Cutting its timber silhouette into the ocean on the south side of the Coogee coastline, the Wylies Bath's boardwalk – adorned in muted circus-like colours – makes this ocean pool one of the most instantly-recognisable in Sydney. The historic pool has sat with quiet grandeur beneath the boardwalk’s Edwardian frame since 1907 – providing a safe haven for swimmers, and becoming the first mixed-gender ocean pool in the country.
In his recent book celebrating the magnificent swimming spots of the Harbour City (Swimming Sydney: A Tale of 52 Swims), Sydney-based author Chris Baker declares Wylie's Baths his very favourite place to swim. Read on to find out why.
*****
Unlike a good parent or an impartial teacher, I have a favourite. Wylie’s Baths is not only the grand old dame of Sydney’s ocean pools and my favourite Sydney swim, it’s also my favourite swimming venue in the entire world. A note to future mourners – this is where I’d like a good portion of my ashes to be scattered. But more about that later.
I’ve started many a swimming season in Wylie’s chilly September water, farewelled languorous summers with a dip in May or June, and sometimes, unable to wait till the next spring, have come back in winter with a wetsuit. I’ve greeted numerous underwater sea creatures as I’ve traversed the pool’s 45 metres and habitually chatted to other biped regulars who float and swim and giggle. I’ve resisted the urge to stalk celebrities who love the pool as much as I do and, upholding the democracy that only Speedos can bestow, have instead offered, and received, a nod and a smile.
After a swim, I’ve bought many a flat white and slab of carrot cake from the pool’s tuckshop. The humble shack has steadfastly resisted culinary gentrification and sells oversized refrigerated rolls that make my jaw hurt when I bite them. In every season and weather condition imaginable, I’ve looked out from the sublimely sited heritage-listed deck that sits on wooden stilts above the rock pool. Taking in Wedding Cake Island and the churning Pacific, I’ve never failed to swoon, and with each visit I reaffirm to myself and various companions that there is no better view in the world. I’ve delighted in the change rooms that are grafted onto the curves of honey-coloured sandstone and feel like a stage set from South Pacific. Lit by cheerful skylights, aired by sea breezes and made of simple plywood, the change rooms host hot solar-powered showers that need a 20-cent coin to be activated. On days when the ocean is cold enough to make me shiver uncontrollably after ten laps, these showers have thawed and soothed me.
I’ve patted the pool’s resident pussy cat, listened to seagulls that squawk and swoop for fish offshore, and read numerous books in the shady hollows beneath the deck. I’ve taken my turn with other regulars scooping bluebottles out of the pool in late summer, and I’ve marvelled at the blue groper who blithely swam with us for weeks. I’ve enjoyed the festive colour and geometry of beach towels spread elaborately on the large cement sundeck, and, as if holding coveted tickets to a gala performance, I’ve tailored entire itineraries of visiting family and friends around a swim here. I’ve heralded several Christmas mornings with a Wylie’s swim and a mango on the Edwardian boardwalk, and I’ve been repeatedly charmed by the pool’s annual ritual of enshrining a decorated Christmas tree in the very middle of the water.
Today, I realise that I’ve clocked up my 52nd swim for the year. I’m reminded of what a glorious time Sydney in December can be. If the year is a working week and summer its weekend, early December is the equivalent of 3 pm on a Friday: the best is yet to come and it’s tantalisingly close.
Walking through a grove of banksias and hearing the swell of the sea, I skip towards the entrance to the pool, a shack of vertical blue-and-yellow stripes that evokes bathing pavilions of bygone days. Descending to the entrance gate, I happily note that the water temperature is 20 degrees and I ripple with excitement at my first glimpse of the pool in several months. I proffer a handful of coins to gain entry. It’s a magical and fair swap – a handful of gold and silver for an hour of aquatic perfection. If I had them in my pocket, I’d also offer sapphires, emeralds and jade in homage to the colours of the sea.
Wylie’s Baths is one of Sydney’s oldest ocean pools, established in 1907 by Henry Alexander Wylie, a local resident and celebrated swimmer. Wylie’s daughter Wilhemina (better known as Mina) learned to swim here; she and her friend Fanny Durack went on to become the world’s first female swimmers to win silver and gold medals at the Olympic Games. An endearing bronze statue of Mina Wylie in a neck- to-knee bathing suit welcomes visitors to the Baths. Every time I come to Wylie’s, I give Mina a friendly wink. She seems to enjoy the view to the Tasman from her vantage point among beds of frangipani and kangaroo paws. Mina Wylie is not the only remarkable female local who I associate with Wylie’s. For many years until she died before her time of ‘an unlucky tumour’, I swam regularly at Wylie’s with my friend Joana. A New York native but a child of the world, Joana enthusiastically adopted Coogee after lives in Brooklyn, Perth, Central Australia and Samoa.
Having worked as a health educator in Iraq, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, China and South-East Asia, Joana told me that the only thing that got her more excited than an aquatic ‘appointment with Dr Wylie’ was a travel tale. Brassy and sassy, she used language as salty as Wylie’s water. She revelled in referring to a senior government minister as a ‘passionless c$#t’ and would conduct hilarious, impromptu poolside vox pops with other swimmers. Joana had a quirky sense of humour and would often end text messages with pseudonyms that referenced contemporary culture. When The Handmaid’s Tale television series premiered, she was ‘Offred’; when a famous prisoner was released from a Bali gaol, she was ‘Schapelle’. If nothing in the news or of the zeitgeist amused her, Joana would often sign off a message as ‘Mina’. It was therefore entirely appropriate that Joana’s wake was held at Wylie’s, and that her ashes were scattered close by. On the day that Joana’s closest friends came to send her to the seas, I thought about why many of us (including me) want our mortal remains to be given to water. An essential and healing element, its embrace is both familiar and mysterious. We are predominantly composed of water and its absence is literally life-erasing. Like our city, our island nation and our fragile blue planet, our bodies depend on water. Our need for water is also emotional – without it we are less free to escape the pressures and doubts of modern life. Swimming can be an initiation, a meditation, an act of liberation. The routines, physical ebbs and flows, and surprises of a swim parallel our individual journeys as life’s emotional tides rise and fall. A swim can wash away past setbacks, irrigate hope and cleanse us emotionally.
Swimming is living, and swimming Sydney connects us with Country, ourselves and each other.
*****
This is an extract from Swimming Sydney: A Tale of 52 Swims (NewSouth) by Chris Baker, out now.
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