My two favourite pools, two successive days

McIvers: my favourite Sydney ocean pool.
Bexley: my favourite suburban Olympic pool

Looking south towards Wylies

McIvers Ladies Baths, Coogee

Of all the magnificent ocean pools in Sydney, this is my favourite. They are located under a cliff, on a rock platform.

The baths have magnificent oceans views and are relatively well screened from the surrounding area. The baths were built in 1886, but according to the National Trust it has been a popular swimming spot for women since before 1876.

The pool site may have been a traditional bathing place for Aboriginal women. 

This pool (entrance donation 20 cents) is popular with nuns, Muslim women, lesbians, and elderly women (well women of all ages, really). In 1995, after court challenge, it was granted an exemption under the Anti-Discrimination Act to continue operating for women, because of its particular importance for diverse groups.

It's relaxed, there is great sunbathing on the grass and rocks, and best of all the pool itself is great to swim in.

I've blogged McIvers before: here on 25 September 2006 and on 25 December 2011.

Now I add pics from 8 January 2012 and 4 April 2013 - contrasting days!

For more about the history of McIvers, see below.

8 January 2012






4 April 2013

From the NSW Ocean Baths site

1860s
This women-only bathing area has been in continuous use since the 1860s.

1876
Randwick Council received complaints about men wilfully lingering near the women's baths, even though these baths were not operated by the Council.

1886
The baths were apparently more formally constructed with women's changing rooms, which made greater usage of the baths possible.

1901
Randwick Council's lease of the baths site expired and the NSW Minister for Lands called tenders for improvements. The Minister believed that the charges required by Council from private operators were too high and he was unwilling to extend the Council lease on the pool. Entry charges to the baths were a penny, with a further penny for hire of a towel and costume. After Council argued that it had spent 300 pounds on improvement to the baths, it gained a 10-year extension of their lease at five pounds per annum.

1912
Mina Wylie trained in this pool before swimming her way to a silver medal in the 1912 Olympics, the first Olympics with swimming events for women.

1918
Robert and Rose McIver began operating the Ladies Baths.

1922
The McIver family had created the baths in their present form.

1923
Rose McIver, Mina Wylie, Bella O'Keefe and members of the Mealing and Wickham families began the Randwick and Coogee Ladies Amateur Swimming Club with Robert McIver as chairman. The Randwick Ladies Amateur Swimming Club formed and took over the lease of the baths. Free swimming lessons have been provided at the pool since the 1920s.

1946
Randwick Council decided to apply to the Minister for Lands to have the bath available to the public for mixed bathing. That decision was overturned after objections from:
- the proprietors of neighbouring Wylies Baths, pointing out the potential damage to business at their mixed bathing pool, and
- the Mother Superior of the Brigidine Convent at Randwick, stating that the nuns at her convent, any country nuns vacationing there and the 100 boarders at the Brigidine School would not be able to visit the baths, if they were opened for mixed bathing.

1947
Randwick Council estimates indicated an expected income of 20 pounds from the women's pool. The Coogee-Randwick Ratepayers Association complained to Council that McIvers Baths were an eyesore and a disgrace to the community and urged they be demolished or put in proper repair. In June, Robert McIver explained to the Council Works Committee that  owing to the bad conditions of steps, he had been unable to open the baths the previous season except to school groups. He also said that he could not carry on any longer under the present conditions.

1972
Council was discussing plans to build a solid fence around the pool 'not only for sensible reasons' but also to deter 'perverts and peek-a boos'.

1977
The women's baths were renovated.

1980s
After vandals burned down the Randwick and Coogee Ladies Amateur Swimming Clubhouse, Randwick City Council agreed to rebuild the clubhouse.
The Randwick and Coogee Ladies Amateur Swimming Clubhouse presented a prize to each youngster who learnt to swim (sometimes after only a two-week period) at its free Saturday morning swimming classes. Boys under seven could learn to swim there, but then had to move on to use other pools.

Continued closure of the women's pool deprived Coogee kids of swimming lessons and made races impossible. The pool was leaking badly and only contained water at high tide. Heavy rocks in the pool needed to be removed and minor repairs undertaken. Council said repairs were delayed until sea and tide conditions permitted them to be carried out in working hours.

1990s
When  Randwick Council's lease from Department of Lands expired,  Council requested a five-year renewal of the lease.

1993
Mrs Doris Hyde of the Randwick and Coogee Ladies Amateur Swimming Club commended the pool's lesbian patrons as 'the nicest girls' and the 'ones who'll put the fellows out'.

1994
The National Trust classified this pool and listed it on its heritage register.
The Randwick and Coogee Ladies Amateur Swimming Club learn-to-swim classes now took boys up to age 12. The club raised funds for cancer research at the Prince of Wales hospital, worked closely with the Coogee surf club and Wylies Baths, as well as the Coogee RSL.

A man complained that he had been sitting on the foreshore near the pool, when several women sunbaking at the pool call him a 'deviant', asked him to leave, and threatened to call the police if he didn't. Mrs Doris Hyde of the Randwick and Coogee Ladies Amateur Swimming Club denied the baths were 'a lesbian lair' and said she had never seen anything untoward there.

After a Coogee man, Leon Wolk, complained to the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board that he was barred from the baths on account of his sex, the Anti-Discrimination Board wrote to Randwick Council seeking information about the baths. Randwick City Council stated there had been no complaints abut the baths and that it was prepared to take legal action to keep McIver's ladies baths free of men. The Randwick and Coogee Ladies Amateur Swimming Club claimed it did not have funds to construct change rooms for both sexes, which made it impractical to admit men, except to cheer on their children at swimming carnivals.

The women's pool was traditionally used by older women, women with disabilities, nuns and others who preferred privacy as well as pregnant women and older people with arthritis who enjoyed the pool's private sunbaking area and didn't want to go to the beach, indulge in mixed bathing, or be bothered by men. Thursday was traditionally married ladies day. Girls schools held water safety classes at the baths, which were popular amongst the Islamic community. The club's free lessons had helped Islamic women and children gain confidence in the water and some Islamic women contended that it was the only place their faith permitted them to swim. The medical profession argued that Coogee's women's baths were the only place where women who had suffered disfiguring operations could comfortably bathe.

Despite claiming it was the only safe sea pool in the area during high tides and rough weather, Leon Wolk lost the case.

1995
The NSW  Minister for Local Government, Mr E. Pickering, granted the baths an exemption to an exemption from the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act.

2000
The pool entry fee was 20 cents. Club members paid 50c as a fundraising measure.

2003
Randwick City Council allocated $85,000 for Stage 1 landscaping at the women's pool, thought to be Australia's only sea pool still reserved solely for use by women and children.

2004
The pool closed while landscaping was carried out.

2006
The pool remains popular with a wide variety of women.

Christmas Day: two swims

After weeks of cool and wet weather, Christmas Day was bright, sunny and hot. We headed off to Little Bay for a swim in the morning. In the afternoon I went to McIvers Ladies Baths at Coogee.

McIvers:

Sydney's Ocean Baths & Other Musings - Ian Swift

The colourful elephant sculpture is called Extreme Surfing. It is by Katoomba artist, Ian Swift, and was on display in this year's Sculpture By The Sea exhibition, which takes place annually along the walk between Bondi and Tamarama beaches in Sydney.

I had a look for more of Swift's work, and came across the catalogue for an exhibition held in 2005 called Sydney's Ocean Baths (above). I am captivated by these works, and ordered a catalogue.

Below are his representations of two of my favourite Sydney ocean pools: McIver's Women's Pool at Coogee, and Mahon Pool at Maroubra.

You can browse more of his works here.



Mahon Pool, Maroubra




McIvers (Women's pool), Coogee



Summer in Sydney. New York Times article

Photo: Tony Sernack for The New York Times

From New York Times . A lovely piece of travel writing. Click on the link and have a look at the slide show of pictures - beautiful!

From this article I have kearned that Sydney, with a population of about 4 million has 40 public 50m swimming pools (not counting the ocean rock pools and harbour pools), and LA and New York have two each! No wonder I'm frustrated when travelling to the other great cities of the world at not being able to find somewhere affordable to swim. Lately I have been doing some investigation into Rome, where I will be visiting this coming May/June. I can go to a couple of private health and fitness clubs as a day visitor - for about €30! That's rather a lot for a swim! I've found one public pool listing for Rome, so hope to check it out.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on the glory that is Sydney rock pool swimming. (One quibble is that some of the other lovely rock pools on the Southern Beaches around Cronulla were left out....oh, well, you can see some of them here in my pics: Shelly Beach, Cronulla and Oak Park, Cronulla

Rock Pools: Sydney’s Rock Pools

By RAYMOND BONNER
Published: February 24, 2008
NEARLY every day for 14 years, Denise Leith, a writer and university lecturer, has risen before dawn and headed to the beach at Newport, a pleasant, residential suburb 19 miles north of downtown Sydney , with fruit stands, pharmacies and small shops along the main road, within the sound and smell of the sea. She walks to the south end of the long beach and after donning her cap and goggles plunges into a 50-meter pool.

It is not your typical pool — no lane markings, no chlorine and far from placid. It is a rock pool, built into the ocean; the surf crashes over the side as swimmers navigate their way through the salty water and must sometimes grab a chain railing to avoid being swept out to sea when the tide is high and the water particularly rough. Some days it is like swimming in a washing machine, Ms. Leith says, others like swimming in Champagne.

As she goes up and back, up and back, she gazes down on rocks, seaweed and dappled-sunlight sand. “I swim with the fish,” she said recently. “For months we had a bluefish we swam with. There was an octopus living at the end of the pool.”

“It’s more interesting than the ocean,” she said. And, she is quick to add, she doesn’t have to worry about sharks or riptides.

Rock pools, so-named because they have been hammered out of rocks at the ocean’s edge, are one of Sydney’s defining characteristics, along with the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, though not as well known.

I began coming to Sydney every winter — the Australian summer — some 20 years ago and started taking swimming lessons, eventually replacing my 10-mile runs with a mile or so in the pool. But I always swam in a regular pool, never the open water. I loved the sound of the ocean, the breaking surf, the vastness, but still didn’t feel terribly comfortable in it. (Those riptides can be killers, literally.)

Then I discovered the rock pools. I could have the sensation of swimming in salt water — that churning surf — but there was always the wall to touch at each end, where I’d flip and start back. I’ve gradually gained more confidence swimming for distance in the open sea, but I still return to the rock pools.

Just about every Sydney beach has one, usually at the southern end, to give swimmers some protection when the southerly winds bring cold air and big seas. Most have changing rooms and showers, and are free for swimmers. Serene at low tide, choppy at high, they are, in many ways, the original infinity pools.

Each pool has its own colorful history. Some were built by wealthy individuals in the 1800s, when Victorian-era morals banned daytime swimming at the beach, a concept hard to fathom in a country where going to the beach seems to be required. Some pools were built by convicts, others during the Depression. They come in all sizes and shapes, from 50 meters long (roughly 55 yards) and many lanes wide to much smaller boutique pools.

Sydney today has some 40 traditional public 50-meter pools (New York and Los Angeles each has two!), which may explain how swimmers from Australia, with a population around 20 million, were able to haul off 15 medals at the 2004 Olympics in Athens — second only to the United States.

But it might be said that the beginning of Australians’ love affair with swimming was at the rock pools.

In the first Olympics to have women’s swimming — Stockholm in 1912 — an Australian, Mina Wylie, won the silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle behind Fanny Durack, another Australian. Mina was taught to swim in a rock pool built in 1907 by her father, himself a champion distance and underwater swimmer.

TODAY, Wylie’s Baths, in Coogee, about six miles south of downtown Sydney, is one of the most popular rock pools in the area; it is open 365 days a year, and charges a small fee (http://www.wylies.com.au/). As with most rock pools, it has its own club of locals, men and women of all ages who swim there regularly and compete on Sundays. Sometimes the surf is so fierce that the waves crash over the edge, making it almost impossible to maintain lane etiquette as competitors bump into each other. On the wooden deck, partly shaded, the most popular activity on a recent Sunday seemed to be parents’ changing diapers.

A few hundred yards away, within sight, well, partially, is another venerable Sydney institution — a pool for women and children. Built in the 1800s, it was long known as the “‘nun’s pool.” Today, Muslim women in scarves are more often seen, along with pregnant women and older women. If a women-only public facility seems an incongruity in a country that prides itself on its egalitarianism, note that it has an official exemption from antidiscrimination laws. [Note: McIvers Baths - click for my pics]

Sydney’s most famous beach is Bondi. At its southern end is Bondi Baths, an eight-lane, 50-meter saltwater pool built into the cliffs. Open every day except Thursdays, it is home to the Bondi Icebergs Club, which was founded in 1929 by a small group of friends.

To become an Icebergs member you must swim three of every four Sundays for five years during the winter (May to September Down Under). It is a true test of dedication, for while outsiders might think that Australia is the land of endless summer, in winter the ocean water is teeth-chattering cold. And on opening day of the winter swimming season, it is tradition that lumps of ice are tossed into the pool to test the hardiness of the competitors.

Today, there are over 350 Icebergs, including women, who have only been allowed to join since 1994. But you don’t have to be an Iceberg to enjoy the pool — there is a small entrance fee — or the wonderful restaurant upstairs. There is also a smaller rock pool at the north end of Bondi.

From Bondi, you can walk along a well-maintained cliffside path, with spectacular views, just over two miles to Bronte Beach and its rock pool, where the serious swimmers do their laps as the rising sun sparkles off the water. A favorite “sport” for many here seems to be hanging on tightly to the chain railing as the waves come crashing over the sides. There are an expanse of grass and towering evergreens at Bronte, making it a popular spot for picnics.

A bit farther south is Clovelly,[my pics] which, unlike other rock pools, is open at the ocean end. It is trapezoidal in shape, starting at a small beach, and the sides are concrete, which may not sound attractive. But it, too, has produced national swimming champions (faded sepias are inside), and because there is no barrier to the ocean, it is a popular place for snorkeling.

For Sydneysiders, beaches and rock pools are divided categorically by the Harbour Bridge. There are those in the eastern and southern suburbs (Bondi, Clovelly, Wylie’s, Bronte, among them), and the Northern Beaches, which became more accessible when the Harbour Bridge was finished in 1932. (For a full rundown of Sydney’s rock pools, including history and location, see www.nswoceanbaths.info/pools and http://www.australiantraveller.com/.)

Among the first rock pools you come to heading north is Fairy Bower (named for the fairy penguin rookery there). It is quite small, not adequate for laps or exercise. But the surroundings make it worth a visit.

It is near Manly, which is a reduced version of Miami Beach, with open-air restaurants and bars on the beach, and Shelly Beach, a picturesque strip of sand tucked in a cove. The ocean was a pristine aqua when I was there in January, and the waters held a scuba-diving class, board surfers, ocean kayakers, a lone long-distance swimmer, sailboats and children frolicking closer to the shore. It is an idyll.

Back on the road and going north, beyond Newport Beach a few miles, is Bilgola, a tucked-away beach, where the writer Thomas Keneally has a hillside house. The rock pool there has a section for children, while older swimmers can do laps.

“I grew up with a backyard pool, and this is more fun,” said Lisa Gaupset, a 41-year-old television graphic designer , whose 4-year-old daughter, Lara, and 12-year-old son, Jesse, were in the pool with her while her oldest son, Kristian, was surfing. It’s ideal for families, she noted, because the older kids can go surfing.

The most northern of the Sydney rock pools is at Palm Beach the wealthy enclave 25 miles north of downtown, where movie stars and moguls vacation. It is 50 meters long and where the legendary 77-year-old John Carter is now teaching a third generation to swim.

While my Australian-born wife swims in the open waters from the edge of the rock pool to the North Palm Beach Surf Club and back, at least a mile, I churn out the laps in the pool. On a recent day, with only a wisp of white clouds in the piercing blue sky and the blazing sun over my left shoulder when I turned at one end of the pool, I went up and back 66 times, lost in thought, mesmerized.

McIvers Baths, Coogee

McIvers Baths is under a cliff face, on a rock platform between Coogee Beach and Wylies Baths. The baths have magnificent oceans views and are relatively well screened from the surrounding area. (I took the shot from inside.)The baths were built in 1886, but accordign to the National Trust it has been a popular swimming spot for women since before 1876.This pool (entrance donation 20 cents) is popular with nuns, Muslim women, lesbians, and elderly women (well women of all ages, really). In 1995, after a challenge int he courts, it was granted an exemption under the Anti-Discrimination Act to continue operating as women-only.







Category: Public - Women and Children only.
Information: 20 cents entry. Swimmers Guide