Fitzroy Pool and the Aqua Profonda Sign

Painted in black letters on the brick wall at the deep end of this pool are two words that tell one of the most touching immigration stories in Melbourne. AQUA PROFONDA. Deep water. Except it is misspelled. The correct Italian would be acqua profonda, with a double C and an A at the end. But that misspelling is what makes it so perfectly human.

In nineteen fifty-three or fifty-four, the pool manager James Murphy had a problem. He was constantly rescuing migrant children from the deep end. The post-war immigration boom had transformed Fitzroy into one of the most culturally diverse suburbs in Australia. By nineteen fifty-four, about twelve percent of Fitzroy's population was Italian-born. By nineteen sixty-six, a third were Italian or Greek-born. Many of the children arriving at the pool could not read English warning signs. So Murphy asked an Italian friend how to say deep water in Italian, and had it painted on the wall. The friend got the spelling slightly wrong, but the message got through.

That sign is now heritage-listed. It is one of the only tangible, surviving examples of a public acknowledgement of the cultural impact of Australia's mass migration programme. A misspelled Italian phrase on a pool wall, and it is officially protected by Heritage Victoria. The sign became iconic after author Helen Garner used it as a recurring motif in her famous nineteen seventy-seven novel Monkey Grip, the book that defined bohemian Fitzroy for a generation. The pool itself opened in nineteen oh eight, with the men's pool described as the largest in Victoria at the time. It has been a community gathering place for over a century, and that misspelled warning is its soul.