Two adjacent ring-of-rocks pools at the southern end of Maroubra Beach, not far from the South Maroubra surf club and the ANZAC Rifle Range on Malabar Headland. These are pools where children splash and play and adults float and relax, rather than pools for people who want to swim laps.
A main pool out on a wide rock platform plus a separate concrete formed children’s pool nearby. This pool was created in the 1930s Depression to cater for campers rather than local people. (Werri Beach Rock Pool , Ourie Park Baths, South Werri Ocean Pool)
Formalised ladies baths at South Flagstaff Point developed from a ladies bathing place, that was in use for generations before a surf club existed at Wollongong’s South Beach. This ocean pool catered for lap swimmers and could stage swimming carnivals. This is the younger of the two ocean pools created to serve the women of Wollongong and the town’s female visitors. Once a significant visitor attraction, this pool featured on early twentieth-century postcards of Wollongong and is now part of the Wollongong Harbour Heritage Trail.
Just to the north of the Continental Baths. Easily accessed from a sealed cycleway/walking track on the site of the former tram-line from Wollongong’s Harbour to the Mount Pleasant coal mine. Featured in early twentieth-century postcards of Wollongong and still a subject for amateur photographers. Also called in the past, Wollongong Men’s Baths, Old Men’s Baths, Wollongong Baths, gentlemen’s baths, the gentleman’s bathing place, Clarkes Hole.
Low concrete piers dam the water in this pool, the oldest of Wollongong’s ocean pools, one of the oldest ocean baths on the NSW coast. Once fitted with a series of chains from which dangled large rings that bathers could grasp, it was a significant tourist attraction from the 1840s.
A main pool linked to a wading pool, on a wide rock platform.
A little south of the Bronte Bogey Hole and the large and beautiful Bronte Park that attracts crowds on the weekends. Also known as the Bond Ocean Pool after lifesaving pioneer and swimming teacher, Major Bond. This nineteenth-century pool was adapted for lap and competition swimming by using a wooden turning board to define a rectangular course within the pool. (Bronte Beach Baths, Wylie’s Bronte Baths, Bond Ocean Pool)
This ring-of-rocks pool is a modified ‘natural’ Bogey Hole, a reef at the southern end of Bronte Beach with a hole at its centre. Close to the Bronte Baths and the large and beautiful Bronte Park that attracts crowds on the weekends.
Sited at the southern end of Avoca Beach, this is a ring-of-rocks children’s pool. There is a dangerous rip at the south end of the beach near the rocks and lifesavers recommend children swim between the flags or in the rock pool under parental supervision. (Avoca Beach Bogey Hole, Avoca Beach Children’s Pool, Avoca Beach Children’s Rock Swimming Pool, Avoca Beach Babies Pool)
Pearl Beach may be named after the pearl-sized quartz pebbles common on the beach until removed by miners and fossickers.Though sited on the relatively sheltered waters of Broken Bay, Pearl Beach is nevertheless considered to be an ocean beach, so the Pearl Beach Pool must be considered an ocean pool.
Formerly ‘The Entrance Ocean Baths’, the iconic ocean pool was renamed in 2018 to The Grant McBride Baths in recognition of the efforts Mr McBride (a long standing former State Member of Parliament) took to protect the baths for the benefit of the Central Coast community.
A children’s pool sited near the mouth of the Richmond River in residential East Ballina on Shelly Beach (on Ballina Head), just south of the Ballina-Lismore Junior Surf Life Saving Club and north of Ballina’s Lighthouse Beach. This seems to be the northernmost ocean pool on the New South Wales coast.
