The Grand Parade Brighton: Real Estate and Recreation
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The Grand Parade Brighton; real estate and recreation Leonie Bell Ron Rathbone Prize 2019 Cover photo: The Grand Parade, date unknown. Courtesy of Bayside Council Library The Grand Parade © Leonie Bell 2019 1 Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 3 Part 1 Real estate developers create a road ......................................................................................... 4 Early days at Ramsgate and Brighton .................................................................................................... 5 Thomas Saywell invests in Brighton ...................................................................................................... 8 Promoting a road to recreation .......................................................................................................... 11 Real estate and road development – early 1900s ............................................................................... 16 Road development v. pine trees ......................................................................................................... 19 Hazards on The Grand Parade ............................................................................................................ 23 Social housing development ............................................................................................................... 26 Saywell’s Terraces, decay and rebirth ................................................................................................. 30 Transport to the seaside ..................................................................................................................... 32 Part 2 Recreation along The Grand Parade ......................................................................................... 35 Saywell’s Baths ................................................................................................................................... 36 Pemberton’s Baths.............................................................................................................................. 38 Brighton Municipal Baths.................................................................................................................... 44 Ramsgate Baths- shark-proofing the bay ............................................................................................ 48 Lifesaving along The Grand Parade ..................................................................................................... 51 Saywell’s Brighton Hotel ..................................................................................................................... 56 Stormy weather .................................................................................................................................. 65 The Roxy ............................................................................................................................................. 69 2005—2015 The Crystal and other extravagant marinas .................................................................... 71 Grand Pines Tourist Park ..................................................................................................................... 73 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 76 Appendix ............................................................................................................................................. 78 The Grand Parade in 2019 .............................................................................................................. 78 Note on place names .......................................................................................................................... 84 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................ 84 Index ................................................................................................................................................... 85 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................ 89 Notes .................................................................................................................................................. 92 2 Introduction The Grand Parade follows the shores of Botany Bay from Kyeemagh to Sans Souci, a key transport route from the south to the city. As they edge slowly from traffic light to traffic light, it is doubtful whether modern commuters stuck in a traffic jam pause to consider its origins. When was it built and what was its purpose? How has the road and changed since its inception? Today’s Grand Parade can be highly congested with commuter and truck traffic, but this was not always the case. While there is much talk today of extending the F6 freeway south through the area and discussion of the best possible route to remove gridlocked traffic from The Grand Parade, the road was not originally conceived as a thoroughfare. Instead, it led to early recreational opportunities for Sydneysiders who wanted to leave the pollution and crowding of the inner city to swim in the pure waters of Botany Bay, stay at its resort hotel, picnic beneath the shade of towering Norfolk Pine trees and indulge in the pleasure of boating in the relatively safe waters of the bay. Much of the road was created by land speculators, as access to the new suburban land divisions of an expanding city. These businessmen enticed prospective purchasers by promoting the healthy recreational facilities of Brighton and Ramsgate as key benefits of home ownership in the region. This work will seek to answer questions about the origins and development of The Grand Parade, and reveal how it was instrumental in the metamorphosis of the wild, sandy dunes of Brighton Le Sands into housing estates and leisure grounds. It will demonstrate how real estate developers promoted the benefits of the seaside to encourage buyers and how the leisure industry was a key factor in the development of the suburbs around the southern shores of Botany Bay. It examines the contributions of two prominent entrepreneurial businessmen; firstly, Thomas Saywell, who was instrumental in opening up the area, investing heavily in real estate and infrastructure, and secondly, Arthur Pemberton, who built a popular bathing facility which attracted tens of thousands of people to engage in year-round sea bathing. It describes the rise and fall of selected recreational opportunities along The Grand Parade, including the Brighton Hotel, Brighton Baths, Pemberton’s Ramsgate Baths, lifesaving organisations, the Grand Pines Tourist Park, and the Roxy Restaurant. It also discusses the role of government departments in upgrading and expanding the road infrastructure, and council initiatives adjoining The Grand Parade, including the building of Brighton Municipal Baths, and the maintenance and preservation of the famous Norfolk Pines in Cook Park. 3 Part 1 Real estate developers create a road 4 Early days at Ramsgate and Brighton With such an expansive name as The Grand Parade, it is tempting to think that this broad thoroughfare was created as part of a magnificent architectural and town planning model, with the goal of opening up the bayside area of Rockdale Municipality. In fact, the picture is the exact opposite. During the late 1800s the area was largely primitive and untamed, consisting of sandy dunes and swampy land, of which a mere remnant remains in Hawthorne Street Natural Area. Surveyor Sir Thomas Mitchell illustrated the area in 1850, showing a series of land grants and a single dirt road from the dam at Cooks River to Rocky Point. Access to the land grant areas would have been on foot or on horseback through the scrub. Left: 1850 Tracing from Messrs. Darkes and Gorman’s surveys showing the road from the dam at Cooks River to Rocky Point. Rocky Point Road is the only track leading to the southern end of the bay. Photo: State Library of NSW 1 Below: Parish of St George map showing early land grants but few roads. Photo: Bayside Library The Hurstville Propeller printed a retrospective of this era in 1944, recalling the landscape of the late 19th century. It is highly likely that the description is culled from the first-hand stories of old residents of the bayside area. ‘Thoroughfares in those days were mere cart tracks. Later they were formed into Rocky Point Road and West Botany Street. Another unnamed track, now Bay Street, wound down over a hill from Rockdale, across a swamp, and petered out in the sandhills near the beach. Soon after another track was made from West Botany Street and across Muddy Creek towards the beach. It was eventually called Goode Street and afterwards rechristened Bestic Street.…the last signs of civilisation on the Botany Bay side of Rockdale (towards Brighton) were Francis' duck farm, in Bay Street, about a half-mile back from Lady Robinson's Beach; the lonely home of a German butcher, George H. Hook, on the site of the Present Brighton Public School; and Godfrey's place, well back on Bestic Street. Between Francis' and Godfrey’s, but closer to Muddy Creek, were the pioneer homes of families by the name of 5 Napper and Bowmer. The area that was eventually to become Brighton-le-Sands then comprised part of a great belt of wilderness