Wollongong Swim Club is one of the oldest swimming clubs in Australia.

Formed in 1894, the club has been campaigning for a 50-metre pool to be built at Beaton Park since 1954.

The club is seeking funds from the future lease of NSW's electricity poles and wires to build the pool and to support the proposal president Col Bruton put together with a brief history of swimming in Wollongong.

Early records of swimming in Wollongong reflect the Victorian approach to dress and separation between males and females.

The first breakaway from the enforced modesty of private bathing structures (rather like a big backyard dunny), that were horse drawn and backed in to the water, came about in 1835. A ladies baths was established within a natural depression at Flagstaff Point, below the existing lighthouse, and a barrier of rocks at the mouth of the cove broke the wave action. Lady Jane Franklin visited the pool in 1839. The pool was once fitted with a series of chains on which rings were added for swimmers to grasp. The pool was quite an attraction in the 1840s, becoming known as the Nun's Pool or Chain Baths. The cove can still be seen from Flagstaff Point.

As an alternative to the Nun's Pool, a pool was blasted out of the rock shelf on the northern end of Wollongong's City Beach. The pool is still there and at one stage was know as the Ladies Pool. For the whole of summer, ladies from the town of Wollongong were able to enjoy the "inestimable luxury of sea bathing". A sentry was posted on the hill to ensure the prying eyes of blaggards did not watch the bathing ladies. The pool is still there.

Gentlemen of the day swam in bogey holes, known as Clarke's Hole and Gibson's Hole, north of the harbour. The sensitivities of refined young ladies were often shocked by the sight of semi-naked (bare from the waist up) and obviously shameless young men bathing and sunbaking on the rocks. There was at that time an ordinance prohibiting public bathing between 10am and 5pm.

In 1871, Michael O'Toole placed a tender to construct a bathing place at Clarke's Hole. Thomas Ryan was contracted almost 20 years later to undertake blasting work to improve the gentlemen's bathing area at Clarke's Hole. Swimming was formally accepted as a recognised sport when the modern Olympic Games were proposed in 1890 and the NSW Swimming Association was formed in 1891. Not surprisingly, the Wollongong Swim Club was formed in 1894 with Mr J. P. Galvin elected as president. The new club was very active, with a men-only membership - women were not allowed to swim in the same pool as men. (Queen Victoria really ruled the roost - her comments on mixed bathing were law!) The men promptly went about enlarging a fissure in the rocks and built for themselves, with the help of Thomas Ryan's blasting, a quaint (although modern for the times) 33-yard pool. Three laps of the pool was equal to almost 100 yards.

The first swimming carnival south of Sydney was held in broad daylight in 1896. The carnival became the new "age of reasoning" and included ladies and men's events held between 10am and 5pm. Shame upon shame, in broad daylight, with men and women in the same pool! Fifteen-year-old famous swimming star Annette Kellerman performed and showed off as she swam at a well-attended swimming carnival conducted by Wollongong Swim Club in 1902. She never swam for Australia as shortly after she turned professional and joined a swimming circus in the US. In 1908 some 600 visitors were in attendance at a local carnival.

The club virtually wound down in 1916, due to young men enlisting in World War I and was not revived or officially re-established until 1926 when the Continental Pool was built with much help from the re-formed club. The term Continental indicated that there were facilities for both men and women at the same site and men and women could swim together - something that existed in Europe since the mid-1800s. The Old Men's Pool still exists to this very day and is still called this by the many locals who choose to swim there.

Information courtesy of Wollongong Swim Club (1894) Inc president Col Bruton