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Utilities - roads and pathways, waste management, water
supply, gas, electricity, sewage,
stormwater and water conservation
Sustained use of ocean baths for tourism, sport and recreation depends
on adequate access to the baths, and adequate safety and water quality at
the baths. Notions of safety and acceptable
water quality have changed considerably since the earliest ocean baths were
developed.
Access to gas, electricity, town water and the sewerage system increases the
amenities that can be provided at ocean baths and extends the hours during
which they are used. Key issues are:
Building roads and paths
Colonial roads were so poor that coastal
settlements were more easily reached by sea voyages than by land
travel. Steamships and steam railways eventually offered travel in greater
comfort to late nineteenth-century travellers to the 'Would-be Brightons'
along the NSW coast.
The growing use of motor vehicles in the early twentieth century fuelled demands for better roads. Faced with expensive road-building
programs to safeguard and improve the economic life of their communities,
coastal councils needed inexpensive sources of stone for road-building. The
use of stone excavated from the sites of ocean baths on local roads or
building projects therefore helped make both baths creation and road
construction more affordable.
Even ratepayers who might have opposed their Council 'spending ratepayers'
money' in the sea by creating ocean baths were unlikely to object to their
Council paying a reasonable price for road-building stone excavated from an
ocean baths site by voluntary labour. This was certainly the case with
the excavation of the men's baths at Gerringong in 1911.
Stone from the baths created at Austinmer in 1914 was used to provide a
foundation for the ladies dressing-shed at the baths and on local roads.
During the 1930s Depression, Merewether's need for roads justified creation
of very large ocean baths that provided suitable stone for several years of
road-building. Not only did the need for roads help provide an economic
justification for the creation of ocean baths, but the resulting roads
improved access to the ocean baths. The creation of paths, walking tracks
and bikeways leading to an ocean baths, or better still, linking a series of
ocean baths, not only improves access to and patronage of baths, but also
increases the knowledge of the baths and helps to cultivate aesthetic
appreciation of the baths among people strolling, jogging or biking
along the paths. The Eastern Beaches coastal walk has made many residents and
visitors aware of the set of ocean baths in Sydney's Eastern suburbs. Ocean
baths are also features of Newcastle's Bathers Way, Cronulla's Esplanade and
the pathway linking Bulli's Baths to the Wollongong Continental Baths.
Conversely, the lack of convenient access by a public road or footpath
limited the appeal of the Clifton baths (despite reported use of a machine
developed to
lower bathers down the cliff). Access to the northern Illawarra
ocean baths declined after closure of the coast road north from Coalcliff in
2003 forced Sydneysiders visiting Austinmer and neighbouring Thirroul and
Scarborough to head south on the F6 freeway and descend to the coast via the
steep Bulli Pass, but has improved since the opening of the Sea Cliff Bridge
in December 2005.
Waste management Poor waste management
practices, such as disposing of garbage and dead animals at sea where the
waste washes back onto beaches and into ocean baths, attracted and nourished
sharks and increased the risk of shark attacks. The perceived threat from
sharks then helped create demand for safe bathing facilities such as ocean
baths and patrolled surf beaches.
Although councils were banned from disposing of waste at sea in the
1930s, professional and recreational fishers continued to dispose of waste
in ways that attracted sharks and fostered demands for safe bathing
facilities.
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More a source of pleasure, than a public utility
While the earliest British public baths were seen as a utilitarian means
of cleansing the poor to minimise the health risks they could pose to the
wider population, this was not the case with the NSW ocean baths. They
have always been seen more as a source of pleasure, than as a means of
hygiene or a public utility. The value
of the ocean pools as places to wash and clean the body was strongest in
mining and quarrying communities around Newcastle and in the Illawarra and
in the regional coal-handling ports. Unlike many of the older public baths
in Britain, few NSW ocean baths have ever offered private tubs for
bathing and none have offered a washhouse or public laundry in conjunction
with the baths.
While
the NSW elite could often enjoy private bathing pools on Sydney Harbour or at other sites, the ocean baths offered pleasure and safe bathing
to the residents, affluent tourists and campers. Few twentieth-century ocean baths ever imposed admission charges and Kiama had abandoned admission charges at its ocean baths in the late
nineteenth-century. The mingling of classes was of little concern at the public
NSW ocean baths, where gender segregation was a far more pressing concern
from the earliest times until well into the twentieth-century.
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Gas, electricity and water supply Ocean baths were often in use
long before any dressing accommodation or utilities were available at the
baths as, until recently, there was little demand to heat the water or the
air at public baths and as indoor public baths were the exception rather than
the rule.
That access to reliable supplies pf fresh water did not diminish demands
for ocean baths reinforces the view that providing pleasure and attracting
tourists were more significant than the baths' significance for personal
hygiene.
For coastal communities, access to a reliable freshwater supply was more
important than
access to reliable supplies of gas and electricity. Gas electricity and fresh water did add to the services
provided to baths patrons by enabling provision of gas/electric
lighting for dressing sheds and for night swimming and the provision
of freshwater showers. Powerful electric pumps improved water quality at the
1920s Newcastle Ocean Baths.
Night swimmers and dawn swimmers benefited from electric lighting at the
ocean baths.
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Sewage and stormwater Significant man-made threats to water quality at the baths have
related not only to waste management, but also to sewage and stormwater
systems. In some areas, provision of sewerage served to reduce pollution of
ocean baths by septic systems or, on an even more local level, by waves and
storms overturning pan toilets located at the ocean baths.
In the early twentieth-century, water pollution by sewage delayed the creation of
baths at Merewether for decades. Merewether and other coastal Councils long
protested the siting of sewage outfalls near popular beaches and ocean baths
and the failure to adequate treat sewage before discharging it into the sea.
The belated creation of deep-ocean outfalls for Sydney's sewage system in
the 1990s greatly reduced concerns about the water quality at ocean baths on
Sydney's Northern
Beaches, Eastern Suburbs and at Cronulla. Success in minimising sewage
pollution focused more attention on stormwater pollution. Actual and
potential stormwater pollution of ocean baths inspired late twentieth-century
protests in the Illawarra. Councils and water boards have,
however, acted to 'naturalise' sewage and stormwater pollution by routinely
issuing standard advice about avoiding ocean baths for some days after heavy
rains, though better systems for management of stormwater and sewage would
make this unnecessary. Since the 1990s, water monitoring has become routine
at many ocean baths and the results of the monitoring programs are reported
on signs at the baths, in the press, in Council State of the
Environment reports and via the NSW Government's Beachwatch
program.
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Water
conservation In recent years, the growing NSW water crisis has
prompted calls to minimise the use of fresh water in maintenance work at
ocean baths.
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