Shelly Beach Pool
A rock pool located below Cronulla’s Shelly Park with its distinctive dressing pavilion. Linked to Cronulla’s other ocean pools by The Esplanade, a popular walking track.
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Historical notes Clans of the Dharawal people lived around North Cronulla and Cronulla Beach.
1827 Surveyor Dixon used the term ‘Cronulla beaches’.
1885 The railway reached Sutherland and the Cronulla area gained popularity as a picnic place.
1899 The original landholders petitioned the government, asking among other things for the Shelly Park reserve to be extended and for a 10-foot reservation on the eastern side of the peninsula. (This reservation allowed the emergence of The Esplanade, one of Sydney’s best walks.)
Early 1900s This area of Cronulla was ‘notorious for mixed bathing’. Shelly Beach was acknowledged for its natural beauty and considered a suitable site for a ‘splendid swimming basin on similar lines to that on the north side of Coogee’. Residents constructed the initial pool that appeared on postcards.
Sutherland Shire was proclaimed in 1906.
A steam tram linked Sutherland and Cronulla in 1911.
1920s Motor cars gave more people readier access to semi-rural Cronulla.
Late 1930s The formalised baths at Shelly Park were one of the many results of E. S. Spooner’s (NSW Minister for Works) unemployment scheme.
1938 About 30 local residents voluntarily began removing stones from the swimming pool in readiness for the coming season. Council acquired a special lease for the pool from the Lands Board office for construction of rock baths in the beach reserve. Construction of the pool cost 1,300 pounds.
1939 W. F. Foster successfully tendered for construction of the dressing-pavilion and conveniences, at a cost of 1,800 pounds.
Cronulla became the only Sydney beach with a railway station.
1960s Cronulla’s low-rise holiday guest-houses were being replaced by high-rise flats.
1981 In ‘The Year of the Disabled’, a ramp was added to provide wheelchair access to the pool, but sand build-up made this ineffective. Sutherland Shire considered extending the ramp, which would restrict access for most bathers or spending $6,000 to shift the ramp to the north side of the pool.
Late 1980s Rising public liability costs threatened the survival of all Cronulla’s tidal pools.
1991 The South Cronulla rock pool’s need for repairs some five years after experiencing storm damage meant large crowds vied for swimming space at the Shelly Beach pool.
1999 Shelly Beach had pollution problems.
2002 Shelly Park was one of the cleanest NSW beaches according to the NSW EPA.
2003 An assessment of the Shire’s ocean pools was identified as a necessary part of the ongoing management of its coastal assets.
2006 This pool attracts year-round swimmers with a group of around fifty year-round daily swimmers constituting an informal swimming club.
2007 The Shelly Beach Baths were praised as ‘one of our best pools’ in the Sydney Morning Herald‘s magazine, despite the barnacle encrusted pool walls and the shabby changing sheds. Mostly used by local lap swimmers, this pool’s appeal seemed to be based on it offering a greater sense of seclusion than Cronulla’s other tidal pools, its quiet setting (since the tram terminus at Shelly Park is long gone) with the park providing a buffer from the street and park picnickers and walkers on the Esplanade making little noise and of course the views out to sea and across Bate Bay.
The nearby Nuns Pool cafe was both a popular breakfast spot and a reminder that this pool (like the ladies pools at Coogee and Wollongong) was popular with the local nuns.
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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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