Rock Pools

Curl Curl Rock Pool (South Curl Curl Pool, South Curl Curl Rock Pool)

All into Ocean Pools · 21 February 2015

Curl Curl Rock Pool (South Curl Curl Pool, South Curl Curl Rock Pool)

A 50-metre, tidally flushed pool at South Curl Curl Beach. Close to Stewart House on Carrington Parade. Home to a range of clubs. This rock pool offers a 50-metre pool and a shallower section largely formed by rock. This pool is a popular subject for photographers.

Click to find location on AllSwims.au

Historical notes 1906
 Warringah Shire was formed.



1918 South Curl Curl acquired a new influx of weekend visitors and the rock pool at the southern end of the beach was a popular bathing place.



1924 The Curl Curl Improvement Association requested that Warringah Council’s engineer inspect the proposed site for a rock pool.

1925
 The surf club was active in the enlargement of the rock pool to provide safer bathing. A public meeting about constructing baths led to the Curl Curl Improvement Association and South Curl Curl Life Saving Club forming a South Curl Curl Bath Committee to pressure council to enlarge the pool ‘for the children’ with the club raising funds for its completion via carnivals and social events at the clubhouse. A beauty pageant run by the swimming club helped to raise funds for the pool’s construction.

1926 Warringah Shire Council completed construction of the South Curl Curl baths. The outer wall of this original rock pool is now the centre wall of the present pool.



1927 The baths were formally opened.



1928
 After the surf club advised it would take no further responsibility for the control of the rock baths, a Council overseer took on this role.

1930s South Curl Curl rock pool attracted crowds of bathers on hot summer days.

 Swimming at the rock pool was part of the holiday experience of the first children accommodated at Stewart House, a facility created to provide seaside holiday accommodation for New South Wales schoolchildren ‘from western suburbs and beyond’.

 Photographs by commercial photographer Sam Hood show country children staying at Stewart House learning to swim at the South Curl Curl Pool. Olympic swimmer Harold Hardwick was one of the instructors.

Proposals were put forward for the enlargement of the rock pool.
 A wall was constructed at the rock pool, creating two pools. The outer wall of the original rock pool is the centre wall of the present pool.

1950
 Toilets and a change-room were added to the pool facilities.

Early 1960s
 The Curl Curl Amateur Swimming Club formed following a meeting convened by South Curl Curl surf club. As the NSW Amateur Swimming Association did not then permit any of its affiliated clubs to have male and female members, the swimming club was officially divided into men’s and women’s sections. The surf club assisted the swimming club financially, and allowed to use the surf club for meetings, social functions and equipment storage.



1966
 The men’s and women’s Amateur Swimming Clubs united to form one club and the pool was shortened to accommodate Olympic standard 50-metre races. This created a pool complex consisting of a ‘stilling basin’, a main pool (50 metres by 12 metres) and a wading pool (25 metres by 15 metres).



1968
 Warringah Shire built the first clubhouse for the Amateur Swimming Club.

1970s There were swimming competitions between the Amateur Swimming Club and the surf club.

Stewart House opened a secondary school and senior dormitory in 1977.

Mid-1980s
 The Harbord Frigid Frogs winter swimming club began to use the clubhouse building.

1990 A deck was added onto the clubhouse building to increase space available for the Frigid Frogs Club, which operates all year round.

1997 The children’s pool was partly concreted, entry ramps were installed and pool walls repaired.

1999
 Warringah Council began monitoring water quality in this pool and its other five rock pools.

The pool catered for a range of activities and for patrons of all ages and abilities. The carpark behind the beach which joins the surf club with the swimming club building and rock pool provided several disabled parking places for direct access to the pool. The elderly retired locals who habitually sunned themselves at the base of the concourse wall were affectionately known as ‘the walruses’. Several high schools used the pool during weekdays in the swimming season. The wading pool was not only popular with children, it was also used as access to the surrounding rock shelf. Some locals expressed concerns about the pool being used for scuba lessons.

2002
 At the 26th national winter swimming championships, the Frigid Frogs were again the strongest winter swimming club in Australia, finishing 71 points ahead of the Cronulla Polar Bears and the Maroubra Seals.

Pollution monitoring indicated that South Curl Curl was an almost flawlessly clean beach.

2003 On a day of gale-force winds, the police helicopter and two rescue service helicopters searched the seas after a pair of men were reported to have been pulled out to sea in heavy swells off South Curl Curl beach. It was not clear whether the men had been in the ocean pool or swimming near it when the undertow took hold of them. The search for the two men proved unsuccessful and was abandoned.

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Historical data and text adapted from All into Ocean Pools Inc (originally published at allintooceanpoolsinc.org, including research contributed by Marie-Louise McDermott), retrieved via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Used under Creative Commons Attribution guidelines.

Allintooceanpoolsinc.org was a great resource which has been lost to the internet and we have restored the page content to keep it live and available. If you have updates or images related to this please contact us to add them. We also want the original authors to contact us. Thank you

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