Tamarama: the bay where the public became participants

Behind the bay’s strip of sand, a ravine begins; it once held a theater with one thousand seats, a menagerie, a railway, and a boxing performance. They were part of a large amusement park stretching across the ravine, the neighboring park, and the edges of the bay. On the northern headland stands the surf life saving club, whose present building was constructed in the nineteen forties. The vanished park and the swimmers are painted on the club wall, while the same sandy bay remains in front of it.

Every morning, Bill Stewart, one of the local swimmers, came down to Tamarama’s southern cliffs with wire cutters. He cut through the barbed wire to reach the water. The managers put the wire back up, called the police, the swimmers were warned—and Stewart came again at dawn.

The fence was put up by William Anderson, a theatrical entrepreneur who made money from touring melodramas and ran two companies. On December first, nineteen oh six, he opened “Wonderland City” here: the paid amusement city occupied the park, the ravine, and the edges of the bay. Anderson claimed to have invested twenty thousand pounds in it. The ravine held a theater for one thousand spectators, a menagerie, a railway, and a boxing show where visitors were promised five pounds if they could last fifteen minutes against a strongman.

Some of the public bypassed the ticket booths along the shore. Anderson protected his takings: a wire fence almost two and a half meters high crossed the cliffs and sand from one edge of the bay to the other. But when the land was bought, a strip twelve feet wide—about three and a half meters—was left outside his plot specifically for free access to the beach. The fence blocked it too.

George Blackburne Philp, the future chairman of the local surf life saving club, wanted to swim here every day. At first, he crawled under the wire. When a guard caught him, Philp arranged to bring the guard tea from the kiosk to the main gate; in return, he was let through to the water. His companions kept cutting the fence. On weekends, Anderson restored it, the police returned, and the swimmers took up the wire cutters again.

Then they sent a delegation to the Parliament of New South Wales. On March sixth, nineteen oh seven, the Minister for Lands, James Ashton, ordered the coastal strip returned in order, in his words, to ensure free access forever to the beach in Tamarama Bay. On April seventeenth, the beach was officially set aside for public recreation. The participants in the dispute formed the core of the Tamarama Surf Life Saving Club: having won access to the water, they set about protecting those who would swim here.

The scandal around the fence damaged the park’s reputation. Anderson invited ever more daring performers, but the public dwindled. In nineteen eleven, “Wonderland City” closed, nearly bankrupting its owner.

There are no more rides or wire in the bay. On the northern headland stands the present surf life saving club building, built in the nineteen forties. On its wall is a mural about “Wonderland City” and the swimmers who turned the narrow strip in front of the paid park into free access to the sea.