McIver's Ladies Baths

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.