Ross Jones Memorial Pool (Coogee Beach Pool), NSW
Sited at the end of Carr Street, Coogee Beach, right alongside the Coogee surf club, which provides toilets and change rooms. Two winter swimming clubs, the Coogee Penguins and the Coogee Huskies are associated with this pool. This pool has walls resembling the top of a sand castle and this makes it attractive to many photographers and other artists.
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Historical notes
There are suggestions that Coogee’s Aboriginal inhabitants traditonally set aside the northern end of Coogee beach for men’s activities and the southern end for women’s business.
1838 Coogee was gazetted as a village and the Coogee beachfront and headlands allocated as public reserves.
1858 There were fewer than 20 houses at Coogee.
1887 Opening of the Coogee Aquarium which offered a range of amusements, including an indoor swimming pool in a building with a distinctive large striped dome.
1907 Nine clubs and affiliated association formed the Surf Bathing Association NSW, forerunner of Surf Life Saving Australia.
1910 Members of the Bondi and Coogee surf clubs become the first lifesavers to gain surf Bronze medallions
1928 Opening of the Coogee pier, an English-style pier entertainment complex with a theatre, ballroom, restaurant and shops.
1929 A massive shark net attached to the famed Coogee pier offered safe swimming day or night. The shark net’s 600-foot by 470-foot swimming enclosure could accommodate some 10,000 bathers at a time. This pay-to-swim facility with an admission charge of one penny attracted crowds of 30,000 a night for night surfing under floodlights. Coogee Beach was promoted as the safest surf beach in Australia and other coastal councils considered creating similar enclosures.
1939-1945 Maintenance of the Coogee shark net lapsed during World War II .
1947 Built by Randwick Council and funded by 963 pounds of the compensation payment from the Commonwealth government to Council for war-time damage to Randwick’s beaches. A further amount of 350 pounds was required for protective walls, drainage improvements and paths. Residents requested steps from the Coogee surf club leading to the new Coogee pool.
The Coogee-Randwick Ratepayers and Citizen’s Association suggested dedicating the new baths to Roscoe Samuel Jones, who was alderman for Randwick’s East Ward from 1934 to 1937 and closely association with the Coogee Surf Life Saving Club. With agreement from the Jones family, Randwick Council arranged for a commemorative plaque to be placed on the rock face near the stairs.
1970s The Randwick & Coogee Amateur Swimming Club swam at the Ross Jones Pool for three months, while negotiating to use the Coogee-Randwick RSL Club pool.
1980s The Randwick & Coogee Amateur Swimming Club formed a winter swimming arm that began its 1980 season at the Ross Jones pool and ceased its activities at the end of the 1982 season.
1993 The pool was filled with sand, making the swimming area unusable for winter swimming by the Coogee Huskies and Penguins. Council was cleaning the pool by using mechanical bobcats and shovels to tip sand over the pool walls, rather than by regularly draining the pool and repairing it monthly.
1994 The National Trust classified this pool and listed it on its heritage register. The Coogee Penguins club, which swam there on winter Sunday mornings, promoted itself as a family club boasting equal numbers of male and female members.
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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.
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