Cooling down before chlorine: Perth's earliest swimming pools
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Before air conditioning and suburban swimming pools were the norm, the people of Perth had to be creative in order to cool down in summer.
Janet Gatt's family moved to a house on Mounts Bay Road at the foot of Mount Eliza in 1954.
Her mother made the best of ground water that poured into the property by having a swimming pool dug out in the backyard.
"I think it was either the second or third pool in Perth; they were a novelty in those days," Ms Gatt said.
"Because there was this endless supply of fresh water coming down from under Mount Eliza, it was very pure.
.jpg/8084146 "Family pool")
"Nowadays there is no way you would do it, but the water coming down under Kings Park was actually a problem.
"We had proper drainage under our house — but next door, quite often their bathroom would collapse because of it."
So plentiful was the water supply that rather than cleaning the pool or adding chemicals, the family would just refill it every week.
"We would just sort of scrub it out in between and then you would have clean water again," Ms Gatt said.
Home swimming pools at the time were a rarity.
"It was a great thing to have, especially for entertaining, particularly as there was very little air conditioning in those days; to have the pool, it was refreshing," Ms Gatt said.
"You'd just invite people round because it was a novelty and it was the era of the two-litre glass flagons of wine."
The house was sold by the family in late 1980s and it was later demolished to make way for the Mount Hospital.
Perth's very first public pool
For people without access to a flow of spring water in their backyard, the options for a swim were limited to the Swan River or the ocean.
During the gold boom of the 1890s, many took to the river and the newspapers recorded regular complaints about nude bathing and immodesty.
Richard Offen from Heritage Perth said residents began to make demands for a public swimming pool to be built.
"In 1884 a tin bathing shed was planted somewhere on the Esplanade so that people could go somewhere to change, but even then there were lots of complaints about skinny dipping and changing without due modesty," Mr Offen said.
"Eventually there was the 1892 Police Act which dealt with the problem by banning bathing except in proper costume between 6:00am and 8:00pm.
"The costumes would have been of wool and it would have itched like anything and when they got wet [they] would have been blooming heavy."
Eventually, in 1898, the council built the Perth City Baths on the banks of the Swan, in the same location where Elizabeth Quay now stands.
"The design of the baths was very ornate," Mr Offen said.
"It was made of timber and in what they call the Moorish style, with flamboyant cupolas.
"It was a sort of lido, so it was an enclosed piece of the Swan River and the water was refreshed with the tide."
Bathing with jellyfish
The baths had to be placed at the end of a jetty about 30 metres into the river because the water by the bank was so muddy.
"So they tried to put the baths out in much deeper and cleaner water but it didn't really work," Mr Offen said.
The water remained murky and was often full of jellyfish.
In 1913 the baths closed and a new facility was built further west at Crawley Bay.
"They were on a sandy bed and eventually the tram went past them and it was a much larger pool," Mr Offen said.
"City baths became derelict and eventually they were demolished in 1920 when all swimming moved out to Crawley.
"Crawley Baths lasted for decades; I know lots of people who learnt to swim amongst the jellyfish out there."
Topics: history, lifestyle-and-leisure, human-interest, perth-6000, crawley-6009
