SWIMMING BATHS.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 43, 20 January 1894, Page 8

SWIMMING BATHS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —-In the way of hacking’ up your article of a fortnight ag’O, let me suggest that a passable bathing- and s wimming place might be made below the gasworks near the big boatshed, where the beach is composed of gravel. Many boys bathe there now, and leave their clothes about everywhere. All that would be wanted would be a long, low shed, and a fence enclosing about an acre of the space between high and low water. Bathers would then he safe from the sharks, and over-sensitive people would not he shocked by seeing a lot of perfectly naked boys running about. In Dunedin the people are not so easity shocked, for it is a common thing to go to St. Clair on the ladies’ day to look from the public road above the baths at the girls swimming’. They wear very pretty bathing dresses, and some of them can swim. In Oamaru they have salt water baths, where they pump the water up from the sea, but the water in our estuary is not worth pumping—it is not clean enough. The onh* plan is to let the tide ebb and flow over the bathing place, so that it would be kept comparatively clean. With all that you say about the necessity of our young people learning to swim I cordially agree, and believe that the only way to g’et them to learn would be to have some recognised place for the purpose, where the older ones might teach the younger. There would be a time at low water when, of course, no bathing could be done. They would be simply high-water baths. It is said that the Corporation borrowed money some years ago for the purpose of making’ baths. I suppose that would be hot and cold fresh water baths fed from the waterworks. It is doubtful, however, if such a thing would pay working expenses. If the money is still available a portion of it might be expended, however, on the beach, where there would be little future cost for maintenance, and none at all for pumping.—-Yours, &c.>. Bamily Man.