in Newcastle Ocean pools date back to the
convict era in Australia with Newcastle's
Bogey Hole being constructed in 1819 by convicts under the orders of
Commandant James Morisset. Construction of ocean pools was generally through community subscriptions or government funded. Two ocean pools were privately built: the Pearl Beach Rock Pool, near
Gosford was constructed by a real estate developer in the 1920s to help sell land, and
Wylie's Baths in
Coogee by entrepreneur Henry Wylie and his sons. |207x207px Several ocean pools were once reserved only for the use of men or only for use by women and children and Sydney's Coogee Bay still hosts an ocean pool reserved solely for the use of women and children. Coogee's McIver's Baths constructed in the 1860s seems to now be the only seawater pool in Australia still reserved solely for use by women and children.
Fanny Durack and
Mina Wylie, who won gold and silver medals in the Women's 100m Freestyle at the
1912 Stockholm Olympics trained at this pool. The
Beverley Whitfield Pool in
Shellharbour is named after another of Australia's Olympic swimmers.
Wylie's Baths established in 1907 at
Coogee, by Henry Alexander Wylie, the father of
Mina Wylie, was one of the first mixed gender ocean pools in Australia; the state's first ocean pool will open at
Ocean Reef Marina in 2026. ==List of ocean pools==