The image above is a beautiful snapshot of a time and place, and indeed way of life unfamiliar to many Sydneysiders. Gladesville, famous for the Gladesville Bridge, is a place which many locals will know well, yet the nearby Glades Bay, featured in the image above, is far less familiar.

Glades Bay, like Gladesville, is named after John Glade, an ex-convict and early land owner in the area. Yet it is the culture of swimming in the area which plays the most important role in our history. As early as the 1850s, school boys and men alike used the Parramatta River for swimming. Women however found it much more difficult to swim in the fresh, salty water as they were only permitted to swim in enclosures and bathing sheds where they were far removed from the prying eyes of men.

As early as 1877 Ryde Council began to discuss the idea of building public swimming baths, and in 1887 the necessity for an enclosed swimming area was highlighted when a man was killed by a shark near Ryde Wharf. Yet building public baths was expensive and it wasn’t until the early 1900s that swimming baths began to be built. Yet once the construction of baths began, more were quickly constructed along the Parramatta River. The Glades Bay Baths were constructed in 1909.