Getting to know Beau!
At Toodyay Rec Centre, one of our main focuses is to create a fun, vibrant and accessible sporting hub for the community of Toodyay to enjoy.
Our amazing team is the building block for creating such an embracing environment, with Duty Manager Beau leading the way. During the week we sat down with Beau to learn more about his life outside of work and to find out what he loves most about working at Toodyay Rec Centre.
Firstly, tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Toodyay.
My name is Beau Houldsworth, I’m from Kalgoorlie originally and I moved to Perth Hills with my parents and two sisters.
I started working at Toodyay shortly after the pool had been opened. I came down for a look and I reckon if they had a big hotel room available, I would have stayed!
Beck, the Venue Manager, made sure that I stayed anyway since they were looking for some more lifeguards. I left my previous job, did the course in lifeguarding and there you go, I have a new career!
I understand lifeguarding is not just the only role you have here. Can you tell us more about some of the wider things you also do at Toodyay?
Absolutely. I completed a pool operations course with Royal Lifesaving which was a lot of fun. It was great to learn the safety aspects involved in a facility like ours that basically runs swimming sports and any programs that you could imagine.
After finishing the pool operations course, I became a duty manager up at the pool. Then came the time for the Rec Centre to open which was a bit later than we had hoped, but the first season with the sports was great.
We’ve been running social sports here and I’ve just jumped into that role as well with some other staff. Toodyay had a great first season of sports; we’ve had touch rugby, five a side soccer and basketball running all simultaneously which was a lot of fun.
Can you tell us about the Seniors Club at Toodyay and your role within this program?
Seniors Club was one of the major things that we really wanted to get going, simply because of the age demographic here. Our biggest number of patrons that have been using the pool are people over 60 , so naturally, a seniors program seemed like the way to go.
Our program is all about movement! We want to keep people moving and also having a chat while we have Coffee. It’s $5 entry and we’ve got all the giant games going on like the big blue volleyball, giant jenga, giant connect four – all with low impact of course.
The roles here for me have allowed me to really jump into helping and organizing these events, which is great physical work as well! It’s also really opening avenues for myself as I’m looking at the sports and recreation certificates at the moment and which way to go with that.
So, I’ve spotted a little nifty piece of tech in the corner here. Talk about what you’re trying to bring to the table there.
Well, I was looking up activity ideas for seniors in Western Australia and the Seniors Recreation Council of WA popped up during my search. One thing they have implemented is exercising with video games. I thought this was a great idea and I remembered that I had a Wii at home that hadn’t been used in about eight years, plus it was still in good condition.
I broke that out of the box and brought it in to Toodyay. We’ve now got that hooked up in the corner on a big TV screen, with its standard games like ten-pin bowling, boxing, tennis, and golf. The seniors all love it!
What would you say is your favourite part about working at the Rec Centre?
Definitely the views.
It doesn’t matter what mood you’re in when you come here to Toodyay, whether it be in the pool or down here at the Rec Centre, you just feel healed after you leave.
It’s the most serene place to work. It is beautiful and the people here are lovely. The facility in itself is great too; it’s got so much going for it, it’s just absolutely brilliant!
Do you have any thoughts or any advice on community members or just anything you’d like to say to people to get them here?
Use your imagination, because anything you can think of you can do down here at Toodyay Rec Centre!
There is just so many activities on offer here at Toodyay, we even had a roller-skating night here during the year. Plus we have some great ideas in the works for the future as well.
There’s nothing stopping anyone from coming down and using our facilities in their spare time. There’s room for a lot of people here and a great place to build new relationships and connect with the community.
You’re obviously a part of a wider team here, how have you found working with the team, particularly with Beck?
Back has been amazing in every aspect of getting this business up and running, especially when you consider it is new and has never been tried in this area before.
It’s just been a great experience to learn the ropes within this industry under her guidance. I consider myself a jack of all trades, but I’ve been able to learn so much in my role and I couldn’t think of a better crew to work alongside with.
We are an hour or so out of the general grater area of Perth, so travel is always a big factor for people. However, this means that we have ended up with the real diehards out here that put in the effort to get out here and make the Rec Centre such a great place. I think that makes for a really strong team.
