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Workplaces - paid and volunteer work
Workplaces - paid and volunteer work
The workforce at
the ocean baths has included:
The key issues are:
While in the United States, sea
baths were often developed as part of a privately developed amusement park
complex, the best NSW example of this style of seabaths was the off-beach
indoor Coogee Aquarium Baths opened in 1887. Wylies Baths at Coogee are a
rare example of a NSW ocean baths created and developed by private
enterprise. H. A. Wylie obtained the lease for the site and with the help of
his sons developed the complex that opened to the public in 1907. Since the
mid-1970s, Wylies Baths have operated under the auspices of Randwick Council.
While the ocean baths at Pearl Beach
on the Central Coast were created in the late 1920s by a private developer
to assist sales of land in the area, private-enterprise involvement with the
ocean baths has been primarily in the form of contract work construction and
design of ocean baths and more recently in heritage assessments and
preparation of conservation plans. Baths construction could be outsourced
from the beginning (as it often was before a Council existed or had
resources or the legal framework to permit any involvement in baths
projects) or once the project proved beyond the capacity of volunteer
workers or a local Council's in-house resources.
The businesspeople most memorably
associated with ocean baths are the pool lessees such as H. A. Wylie and O. E.
Giles, who helped create the ambience at their ocean baths and even passed their
names onto the baths. The ocean baths were more than just a workplace at the
few ocean baths that provided on-site residences for caretakers or baths
managers. These included the Newcastle Ocean Baths, the Newcastle Bogey
Hole, Wylies Baths and the Wollongong Continental Baths.
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Many of the early ocean baths owe
their existence to working bees, perhaps following a public meeting like the
one that triggered development of the Woonona Baths at Collins Rock, or via
the progress association as at Kiama in the 1890s. Later, swimming clubs and
surf clubs became involved in working bees to develop ocean baths. In other
cases it was a far less formalised process by a single resident, as at the
Roberts Pool on the site of the present ocean baths at The Entrance. Often volunteer labour had to be supplemented by government grants, as was
the case at Kiama. But even where contractors developed the pool, working bees
might erect the dressing-sheds as at Austinmer in 1914.
As beachgoing boomed worldwide in
the 1920s, working bees and supportive Councils created even more ocean
baths on the NSW coast. Coastal communities believed large baths attracted
'people from all parts' and that if baths attracted 'a few extra tourists',
they will 'pay for themselves'. Volunteers worked on Wollongong's Continental Baths before that project
was taken over by Wollongong Council.
Efforts expended by working bees were expected to be matched by Council
support. When a working bee cleared rocks from the Merewether Ladies Pool in
1924, Merewether Council was asked to co-operate on a pound for pound basis.
Volunteer work could also include
lobbying related to ocean baths. In 1927, the Merewether surf club appointed
three members to approach the Public Works Department and argue against the
site for new baths proposed by Council.
Though not consulted, nor asked to participate in choosing the site, the
surf club declared the 'only 'feasible, practical' site was 'the spot known
as the Ladies Bathing Pool'. The baths were in fact located adjacent to 'The
Ladies'.
Women's support for ocean baths
usually involved holding events to raise funds for the baths or serving
afternoon tea to volunteer workers at the bath, and their efforts were often
acknowledged in local newspapers or in club newsletters and histories.
Dances, a fancy-dress concert and a 'popular girl competition' raised funds
for a clubhouse near the Merewether Baths for the Merewether Ladies Swimming
Club. Dances also help fund the development of the first ocean baths at Bermagui.
Widespread community support for the development of ocean baths
meant that volunteers still laboured to create ocean baths into the late
twentieth century, despite Councils assuming responsibility for the
operating and maintenance of the ocean baths (See
the thematic history for
Governing - colonial,
federal, state and local government). In the smaller coastal communities,
where private pools and inground pools remained rare, ocean baths continued
to be created and improved by working bees supported by swimming clubs,
community groups, Councils and government organisations after the 1950s. On
Sydney's northern beaches, the lower half of the current Freshwater ASC
clubhouse was erected in 1954 by volunteers, who later added an upper storey
funded by Warringah Shire.
Volunteer labour contributed to the development of pools at Towradgi and
Bellambi in the Illawarra in the 1960s. A 1964 doorknock helped raise the
funds still needed to finish the nearby Bellambi Pool begun by
volunteer labour.
Other new bathing pools were created
primarily by residents' initiatives. On the Central Coast in the late 1950s,
Copacabana land owners worked at the weekends for years to form a ring-of-rocks pool
by using crowbars and rock hammers to shift boulders when the tide was low
and then using sticks of gelignite to blow up rocks in the middle of the
pool.
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During the 1930s, work on creating and maintaining ocean
baths was an important source of income in many coastal communities.
In some NSW coastal communities, men receiving food
relief created their own public works projects. When there were already so
many people unemployed in Kiama that the Unemployed Committee offered
volunteers to assist with alterations to the gentlemen's baths, Kiama Council rejected
the offer as it had 'no intention of undertaking work at the baths at
present'.
Kiama
later
seized the chance to begin
construct of its much-desired Olympic pool as an unemployment relief project.
Unemployment relief projects were
challenging for workers and management. Different terms and conditions
applied to different workers, strength and skill levels varied enormously
and though Councils were only allowed a meagre project management fee,
Council engineers often found that working with unemployment relief workers,
rather than contractors, demanded far more input and supervision on the
engineer's part.
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Clubs based at ocean baths have
strong traditions of providing learn-to-swim programs often at no charge. By
2000, the Chief Instructor at the North Narrabeen Ladies Swimming Club's had
been involved in the learn-to-swim program for 31 years. The Narrabeen Ladies Swimming Club still offers free swimming lessons every
Saturday and Sunday for beginners over three years of age. During summer,
The Entrance Amateur Swimming Club and provided free swimming lessons the
Entrance Ocean Baths to local residents and tourists alike. At McIvers
Baths, the only ocean baths now solely reserved for women and children, the
Randwick and Coogee Ladies Amateur Swimming Club's free swimming lessons
have a special appeal for any women who prefer to bathe
away from the gaze of men.
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