Leases & surveys

From the late nineteenth century, the NSW government tried to formalise leases for the ocean baths. This process could take years as was the case with Wollongong Council's lease for its long-established ocean baths. Several pools required two different types of leases; one for the area above the high water mark and one for the area below the high water mark.

In some cases, there was considerable confusion over the site of the pool leases. At Kiama's Pheasant Point, the government surveyor had pegged out the site of the baths, but the official records showed the pool which was sited on a rock platform at the base of a 60 foot cliff and submerged at high tide as forming part of a suburban street.

Even for long-established leases, survey information was not always reliable, as Randwick Council discovered in the 1940s, when it sought details of the precise boundary of the area it leased for McIvers Baths at Coogee.

Usually pool leases were granted to councils, which might then sublease the baths to an operator. This was initially the case with Waverley Council and its Bondi and Bronte Baths and Randwick's men's and women's baths at Coogee. At Coogee, H. A. Wylie had a lease directly from the NSW government for Wylies Baths.

Because the baths were not on freehold land, the NSW government could have a significant impact on the management of the baths. At Coogee, the NSW Minister for Lands was unwilling to extend Randwick Council's lease on the Ladies Baths in 1901, because he considered that the charges required by council from private operators were too high. In the late twentieth century, difficulties in resolving the lease to Randwick Council of Wylies Baths at Coogee retarded the renovation of those baths.

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