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Lives, memorials & gendered sites
Lives, memorials & gendered sites
Some ocean baths have strong associations with particular swimmers and
sportspeople, swimming teachers or artists. Their local ocean baths have been an integral part of the
local environment for generations of residents of
Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong and other coastal towns and villages.
Ocean baths from the segregated bathing/swimming era and more
modern baths with gender-segregated swimming clubs, surf
clubs or winter swimming clubs are strongly gendered sites. Other ocean baths are strongly associated with particular occupational groups such as nurses, nuns or miners. Ocean baths may figure in their
patrons' and supporters' mental maps, not simply as leisure spaces, but also
as aesthetic, ritual, social and memorial spaces of personal, family and
community significance.
Key points to consider are:
Plaques and
structures as memorials
The remnant portico of Giles Baths
on Coogee's northern headland (now known as Dolphin Point) is part of a
recreational space, and of a memorial space commemorating victims of the
Bali Bombing. Dolphin Point has aspects of a sacred site.
Plaques testifying to the pool's own
history and heritage value exist at Bronte, Cronulla and at Pearl Beach on
the Central Coast. People and organisations memorialised at the pool may
include those who helped bring the pool into existence. Towradgi has plaques
honouring the volunteer workers and the Joint Coal Board. A plaque at the
top of the steps to Bermagui's Blue Pool announces that the steps were 'the
gift of W. Dickinson Esq.' in 1939.
While most of the coastal communities that would
develop ocean baths already had their ocean baths by 1945, both the
1960s ocean baths at Sawtell and Towradgi have plaques asserting their role
as war memorials.
Other plaques pay tribute to pool
regulars and swimming coaches. In 2002, a plaque was added to the Palm Beach
rock pool to commemorate 54 years of dedicated service in teaching kids
swimming and surf safety by a swimming coach, who joked about using space
behind the plaque to store his ashes.
Informal memorials include the flowers and computer printouts tucked into
the wire fence at an ocean baths to acknowledge the death of a pool regular
of long-standing.
Remnants of earlier ocean baths are
also a kind of memorial to the designers and builders of those pools. From an
engineer's perspective, the building of pools that have to be replaced say
three times in a century is a sensible approach to delivering social
benefits, since designs with an effective life of 100 years would cost a lot
more – unless they are simple rings-of-rocks.
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Names as memorials
Formal and informal names for ocean baths are another kind of memorial. Coogee
has named most of its ocean baths after their one-time proprietors.
Men's names are attached to a number of pools such as Wylies Baths and Giles
Baths (also known as Lloyds Baths while leased by F. W. Lloyd). North Bondi's
Wally Weekes pool is named after a man closely associated with the North
Bondi surf club. Coogee's Ross Jones Memorial pool honours a Randwick
Alderman closely associated with a range of sporting organisations,
including the Coogee surf club based next to the pool. Coogee's McIvers
Baths commemorate Rob and Rose McIver, who once leased the women's baths and
helped establish the Ladies Amateur Swimming Club that took over the lease
of that pool and still hold it. The Eastern Beaches coastal walk round the cliffs at South Coogee
has a plaque outlining the
history of the Ivo Rowe Pool on the rock below. Further south still, the
track runs above Maroubra's Mahon Pool named for another Randwick alderman.
Ocean pools named for specific
females, rather than a female grouping such as 'nuns' or 'ladies' include
the Olympic-size Beverley Whitfield pool at Shellharbour, which is named for an
Olympic swimmer, and the ring-of-rocks pool at Copacabana on the
Central Coast once named the 'Mavis Pool' to honour the wives of the pool's
creators. If non-human females are considered, the North Bondi children's
pool
once known as the Mermaid Pool can be included in this category.
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