Father and Son 
The Cape Patterson  Rock pool.

Hello everyone , dad is in Rose Lodge at the minute on respite to give Mum a break.
I went to visit him yesterday.
He was just sitting in his room listening closely to NewsRadio.

I asked him if I could ask him some questions about the rock pool and its formation at
Cape Patterson.?
He was more than willing to share any information that he had in his mind on the subject.

Firstly. I asked him about the rock diving platform located near the Rock pool and on the edge of the bay it’s a platform about 8 foot long by 5 foot wide of completely flat rock that everybody uses to dive off into the bay.

Apparently. It was placed there by the local Legg family as they were professional fisherman. It was placed there so they could tie up next to it unload their catch in Fish boxes bound for market.

Apparently, it was towed in a position by two tractors at once and it has remained solid in exactly the same position ever since it’s installation.

So the rock pool was actually built by a group of local men , including
Alan Birt
Danny Carr
Fred Oakley
Jack Hughes .

We were lucky enough that Les and Joyce Legg were also staying inn Rose Lodge so Dad and I went to pay them a visit just to check out what Dad told me was accurate and gained further information on the subject

And the rock pools  construction was witnessed back then by a young local lady  ,
Miss Joyce Weatley that states that she was 12 years old at the time and remembers it well. she is now 90 so it was a fair while ago , 1947 but on google it says it was built in the sixties , by local coalminers .

It was built by the use of explosive.
A professional shot blaster from the Wonthaggi state coal mine layed the charges. Over a period of a few weeks with multiple blasts , required to complete the job.

Joyce told me that
Alan Burt had  a small mischievous dog with him on site,
at the time of the first blast that Dog ran for some reason straight towards the blast site.
On detination , with the noise and the rocks flying everywhere the dog got the biggest fright of his life and disappeared into the sand dunes at 100 mile an hour, never should be seen on site again.

Joyce says that she couldn’t believe how loud that the explosions were  and just how high in the air the rocks flew , all different sizes from small. It’s very large.

They were all carted  away on a horse drawn sled towards the sand dunes  and the adjacent Cliff and they were all used on site to form a rock wall towards the existing Royal life saving club Lookout.
That Rockwall is now buried somewhere deep under the sand dunes, and its something I have only just learnt about now.

So when you look at the rock pool there’s a channel leading out towards the diving platform into the bay,
that channel was a pre-existing natural feature and was not blasted out of the rocks, so they cleverly used the channel as a low drainage point in the new Rockpool and they installed a plug Inside the pool at the deep end that joins it to the channel.
They tried many different plugs and systems over the years and ended up with just a tapered metal plug with a handle.

This gets covered with rocks on the inside of the pool, basically so no one knows it’s there and interferes with it.
The channel on the other side is also full of rocks.
So when the pool is cleaned out and emptied all those rocks are removed by hand once it’s drained and then cleaned everything is put back into place awaiting a very high tide to refill the rock pool with clean fresh seawater.

The top edge of the rock pool was going to be coped off with a troweled out  concrete surrounding edge but for some reason or another it was never finished.

While I was in the Wonthaggi lifesaving club as an active member twice over those years, I helped empty and clean the Rockpool.

It’s a wonderful addition to the bay area of
Cape  Patterson. Providing a sheltered safe place for everyone to swim when the bay is too rough.
Or a great place to introduce your baby to the water .

The Royal lifesaving club located at the bay , was up and running many years earlier.
It’s early founding members were Heck Ross and
Fred Oakley,
The Rockpool formed a big and important part of lifesaving training.
At around the time frame Les , Joyce and dad all  informed me, that there was no lifesaving club at the surf beach,
so the Wonthaggi life-saving members , would actually actively patrol both beaches, the men would all swim around to the surf beach in the morning to patrol, then swim  back that evening whilst the women would stay at the bay beach and patrol that.

Nowadays there is a SLSC there and  Les and Joyces son Mark (Doogs) is basically a life member there and a great instructor and a big part of the club .

I also found that an interesting that there was no club yet back then as I would class the surf beach as the more dangerous location.

It was now nearly teatime at Rose Lodge, so I thanked both Lez and Joyce for their great company and their contributions to the story and also Dad and I politely excused myself .

All three of them are life members for their contributions to lifesaving st the Wonthaggi Royal lifesaving Club .

So that is about it a bit of history out of two 90 year olds and an 89 year old , all were so happy for me to jolt their memories.
And put a smile on their faces .

I guess ill have to visit Les and Joyce again and read this out to the three of them , and possibly add new memories to it then .

Cheers xxx
Curlyg