Once in a full moon: night swimming in McIver’s ladies baths
A year ago, late on a summer evening in Sydney, I found myself peering – discreetly, I hoped – through a gap in the bushes at a small nature reserve in the city’s eastern suburbs, not far from Bondi Beach. My heart was racing because I thought I had just seen a leg, pale blue in the moonlight, advancing up a flight of stairs at the McIver’s ladies baths. Then, a rustling in the bushes: somebody was climbing up the hill, from the baths to the pathway on which I was stationed. I moved closer to the sound; the swimmer emerged. He was a man: bald, large, his grey T-shirt wet at the neck.
As the name suggests, the ladies baths is a space reserved exclusively for women and children. I had heard a rumour, as the Australian summer’s last late heatwave bloomed, that every full moon a group of older women headed to the baths at night to swim naked. I began visiting at full moon, needing – it was a form of madness, and a distraction from it – to know if it was true.
McIver’s is a natural sloped hollow in a stone shelf, deepened and walled in on the sea edge. Waves crash into the pool, spilling white foam into its far corners where, beneath the surface, small fish and the occasional octopus take shelter. It lies at the foot of a two-storey yellow sandstone cliff face, crowned with railings, a grass bank, a cement pathway and change rooms.
On an interactive map called FreeToBe, which asks women to log safe and unsafe areas in Sydney, several women have dropped “safe” pins at McIver’s. “The safest I have felt as an adult woman,” declares one accompanying comment. Another describes it as “my favourite place to be a woman in Sydney”. (Comments for other parts of the city include: “Man called me a bitch while I was entering my building”; “I saw a man spit at a woman passing by for no known reason”; “A man going around filming girls sunbathing around the outdoor showers”.)
Fanny Durack and Wilhelmina “Mina” Wylie, who in 1912 won gold and silver medals respectively for swimming at the first Olympic women’s swimming event in Stockholm, trained at the baths because they weren’t allowed to train with men. A 1996 ABC radio story features a young Cate Blanchett as the voice of Durack, arguing the case for mixed bathing.
The baths have twice had to fight to remain exclusive to women. In 1995 a local man took the committee that looks after the baths to court on the grounds that the baths defied the New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Act, which applies to services. McIver’s was granted an exemption on the basis it was a place, not a service. In June 2018, the exemption, which had been valid until 2020, was modified to become “indefinite”.
In 1946, when the council tried to open McIver’s to men, the mother superior at Brigidine convent, Randwick, came to its defence. She wrote a letter to say that were the baths to become mixed, the nuns and boarders at her school would no longer be permitted to swim there.
Brigidine, though far smaller that it was in the postwar years, is still in operation today. What was the main convent building is now a Catholic aged-care facility.
There I found Sister Eileen Creagh, one of six Brigidine sisters who came to Australia from Ireland in 1954 to establish the convent. When she was 24, shortly after arriving in Sydney, Creagh and other sisters were taught to swim at McIver’s by Mina Wylie, the Olympic champion. The nuns would hurry their breakfast and travel by tram to get to their lessons on time. They were dressed, even in Australia’s heat, in a cloak, gloves and a black serge habit, made of fabric three yards across and deeply pleated. Creagh laughed, remembering how many clothing hangers she’d use for her habit before she emerged “in an enormous bathing suit – a one-piece, of course.”
One morning at the baths, as the sun illuminated fine rain, Bronwen Morgan, a regular swimmer, described her favourite time to swim. In the morning, she said, light shone off the pool on to the rock face. As the water moved, the hewn rock appeared to wobble and catch fire.
Last January I staked McIver’s out three nights in a row – the full moon fell on a Sunday, but I thought the big swim might happen on the Saturday. The gate, usually left open, was now being locked after dark. On the Saturday Moggy, a friend, came with me. It was a misty evening and the sky was a spooky almost-green. Just after nightfall a fox skulked past us. A few minutes later her cub followed. There was no full moon swim. The next night I returned alone. I saw the leg and then the wet man who, thinking he had given me a fright, apologised and hurried away.
On Monday I arrived while it was still light, hoping to discover the secret entrance the man must have used. Behind a public bathroom and down a hill, a tree formed a low tunnel, at the end of which is McIver’s. Two big orb spiders hovered in their webs above the tunnel. I could just manoeuvre past them. I retraced my movements backwards, made my way up to the path and waited for Moggy: we had decided to swim.
A blue-ringed octopus had been spotted in the pool that day. Their bites cause victims to experience a feeling of impending doom and can be fatal. The moon that night was a “super blood wolf moon”. It all boded well. Together we inched past the spiders, through the secret entrance and down the stairs. We undressed, fussing over where to hang our things and how to place a mobile phone within reach. We dived in.
As we came up for air, there was a large splash at the other end of the pool. I squinted at the water and the familiar bald head emerged. Moggy and I looked at each other, folding our arms across our breasts. “Hi, are you a man?” I asked. My voice sounded like a child’s. “Yes,” he replied. Then, “I won’t tell if you won’t.” He paused. “How did you girls get in here?” We remained silent; the man feigned nonchalance, diving and emerging extravagantly. “You know this is a place for women,” Moggy said. “That was a long time ago,” he replied, then, maybe realising we were likely to know he was lying, “The rules change after dark.” And then he swam to the stairs. “You girls have fun in your safe space,” he said, climbing out. It was our turn to feign nonchalant swimming, glancing up to make sure he was gone. Eventually, we climbed out and sat on the rocks. Across the water, at the edge of Coogee beach, police lights flashed; they reflected red and blue on our wet skin.
The last full moon stakeout was windy and drizzly; the park and the baths, deserted. I walked to Coogee promenade, where seagulls hovered above the small hollows their bodies had left in the sand. Nearby, someone laughed loudly. In the small ocean pool at the foot of the Coogee surf lifesaving club three young women in bright swimsuits were swimming and shrieking beneath the pale night sky.
