Sydney’s Harbour Pools

Pruned’s recent posting on ocean pools, reminded me that I had always planned to follow up on the ocean pools of Sydney survey that I posted a little while ago with one on the harbour pools.

The harbour has a number of pools within the heads that provide a service less concerned with the taming of the ocean as they are along the coast and more with a nineteenth century notion of orderly bathing in calm water.

At their most minimal, these pools, sheltered from ocean swells leave behind the monolithic carved earth geological bathing of the ocean pools for a finely drawn line in the water that separates pure leisure from the leisure+infrastructure+public transport mode of the greater harbour space.

At their most formal they are olympic pools located on the harbour edge; highly controlled wave resisting, chlorinated vessels of sky blue water.

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I have looked for all of the publicly accessible baths and pools around Sydney Harbour. In addition to these there are of course hundreds of private pools right on the waters edge, as if that much water in front of you were not enough, but I will leave those to someone else to collate.

If I have missed any and if I have the names wrong, let me know and I will update the post. Curiously and likely due to human error, I found the exact number of pools within the harbour as I did along the coast (26).

Working clockwise from South Head, starting at Watsons Bay:

Parsley Bay:

Nielson Park with its excellent change rooms that provide a modesty tunnel for safely traversing the way to the harbour away from prying eyes:

Redleaf Pool at Double Bay:

Boy Charlton Pool at Woolloomooloo:

Then, after a long pool-less stretch around the CBD, Pyrmont and onto the north side of Balmain, we find the Dawn Fraser Pool:

Drummoyne Pool:

Cabarita:

Henley:

Woolwich Baths:

Tambourine Bay:

Greenwich Baths:

North Sydney Olympic Pool:

A sliver of a lap pool embedded into the rockface at Cremorne Point:

Clifton Gardens:

Balmoral Pool:

Balmoral again:

Sailors Bay:

Kuringai Chase somewhere at the periphery of Middle Harbour…

Balgowlah:

Balgowlah:

Sand Bay:

Grotto Point:

Manly:

Manly:

And finally a pair of pools at Little Manly Cove:

See also: Sydney’s Ocean Pools