Mahon Pool with Darelle and Sally

Today we returned to one of our favourite pools, Mahon at Maroubra.

What's good about it:

• there is a change area (though it desperately needs updating), so you don't have to travel home with that clammy "swamp-butt" feeling
• the water is lovely, and because the seas get high at Maroubra, it does get regularly flushed
• there is a great cafe just across the road. Plus they were able to serve me a delicious salad without any salt! RARE!
• there is soap available in the toilets
• it isn't too much of a "scene". No yummy mummies with oversized "look-at-me" strollers, just a great mix of people of all ages and ethnicities
• parking is relatively easy to find, even on a Saturday of a long weekend, in the school hols

The downsides:

• not much shade
• the steps are getting a bit slimy with algae and are a bit precarious for those of us with some balance issues

Sally and Darelle's (non) Swimming Adventure - Blue Pool, Bermagui. 7 Jan 2018 Part One

We set off with such high hopes, fuelled by fond memories Sally had of the two previous times she had swum at Bermagui's Blue Pool. Its setting down the clifftop, with a backdrop of the sapphire-blue sea is quite stunning.

The first view from the clifftop was non-too promising. For a start it wasn't looking blue, and second, noone was in it. Also, though the car park was busy, people seemed to be coming and going in quick succession.

Disappointment was our name:

The reason had been posted: CAUTION Algae Bloom. Due to insufficient swell the Blue Pool hasn't been able to flush itself out which has allowed Algae to grow. 

After admiring the view, and spotting some seals in the ocean, we retreated into town for fish and chips for lunch.

Darelle and Sally's (disappointing) swimming adventure - Bronte. 13 Feb 2017

Today our aim was Bronte pool. We were met with a closed beach and closed pool, due to heavy surf conditions.

We're in Waverley Council territory now, and so we had to feed the hungry beast. We did manage to find a park in the shade, but it's a very short term stay. 

From 9am to 6pm, September to May, the maximum parking time is 1 hour. Two hours the rest of the year.  There's unrestricted parking further away from the beach, and being the eastern suburbs, long hot climbs up hills after your dip. So, don't drive to Bronte thinking you are going to park close by for a day at the beach. You might need to catch a bus. I think this is the way the locals, as well as the revenue-raising Council quite likes it.

There's a great kids' playground in Bronte Park. The park leads down to the beach. 

Lots of picnic tables and barbecues

Typical weekday crowds

There's the pool tucked under the southern headland....not many people there, we thought. Well, noone as it turned out. 

The area just outside the pool is called the Bogey Hole. Click here to see what it looked like last time I blogged it. 

The surf was roiling and broiling

Here's a video of the surf

Here's another video

A few adventurous souls were taking a dip...not us....there were no safe swimming area flags on the beach, and neither of us is confident enough in strong surf.

Mindful that we only had a half hour on the parking meter before getting a ticket, we went to the kiosk for a coffee. Good coffee, and lots of traditional beach fare - chips and sausage rolls, and ice creams, but chiko rolls seem to have been replaced by Turkish bread sandwiches! There's swankier cafes in the 'hood as well, but the kiosk served us well.

Here's a previous blog from when I swam at Bronte pool once before.  It's a great pool.

Darelle and Sally's Swimming Adventures: Malabar Rock Pool; Mahon Pool, Maroubra, 7 Dec

Sally has been here once before....click here....

We arrived just as high tide was approaching. Sadly, the pool had a fair bit of rubbish in it, and what 

appeared to be algae. It wasn't very enticing, so we declined a swim. We moved on to the beach, which is at the head of Long Bay. Sadly, probably due to storms and heavy rain over the past few days, there was a fair bit of rubbish on the beach, as well as bluebottles. 

So, then we headed over to the pool where the idea for our adventures was born on New Years Day, 2016: Mahon Pool at Maroubra. ...click here. 

High tide started spilling water into the pool. We met a woman who said she had never seen the water level so low. It says that the water level when full is 1.4 m. Today it was lucky to be 40 cm. On my previous post it was full. click here. 

Video of the water coming in 

Last time I was here (April 2009), there were no cafes nearby - had to go up to Anzac Parade. As a decent cafe for a pre-sswim coffee is one of our judging criteria, we are pleased to be able to report that Beach Cafe was really good. We sat outside with a view of the ocean )and the sewerage treatment works at the north end of the beach. 

Malabar beach. The bay is Long Bay. Very pretty view. We saw some divers. Apparently it is also a popular snorkelling site. 

From the beach looking southeast. The rock pool is about half way along.

Paul the paddle boarder told me that Malabar is a great place for paddle-boarding. 

Paul is up and off

We were quiet taken with Fido in the front yard of a house along the way to the pool. 

We wondered just how long it will be before some bright spark out to make a development buck decides that a fancy schmancy marina needs to be built here. 

You have been warned! That's the sewerage treatment works across the bay. An outfall carrying abattoir waste from Homebush was built in 1916. By the 1970s the pool and bay were declared off-limits due to pollution from what was by now a sewerage outfall. In the early 1990s a deep ocean outfall was constructed, emptying 4.2 kms offshore. It's still horrible that Sydney tips its only partially treated sewerage into the ocean.  

There's the pool. 

Local schools requested that the pool be re-opened after Malabar became clean again (monitoring shows that it is), and funds were promised by the Premier, and local MP, Bob Carr. He "cut the ribbon" for reopening in 1997. 

There are both stairs and a ramp in. Three sets of stairs. 

There's a shower by the pool. The nearest toilets (and more showers) are in a modern facility in the park behind the beach. No hand soap! Toilets very clean. 

Hooks in the rock face on which to hang your stuff. 

Back at the beach, we discovered a paddleboard school was about to begin. 

And now.....off to Mahon Pool 

Surely a contender for the Best View Enjoyed By A Toilet Block Award

Top marks for a soap dispenser. And a tiny hand basin!