denmark. He no doubt returned from his Scandi sojourn and cracked the whip on getting something…anything…done that shows he means it when he says he wants to give more of the waterfront back to Aucklanders.

There’s some risk to tying himself so closely to the pool, especially when your last name is Brown, your city is prone to multiple warnings about water quality, and your constituents frequently grumble about having to swim in poo. When the pool was declared unsafe for swimming on Boxing Day, Brown shook his fist at the clouds by doubting the accuracy of Safe Swim’s modelling, invoking the dreaded spectre of the Auckland floods, which he says he was blamed for.

There are other risks in attaching your name to something as a politician, too. What if it’s a flop, and no one uses it? What if someone is injured or drowns there? What if you’ve misjudged how you’re perceived and how much affection people have for you and can not get away with colloquially naming the thing after yourself? Few politicians can get away with that. Chippy’s pool or Luxo’s pool would sink like a cringe-covered stone to the bottom of the sea. 

Brown hard-launched the pool to the public, and it was deemed Browny’s pool with an Instagram video of him swimming in it. Wisely, he dialled down the strange sense of intimacy watching the video conjures by wearing swimming shorts and not speedos. In 2023, The Spinoff asked, “Has Wayne Brown ever looked this happy?” after he walked along the roof of Eden Park, kicking a ball, to welcome the world to the Fifa World Cup. His pool video further proves the outlandish theory that Brown might be a happy man. It’s also funny.

He and his team have discovered that the secret sauce to making Brown work on social media is letting him be who he is. His temperament and blunt speech, once a political liability, have been embraced by Aucklanders. His approval rating is high. He’s in step with what feels like a broad pendulum swing away from the safety-conscious years of the pandemic. That’s clever political positioning in the city that copped the worst of the lockdowns. He’s been ahead of prime minister Christopher Luxon in calling for less “nojo” and red tape, and as Luxon continues to struggle with authenticity in a communications era where that’s crucial, Brown seems to have found his way of being. His latest funny Instagram post? A call for a grown-up conversation about safety and risk. 

For Browny, the pool proves he’s more politically astute and attuned to the zeitgeist than many people thought he was when first elected. For swimmers, the pool is just a pool — a summery delight and another reason to feel like Auckland is growing up and making the most of one of its greatest assets. Five stars.