ALL INTO OCEAN POOLS - Key Persons
Alec Wickham came to Australia from the Solomon Islands in the late 1890s. He initially swam in the style developed by generations of Pacific Island people. His ‘crawl' over the water at the Bronte Baths was said to have inspired other Sydney swimmers to do likewise.
The Cavill family and other Australian swimmers developed that style further and something called the ‘Australian crawl' emerged to challenge the then-popular trudgeon stroke.
Alec Wickham was a gifted amateur swimmer and diver and interested in surfboard riding. Diving fans remembered ‘the great Alec Wickham' for the grace of his dives, especially the classic ‘Alec Wickham' or ‘South Sea Island dive' done feet first.
Wickham had turned professional by 1914, developing a vaudeville act where he performed in a glass tank.
His world-record dive of 205 feet (62.7m) in 1918 was not accomplished at an ocean pool, but from a specially constructed tower on a cliff above the Deep Rock Swimming Basin on Melbourne's Yarra River. Wickham's dive was the highlight of a World War 1 patriotic gala. Wickham had not anticipated having to dive from such a height, but was reluctant to disappoint the crowd and the gala organisers. Having survived that dive, he never wished to dive from such a height again.
By 1918, Wickham had already abandoned his vaudeville career and was working at the Sydney Tramways Board. He later moved back to the Solomon Islands. His image appears on a postage stamp issued by the Solomon Islands
Job Titles:
- Photographer and Publisher of Postcards )
Job Titles:
- Galleries - Rod Bathgate - Director
Fanny Durack is best remembered as the first Australian woman to win a gold medal in Olympic swimming.
Born Sarah Durack on 27 October 1889 in Sydney, Fanny learned to swim at the Coogee Baths. She won her first State title in 1906. She went on to hold Australian records over distances from 50 yards to a mile and set many world records for swimming.
After being defeated by Mina Wylie in the 100 yards breaststroke and the 100 yards and 220 yards freestyle at the Australian Championship in 1910-11, Durack began practising the new Australian Crawl stroke.
Public demand for Fanny and Mina to compete in the 1912 Olympic Games held at Stockholm led the New South Wales Ladies Amateur Swimming Association to change the rule which forbade their members to appear in competitions when men were present. Fanny and Mina had to raise their own funds to cover their involvement in the Olympics and be accompanied by an appropriate chaperone.
At the Stockholm Games, Fanny broke the world record for 100m free-style in the heats and won the gold medal. She broke twelve world records between 1912 and 1918.
She and fellow Olympian Mina Wylie toured the USA in 1919.
World War I meant her next chance for Olympic competition came in 1920, but one week before the 1920 Olympic Games, Fanny had to withdraw due to an appendectomy, typhoid fever and pneumonia, which led to her eventual retirement.
Fanny was made a life member of the NSW women's Amateur Swimming Association.
She died of cancer in 1956 and is buried at Sydney's Waverley Cemetery, which overlooks the ocean.
Job Titles:
- Vice - Chairperson
- Member of the Executive Committee of All
Isa Wye was involved with the Dee Why Ladies' Amateur Swimming Club for 85 years. She became its honorary secretary when she was 16 and served as the club president for 50 years. Her book "80 years on": The Dee Why Ladies Amateur Swimming Club, 1922-2002. was published in 2002 by the Dee Why Ladies Amateur Swimming Club. She was still a member of the Club's executive committee when she died in 2013 at the age of 90.
Her family helped to establish the Dee Why RSL Club and some of the Northern Beaches most successful sporting and community organisations. She was one of the people who lobbied for the building of the Warringah Aquatic Centre in the late 1970s.
Isa Wye received an MBE in 1973, attended the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow as an Australian team official and received an OAM in 2002 in honour of her outstanding service to the community
Sydney's Northern Beaches Council decided on 7 March 2019 that the ocean pool at Dee Why will now be known as the Isa Wye Rockpool.
Isabel Letham was born in 1899.
She is now best known for riding a surfboard with Duke Kahanamoku at Sydney's Freshwater Beach during his 1914 tour of Australia and New Zealand.
Letham went to the USA to seek work as a stuntwoman in Hollywood.
On her return to Sydney, she taught swimming and organised aquacades at the Freshwater Pool.
Job Titles:
- Secretary
- Member of the Executive Committee of All
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Member of the Executive Committee of All
Job Titles:
- Engineer With the Harbours and Rivers Branch of the Public Works Department
Ross Jones Memorial Pool, Coogee, NSW (Coogee Ross Jones Baths, Sydney, June, 2002)
Job Titles:
- General Committee Member
- Member of the Executive Committee of All
William Kelly was remembered as ‘a kindly genial soul', ‘generous to a degree' with a witty tongue , a ‘sense of humour and enthusiastic nature' that ‘sent him happily through life in which he never lost interest'. Kiama's Masonic and the Oddfellows lodges attended his funeral and acted as pall bearers. His hearse was piled high with flowers. Family members at his funeral included his wife Florence, his son William and daughter Muriel from his first marriage to Sarah Pinkerton of Richmond River and his young grand-daughter. Sadly, Orry Kelly, the son of William's second marriage, arrived back in Kiama from New York in time for his father's funeral, but too late to see his father alive.
Orry, who may have shared some of his father's tailoring and organisational skills, later won three Oscars for Costume Design awarded to him under his professional name of Orry-Kelly.
Job Titles:
- Treasurer
- Member of the Executive Committee of All
Zane Grey was a best-selling American novelist and a fishing enthusiast, who visited Australia to enjoy the gamefishing in the 1930s.
On his first visit to Bermagui, Zane Grey caught the first yellow fin tuna ever found in southern NSW waters. Off Sydney, he caught a tiger shark so big it set a world record and over 300 people came to see the shark.
His visit helped popularise sharkfishing and Bermagui. Grey's visit was widely covered in the press, in Grey's weekly broadcasts across the country and in two of his bestselling books, An American Angler in Australia and Wilderness Fresh.