BEACH AND BATHS.

Evening Star, Issue 19782, 4 February 1928, Page 6

BEACH AND BATHS.

We are heartily in accord with the objects of the St. Clair Improvement Association. It is rather a matter for regret that its revival did not take place earlier in the season, for there is now too little time left to provide accommodation anything nearly adequate for the immense crowds who daily and nightly throng the waterfront of this suburb. Most of these people come from some little distance. While the closely-parked motor cars vividly attest the rapidly increasing proportion of our population who own (or partly own) cars, a huge number travel by tramcar. We shall be immensely surprised if the next traffic returns do not show how greatly the tramway revenue has been “ boosted ” by this summer’s heat wave. For that reason alone the Dunedin City Corporation should have a live interest in co-operating with the reorganised Improvement Association in making provision for more than a mere fraction of the visitors who seek invigoration at the ocean’s marge. We have been assured that the number of visitors would be far greater than it is even now if there were better bathing accommodation, for one thing; because numbers stay away after one experience of the congestion which has become a positive reproach to the authorities. This congestion must be alleviated, not merely for its own sake, but because it breeds scandal. Students of mob psychology need not be told this. As the abuses complained of chiefly concern the corporation’s own property—the St. Clair baths —the corporation cannot, without loss of self-respect, refrain from taking action. As a matter of fact, the omens are already favorable. Tho association has lost no time in getting to work. The General Committee of the City Council has been approached and has agreed to recommend an allocation of £2lO, to be included in the items of expenditure for the coming financial year, this being the estimated cost of converting the existing sun-bathing area into accommodation lor women bathers, provision for whom has heretofore been about a twentieth of what would be taxed by to-day’s demands. The new rearrangement would only permit of sixteen boxes for women being erected, but even that would be something to go on with in tho meantime. Almost equally important, it would involve doing away with elevated floor space which has been misused by hooligans (always unfortunately to bo found among crowds) as a vantage point from which to wring dripping bathing suits on to the heads of women bathers below, and from which to bombard the custodian’s retriever dog with live cigarette butts. It is probably not news to the City Corporation officials that the police have repeatedly been called in to the baths to quell misbehaviour and investigate cases of theft, which are all too frequent. More supervision is imperative, and it will be the more effective when the existing congestion is relieved.

It may be urged that the possibilities of extension of accommodation at the St. Clair baths are so restricted because of physical configuration that not much relief can be expected, especially as an expenditure of only a couple of hundred pounds is proposed. But immense relief would be given if the corporation would provide proper accommodation for surf-bathers. The Improvement Association has not overlooked this fact. The Tramways Committee of the City Council has been approached and has deputed its chairman and the tramways manager to draw up a report for presentation to the next meeting. When the Improvement Association was first formed in 1918 it stressed with the council the need for a building, half of which would provide shade and shelter for families, and the other half dressing accommodation for surfers. Such a building was erected by the council, but it was of such a design originally that it soon underwent alteration, and, as not infrequently happens, the upshot was such a “botch” and an eyesore that there was ill-concealed satisfaction among St. Clair residents when one night it disappeared in smoke. It was replaced by the present handsome structure fronting the Esplanade. But the present structure contains no provision whatever for surfers. If such accommodation was necessary in 1913, how much more is it needed in 1928? Time and again visitors from overseas and from other parts of New Zealand have expressed amazement that Dunedin does not take far further advantage of the magnificent asset Nature has provided in this long, wide stretch of clean sand shelving gradually to the South Pacific. The dangers of this beach for surfing have been greatly exaggerated. We do not deny that there are danger spots, but they are known and ought to be plainly indicated. In this respect Warrington has shown the way to Dunedin by erecting a notice-board warning bathers to keep a certain distance away from the rocks at the most frequented end of its beach. Between them the City Corporation, the Domain Board, the Improvement Association, and the Surf Club might surely subscribe jointly enough money to place a similar notice, aggressively plain, near the St. Clair baths, where the worst danger spot exists. And between them those bodies might also arrange for a regular beach-cleaning service. The litter left by picnickers is sometimes merely offensive to the eye, ns in the case of paper wrappings, etc.; but sometimes it is positively dangerous to bathers and paddlers, as for example when it consists of empty bottles, always a temptation to the thoughtless and indisciplined youth—and even grown men—whenever a stone is handy.