BRIGHTON BATHS END
A huge storm in 1968 sealed the fate of the baths at Brighton-Le-Sands.
They had been very popular in their heyday, but patronage had declined greatly and Rockdale Council was finding it difficult to maintain the ageing facility, which included a circular boardwalk, swimming platforms, trapeze, diving tower and fishing area.
Extensive damage caused by the storm sealed the council’s decision to replace the baths with a simpler structure, which occurred a few years later.
A restaurant opened in the former dressing sheds in 1972.
The baths were officially opened in 1928, replacing those built by Thomas Saywell in front of the Brighton Hotel in 1886.
Historian Ron Rathbone wrote the new baths were ‘‘an instant success, especially when an 11ft [3.35m] grey nurse shark was hooked opposite Bay Street in the first week of the swimming season and a bronze whaler three weeks later.”
‘‘On New Year’s Day 1929, 12,589 crammed into its confines,” Rathbone wrote.
Numbers dropped in the early 1960s as people became more mobile and free swimming enclosures opened nearby.
The 1968 storm did enormous damage to the foreshores in Botany Bay,as well as at Cronulla.
At Brighton-Le-Sands, a dozen Norfolk Island pine trees and several old cannon toppled into the bay.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY
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