McIver's Ladies Baths
Natural rock pool, women and children only, in continuous use since the eighteen seventies.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to McIver's Ladies Baths in Coogee, Sydney traces a women-only rock pool with roots stretching back to the Eora nation, for whom this stretch of shore was women's business. It follows a 1946 stand-off when a Mother Superior blocked the council's plan to let men swim here, and the story of Fanny Durack and Mina Wylie, who trained in this water before becoming the first women to win Olympic swimming medals in 1912. Stand at the stairs cut into the rock and picture the generations who defended this small stretch of coast.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Wylie's Baths
Tidal ocean rock pool carved into cliffside sandstone, filled twice daily by the sea and framed by a timber boardwalk.
Coogee
Tidal ocean pool flushed by the sea, training ground for Australia's first female Olympic swimmers.
Cremorne Reserve
Rock-cut tidal pool built by volunteers on a harbourside reserve of walking paths and skyline views.
Mahon Pool
Depression-era ocean rock pool walled into cliffside stone, filled and flushed by the swell.
Bronte Baths
Historic cliffside ocean pool carved into sandstone, where the freestyle swimming stroke was born in a schoolboy race.
Fairy Bower Sea Pool
Triangular ocean pool carved into sandstone, guarded by bronze sea-nymph sculptures on its seaward edge.