A cold pool, a hot room, and the fig tree in between.

The courtyard

The laundry block stood on the northern side of the courtyard from 1936 until 2021. What replaced it is a plunge pool six metres long and a metre and a half deep, kept between 14 and 16°C year round, and a two-person cedar sauna built into what was the drying room. The fig tree that has been there longer than the building shades both of them from about two in the afternoon.

Neither is supervised and neither needs booking except the sauna, which takes one party at a time and is signed up for by the hour at reception. Towels are by the courtyard door. The outdoor shower by the side gate is not a luxury in a beach town, it is the thing that keeps the sand out of eighteen bathrooms.

The better pools are outside

Bondi has two ocean pools and both are better than ours. The North Bondi rock pool is six minutes downhill, free, small, and full of the same people every morning at seven. Bondi Icebergs is fourteen minutes at the far end, charges a few dollars, and is the one in every photograph ever taken of this suburb. Both are seawater, both are swept by the swell at the high end of the tide, and both are cold until December.

The Winter Swimming Weeks package includes Icebergs entry for the length of the stay, which is the only reason that package exists.

Safety, plainly

The plunge pool is unsupervised, has no lifeguard, and children must be with an adult. The sauna is not advisable if you are pregnant or have a heart condition, and twenty minutes is long enough for anyone. For the ocean, read where to swim at Bondi before you go in — the rip at the southern end of the beach is the most rescued-from stretch of water in Australia.