Brighton Bathing Boxes

The Brighton Bathing Boxes are 93 beach huts on Dendy Street Beach in Brighton, Victoria, Australia, in the City of Bayside. They are a significant tourist attraction for the area.^[1] In November 2019 a bathing box was sold for $340,000^[2] and historically they have been valued at about 10% of the median Brighton house price.^[3]

The Bunurong (also known as the Boonwurrung) have a strong ongoing connection with the coastline of Port Phillip and Dendy Street Beach. Their shell middens and stone tools have been observed and remain at Brighton Beach.^[4][5]

Described in 1925 as, 'between Middle Brighton Baths, and the Bluff, at Brighton Beach is the best place to look....In these middens, "scrapers", firestones, stone axes (nearby), the charred broken shells of mussels, "mutton fish" (Haliotis), cockles and periwinkles, are found in abundance. Sometimes splintered bones, perchance those of kangaroo or wallaby. Also lumps of ochre....are found in the remains of these campfires.'^[6]

A more recent reference notes that a large midden of shell and charcoal extends behind the Brighton Bathing Boxes at Dendy Street Beach.^[7] The whole of the Brighton Foreshore is designated an area of high aboriginal sensitivity protected by both State and Federal legislation.^[8]

The bathing boxes are located on Dendy Street Beach between Gould Point (opposite Gould Street) and Rocky Point (adjacent to the Brighton Lifesaving Club).^[9]

The land from the Esplanade to the high water mark of Dendy Street Beach is within the Brighton Beach Reserve vested to the Mayor, Councillors and Burgesses of the Borough of Brighton for public recreation by an 1877 Act of the Victorian Parliament.^[10]

Behind Dendy Street Beach lies the Dr Jim Willis Reserve, an area of geomorphological and regional vegetation significance.

The historical sea levels of Port Phillip can be interpreted at this location. At the end of the last ice age rising global sea levels flooded Port Phillip to about 1 to 2 metres higher than present sea level.^[11] The waves of Port Phillip are likely to have actively eroded the escarpment of the Brighton Coastal Plain here.^[12]

Around 2000 years ago the entrance to Port Phillip was blocked to the ocean and the salt water gradually evaporated. A flat grassy plain with a central lake fed by surrounding rivers emerged on the previously submerged land . As is the oral history of the Bunurong (Boonwurrung) and supported by recent scientific research, the ocean again flooded the Port Phillip about 1000 years ago.^[13] Sea levels were lower at this time and likely never reached the base of the escarpment enabling Holloway Bend beach and Brighton dunes to develop and protect the previously eroding coastline.

The reserve contains a plant community of regional significance being the last vestige of natural vegetation to be found anywhere along Brighton's foreshore. Plants include the tea tree, coastal wattle, boobialla, coastal pomodoris, bower spinach, running postman, black anther flax lily, wattle lomandra, drooping she oak, mat rushes, coast salt bush, coast spinifex, black wattle, pink coast noon flower, and the seaberry salt bush.^[14]

The foreshore vegetation near the beach is a habitat for a variety of native animals including the superb fairy wren, shrub wren, little wattlebird, micro bat, blue tongue lizard and tiger snake, as well as introduced species such as the red fox, rabbit and brown rat.^[15][16]

Bathing boxes were first built in the 1860s, across the Brighton coastline, to protect the modesty of bathers.^[17] The number of bathing boxes gradually increased from that time.

Paintings from the 1890's depict 6 bathing boxes on Dendy Street Beach^[18] and a single bathing box on Middle Brighton Beach.^[19] Plans dated 1907, but likely surveyed earlier, show 17 bathing boxes on Dendy Street Beach and the single bathing box on Middle Brighton Beach.^[20]

In 1907 Brighton Council's Town Clerk stated that some 23 ratepayers owned bathing boxes.^[21] By the mid 1910's, the number of bathing boxes had increased to about 40 on Dendy Street Beach^[22] and 28 bathing boxes on Middle Brighton Beach.^[23]

The number of bathing boxes significantly increased after the First World War. By 1933, 246 bathing boxes were located on Dendy Street Beach and Middle Brighton Beach. On Middle Brighton Beach, Bathing Box No.1 was near Park Street and No 111 just south of Wellington Street. On Dendy Street Beach were Box No.132 to No 267.^[9]

Between 1935 and 1936 work was completed to move bathing boxes to the top of the beach, instead of the high-water mark, where they were located previously.^[24] In May 1937 Brighton Council decided that bathing boxes on other beaches, in particular Middle Brighton, were to be moved to Dendy Street Beach to allow construction of a sea wall. ^[25]

Possibly the first dispute over the construction of a bathing box occurred in 1862 over a bathing box illegally erected on private property, and subsequently moved without appropriate approvals to Crown Land below the high tide mark.^[26]

During the 1920's and 1930's the large number of bathing boxes, storm damage^[27] and their disrepair, prompted calls to abolish the granting of licenses and remove them from the beach.^[28][29]

In 1983, the Coastal Caucus Committee decided to phase out 2000 buildings along the Port Phillip Bay, including the Brighton Bathing Boxes. Among others, the Brighton Bathing Box Association decided to fight the decision, and in 1985, the Bathing Boxes were recommended for retention, with the huts being heritage-listed in 2000.^[17]

In 2009, the City of Bayside built 9 more huts at the southern end of the beach to raise money despite the Great Recession, raising the number to 88.^[30] This was done despite the objections of heritage groups, as boxes previously built there had flooded.^[31] By 2017 the City of Bayside had built another 5 huts, raising the total number to 93 .In 2019 the council had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars protecting those boxes when, as predicted, the foundations of those boxes were severely compromised by erosion.^[32]

In 2019, the Draft Marine and Coastal Policy document proposed that the huts be removed or relocated, causing backlash online and condemnation from the Victorian Liberal Party and Member for Brighton James Newbury, with Newbury calling the plan 'crazy'. Acting Premier Lisa Neville accusing Newbury of fearmongering, stating, “This is a nonsense coming from the Liberal Party.”^[33][34]

The Brighton Bathing Boxes are built in a uniform way with Victorian features, painted weatherboards and corrugated iron roof, due to a Planning Scheme Heritage Overlay. Owners are allowed to paint their huts, causing a mass of different bright colours.^[35] They do not have water or electricity connections.^[30]

The Brighton Bathing Boxes are at threat of erosion, which has caused sandbags to be installed, in order to stop flooding.^[31] Sand has also been trucked in, in an attempt to stop erosion and replenish sand on the beach.^[36]

Originally the erosion of cliffs along the coast of Port Phillip supplied the sand that formed the beaches of the Brighton Beach coastline.^[37] The construction of seawalls and other erosion management works has stopped the supply of sand and the beaches are no longer being naturally replenished.^[38] Beaches are now renourished artificially including Brighton Beach (1987), Dendy Street Beach (1982 -1983 and 2022) and Middle Brighton Beach (1982-83).^[39] However the complex and interrelated processes by which sand moves along the coast still occur, but with sand from the renourished beaches.^[40]

Wind driven waves move sand up and down the coast both onshore and close inshore. In summer sand is moved to the north, and in winter to the south.^[41] Within this seasonal oscillation there is a gradual accumulation and then loss of sand northwards along Brighton Beach, Holloway Bend, Dendy Street Beach, and Middle Brighton Beach. Natural reefs off Holloway Bend, and Dendy Street Beach temporarily capture the sand and slow its movement northwards.

These coastal processes are demonstrated by sand moving north past Green Point to create a sand spit and lagoon across Holloway Bend between 1987 -1990.^[42] Also the gradual build up of sand at the renourished Middle Brighton Beach and its movement north past the manmade Park Street groyne to create beachlets can be readily observed.^[43]

Sand drift from Holloway Bend, Dendy Street Beach and close inshore is captured by the groyne at Middle Brighton Beach until it has accumulated to its tip. The sand then moves past the groyne progressively filling and bypassing the smaller reefs and groynes to the north. Ultimately the sand collects behind the Brighton Yacht Club marina in a triangular spit.^[44] The small amount of sand that escapes that entrapment doesn't collect along the seawall north of the yacht club, but is moved deeper into the bay by strong reflective waves from the seawalls. Once further offshore, the predominant sand drift of Hobsons Bay bypasses the beaches of the Brighton coastline, and moves the sand south to beyond Rickets Point Beaumaris.^[45]

These coastal processes mean that where a groyne, breakwater or other structure prevents waves from a particular direction but allows others, sand will accumulate in the sheltered portion of the foreshore. The impact of sea walls, groynes and breakwaters has had adverse effects. Rather than add to the groyne system it would be preferable to undertake regular beach renourishment.^[46]

In response to climate change and to manage future coastal processes it has been recommended that 'attempts to stabilise a coastline by building solid structures such as sea walls, or dumping boulder ramparts, should bear in mind that a rising sea level is in prospect, and that coastline processes would resume with the sea at a higher level and these structures submerged. On the other hand, beaches can be renourished at higher sea levels, and the use of artificial beaches to halt coastline recession is a better long-term strategy than building solid structures.'^[47]

37°55′08″S 144°59′14″E / 37.9188°S 144.9873°E / -37.9188; 144.9873