The Women's Pool

Lynne Spender (ed)

These heart-warming tales of trials tribulations and trysts at Australia’s only ocean pool ­ just for women – will make you want to dive in, naked at midnight, to revel in all that joyous aquatic camaraderie.

—Kathy Lette, Writer, ocean swimmer and shameless sea pool skinny dipper.

The history of Coogee’s McIver’s Ladies Baths – Australia’s only ocean pool reserved for women – is eloquently told in these stories from women who have found friendship, sanctuary and sheer pleasure as they have gathered and swum at ‘the Women’s Pool’.

Humorously told tales of encounters at the pool sit together with stories of sorrow and regret. Older women tell of the history of the pool and the famed ‘Thursday Married Ladies Club’; younger women detail their delight at the natural beauty, the safety and the sense of freedom that the pool offers. No aquatic manspreading here.

In this book, women from a diverse range of cultures reveal the role that the women’s pool has played in their lives. From the ‘365ers’ who brave the elements all year round to the younger women who seek summer sun on the rocks, a picture emerges of a place of natural beauty and a space for women to simply be themselves.

The ancient seasonal cycles find their own rhythm at our pool, at our place of ‘women’s business’. In the vastness of the largest Continent on Earth, it is a tiny space of companionship if wanted, or solitude if needed.

—Mary Goslett

The Baths welcomes us to its shelves of stone and grass for drying off, to doze, to talk, to preen, to gaze into the aqua green, ivory and midnight blue pool, to the rocks and outcrops either side, and the Pacific Ocean beyond.

—Jane Messer

NOVEMBER 2021 | ISBN 9781925950458 | Paperback | 140 x 210 mm | 160 pp