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Environment - Appreciating the evolving rocky shore
Environment
- Appreciating the
evolving rocky shore
The natural environment shapes and influences human life and culture. The
naturally evolving rocky shore is a dynamic environment that compels
attention and serves as a nourishing terrain, even for people who visit
those shores for reasons other than fishing or food-gathering. It is also an
inescapable part of the environment of the ocean baths and distinguishes
them from other sorts of outdoor public pools, including tidal pools in
sheltered waters.
While the creators and patrons of ocean baths typically showed
little concern about the Aboriginal cultural significance of the sites they
used, they had profound concerns about the changing natural environment,
especially the waves and currents, the presence of sharks and the presence
of any other wildlife that could threaten their safety or bathing pleasure.
The types of rocks around the bathing place and the quality of the water in
the pools also impacted on safety and bathing pleasure. Natural rock pools and constructed
ocean baths undeniably offer a more challenging and dynamic outdoor
adventure playground than alternative children's play facilities. For that reason,
present-day children and their carers now encounter more warning signs at
the ocean baths than at most adventure playgrounds. Until the 1980s, many
of the dangers now carefully signposted were previously considered minor
nuisances at a safe place for safe seabathing and watersports.
Environmental aspects of key significance for the ocean baths are:
Weather, tides, waves and currents
Because
the NSW coast lacks coral reefs or large sandy islands to break the force of
the surf, many of its surf beaches have dangerous rip currents.
Without providing alternatives, such as patrolled surf beaches or ocean
baths, the NSW community would need to invest even more heavily in public
education to develop awareness and appreciation of rips and knowledge of how
best to handle being caught in a rip or 'the undertow'.
Weather and tides determine whether
safe surfing or even safe bathing in rock pools is feasible. On milder days, ocean baths in clean
waters have a set of sights, smells and sounds that distinguish them from
surf beaches and other public pools, whether tidal, inground, above ground
or indoor. This set of sensory experiences is closely linked to the sense of
these pools as safe and pleasant public spaces for sport and recreation.
Yet on stormy days, the natural rock
pools or constructed ocean baths can offer a reassuringly protective
environment, perhaps even a safe and delightful place to swim after
lifesavers have closed the open beach. This is never a risk-free
recreational environment and many patrons of ocean baths are grateful for the presence of pool
chains that continue to offer comforting protection against the risk of
being swept out to sea. The risks are perhaps overemphasised in a large red
sign warning at the top of
the steps down to the Bermagui's long popular Blue Pool. The big print reads
'PLEASE DO NOT ENTER',
while the sign's smaller
print states that 'bathing in this pool during heavy seas is dangerous
because of the risk of being washed out to sea'.
When the surf is too big and the
weather is too bad for swimming even in those pools, people still stand at
the top of the cliffs and admire the force of nature, and the ability of
storms to whip the ocean baths into froth and send seaspray soaring over
nearby houses. From at least the 1830s, people have experienced ocean baths
as places that enable them to commune with the sublime and that stimulate
their interest in the natural environment.
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From the earliest days of European settlement
in NSW, saltwater bathing has been constrained by a profound concern
regarding the presence of sharks in the coastal waters. A belief that being
killed or eaten by a shark was a fate more to be feared than a simple death
by drowning, combined with ignorance of shark biology, meant that all large
sharks were feared as potential 'man-eaters'. Enclosing part of the sea long
seemed the only feasible protection against sharks. To a large extent, the
ocean baths can be regarded as a form of the 'shark-induced architecture'
that includes the once-common shark towers.
The shark problem was exacerbated by
coastal whaling and fishing practices and by waste disposal practices of
local councils and water boards. The whaling station that operated at
Twofold Bay until 1932 encouraged the presence of sharks. On a smaller
scale, the Fairy Bower pool at Manly succeeded a netted enclosure created to
protect local children from the sharks attracted to the scraps tossed into
the water by fishermen who kept their boats at nearby Shelly Beach. Local
councils continued to dispose of solid waste by dumping it at sea, until the
practice was banned in the 1930s. The discharge of sewage and industrial
waste into the ocean near Sydney continued until the introduction of deep-ocean outfalls in 1990s. Safety concerns triggered by sightings of sharks
along the coast continue to be reinforced by well-publicised reports of
encounters with sharks, shark attacks, and accounts of sharks caught by
fishers. The presence of sharks has remained a major concern to coastal
communities and their visitors.
During the twentieth century,
other means of addressing 'the shark menace' such as patrolled surf beaches,
shark nets, shark meshing or aerial shark patrols helped reduce the reliance
on ocean baths to provide safe bathing facilities, at least at the times and
places covered by those specific services. Even so, only the ocean baths
could offer 24-hour protection or a safe space for night bathing. Thus the
NSW government's introduction of shark meshing at Sydney's ocean beaches in
1937, which greatly reduced shark attacks, had little immediate impact
on the creation and use of ocean baths. Even after the NSW government's
program of shark meshing was extended to cover some 50 surf beaches
including popular beaches in Sydney Newcastle and Wollongong and the Central
Coast, the use of ocean baths continued in meshed areas, because the ocean
baths offered a recreational environment distinct from the surf beach.
The numbers of Great White sharks
and the Grey Nurse sharks along the NSW coast have diminished to the point
that both these shark species are seen as needing to be conserved and
protected from humans. Even so, media reports of a shark attack in south-east
Queensland in 2006, sparked a new debate about the need for shark meshing
and bathing enclosures along the NSW coast.
In Tourism Australia's 2006 Where
the bloody hell are you? advertising campaign, the Bronte Baths served to
illustrate the advertisement segment that assures potential visitors that
'we've got the sharks out of the pool', but there is little real concern
about dangerous sharks posing hazards to people in NSW ocean pools.
Admittedly, wobbegongs and other small sharks are occasionally washed into
natural rock pools and ocean baths, where they may bite pool patrons
attempting to return them to the sea. Any large shark now found in an ocean
baths is likely to have been placed there by fishers or other pranksters.
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Sharks were not the only wildlife
that caused concern at the ocean baths. The late nineteenth-century
Newcastle Bogey Hole was lauded for its lack of 'sharks, stingarees or jelly
fish'.
Bluebottle stings are painful and blue bottles can be washed up by the tide
in such numbers that they interfere with human enjoyment of surf beaches and
ocean baths. Sharp shells were another cause of concern, especially before antibiotics were readily available to treat infected cuts and
scratches.
The presence of fish, nudibranchs,
seahares, sea urchins, octopus, crabs and other
wildlife in and around the pool is part of the attraction of swimming in
natural rock pools or constructed ocean baths. Seals occasionally visit the
baths. Ocean baths and their surrounds also offer good places for viewing dolphins
or the annual whale migrations along the coast. The sound of seabirds mixes
with the sound of the waves.
Yet non-indigenous coast dwellers
have been slow to appreciate some of the risks posed by intertidal animals.
Until the 1960s, there were generations of children who played in rock
pools, without them or their parents having any idea that the small friendly
octopus they encountered were probably the venomous (though normally
harmless) blue-ringed octopus. Signs at ocean baths at Coogee, Malabar and
Cronulla now not only warn of the presence of blue-ringed octopus, but also
indicate that these octopus and pool patrons continue to coexist at the
ocean baths and elsewhere on the rocky shore.
Likewise, awareness that intertidal
wildlife might need protection from humans was slow to develop. Ocean baths
at Narrabeen, Bronte and Bondi are located near protected intertidal areas
created to safeguard the wildlife of the rocky shores. While ocean baths are
demonstrably a highly sustainable use of the intertidal environment, the
methods used to maintain ocean baths are now required to be environmentally
friendly.
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Seaweed grows in and around ocean
baths and cannot be ignored. A carpet of seaweed can add to the appeal of less formalised ocean
baths, while too much seaweed makes the pool less attractive.
Persistent build-up of seaweed at ocean baths usually triggers community
demands to have the pool cleaned or even redesigned. Particles of rotting
seaweed trapped in natural pools or ocean baths can smell most disagreeable.
Seaweed on rocks and cement around the pool can make
these areas slippery and provoke demands to remove the 'moss' or algae in
the interests of safety.
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Rocks and sand influence the
appeal of ocean baths. While diving boards and diving
blocks are now rare items at ocean baths, natural diving points have retained
their popularity. A shoe–shaped rock outside Maroubra's Mahon Pool has
delighted generations of pool patrons, as have the rocks and cliff around
Coogee's Giles Baths and the cliffs at Bermagui 's Blue Pool and the
Newcastle Bogey Hole. Patrons of the South Coogee pools (Ivo
Rowe pool) in the 1940s and 1950s have affectionate memories of a large rock that was their refuge
when high waves surged onto the rock platform.
Falling rocks and slippery rocks
remain a hazard to anyone exploring natural rock pools or created ocean
baths. Ocean baths at Avalon and Bilgola have signs warning about the danger
of falling rocks, while rock falls have repeatedly damaged structures to the
Newcastle Bogey Hole and reduced access to that ocean baths.
At ocean baths near sandy beaches, sand moves in and
out of the pool and can form sandbanks within the pool.Persistent
build-up
of sand at ocean baths usually triggers community demands to have the pool
cleaned or even redesigned. Beach sands also offer good access paths
to many pools.
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While bathers prefer to immerse
themselves in pure sparkling seawater, the quality of the coastal waters
inevitably reflects natural occurrences such as storms, algal blooms and any
build-up of seaweed in natural pools or constructed ocean baths. Arguably, the greatest threats to
water quality in natural pools or in constructed ocean baths have come not
from nature, but from poor waste management practices and poor siting of
sewage outlets and storm water outlets along the coast. Even so,
pool patrons have on many occasions blamed bad smells at ocean baths on
sewage pollution, when the culprit was rotting seaweed.
While the many decades of pollution
of city beaches and ocean baths by discharges from the sewerage systems have
ended, most ocean
baths now have signs advising patrons regarding results of recent water-quality monitoring. To address concerns about sewage and stormwater
pollution following heavy rain, people are still advised to avoid surf
beaches and ocean baths for a few days after heavy rains.
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