1907

Concern and laughter greeted a 1907 Waverley Council rule that decreed bathing costumes at Bondi had to be neck-to-knee and worn with a short-sleeved tunic on top.

In protest, a large group of men dressed in absurd costumes with outfits including a black and white draughts board garment with a skirt to the knees, cape and frilly knickers. Another dressed as a Roman centurion but found the skirt dangerous in water.

A journalist and photographer from The Daily Mail covered the event, reported under the headline: Fun on the Beaches: Surf-Bathing in Skirts? A cartoon quipped that: ‘Not being able to tell which is Bertie and which is Gertie will not matter a bit … not to Gertie, perhaps, but it may well be unpleasant for Bertie to be mistaken for a girl.”

Another asked: ‘If a member of the lifesaving brigade took off his skirt to go and rescue someone, would he be liable to pay a fine of £10?’

The Daily Mail claimed that if two or three public servants could abolish sunbathing it would make a farce of public administration.

What led to the laughable Ordinance? It appears the then mayor, Alderman. R. G. Watkins, was shocked by what he saw on the beach, declaring: ‘These ‘V’ costumes … accentuate rather than conceal the male anatomy as, after contact with the water, [they] show up the figure … in a very much worse manner than if they were nude.’

The new Ordinance also limited the time that could be spent in a public pool to no more than half an hour, with instructions on where to enter and leave the water ‘with no loitering along the way’.

Even when it was revoked, bathers continued to campaign against restrictive swimwear. The professional swimmer and actress Annette Kellerman led the push for women to be allowed to wear one-piece costumes, while men fought for the right to bare their chests. The battle over modesty on the beach continued in the 20th century.

Courtesy the National Library of Australia.