Circa December 1928 - No. 129. "ENTRANCE TO PIER - COOGEE, SYDNEY - N.S.W.", Australia (restored version)

IMAGE INFO

- Photographer's viewpoint is looking east from Beach Street beside Coogee Beach. The (partially completed) Pier was officially opened on Sunday 11 November 1928.

- I have dated this image to Circa Dec 1928, since advertised singer Billy Mason was noted in the Sydney Truth newspaper on 25th Nov 1928 as having joined the musical entertainment lineup at the Pier for the summer season (Dec 1928-Feb 1929).

- A report in the Newcastle Morning Herald dated Monday 12 November 1928 claims "After being under construction for many months, [a] portion of the Coogee ocean pier was opened on Saturday afternoon in the presence of what was claimed to be a record crowd. The pier was thronged at night by crowds until a late hour".

- Extracts from a report in the Labor Daily (Sydney) dated Monday 12th November 1928, page 4, included "The structure includes a soda refreshment salon and soda fountains on two floors", "Over 11,000 people visited the pier on Saturday and a further 7,000 yesterday". However, interest waned rapidly after that weekend to the point where the business soon became economically non-viable.

- Coogee Ocean Pier Co. had been granted a 28 year lease. It stretched 180 meters out across the middle of Coogee Beach & well into Coogee Bay (originally it was meant to extend 250 meters). It boasted to have a capacity for 21,000 people, including a 1,400 seat theatre (but this was never built) as well as numerous restaurants (never built), a dance hall for 600 people (never built) plus a variety of shops & arcades (also never built). The funding crisis that had befallen the Company halfway through the build virtually guaranteed the Pier would have a very short existence (since it now had almost none of it's advertised main attractions).

- From 16 November 1929 the adjacent Coogee Beach also had large safe beach swimming & bathing areas protected by steel mesh shark-proof nets supported from pylons next to the Pier. Ironically, the huge attraction of people away from the Pier & instead to bathing within the shark-proof enclosure (with night bathing following soon after) at a cost of only 1 d per person, also would have significantly affected income for the Pier. By comparison -

- Entry fees to the Pier were:

Monday-Friday - Adults = 3 d.

Sat, Sun & Public Holidays - Adults = 6 d.

Children = 3 d. at all times.

- The Pier was for a very short time a truly desirable tourist & pleasure-seekers facility, that helped promote Coogee as a major resort destination, similar to Brighton in England. It even had a "Coogee Pier Golf Course" which was constructed on the northern side & extending for half it's length that opened on 1 November 1930!

- However, unlike the calmer waters at Brighton, the incessant pounding, powerful surf that regularly smashed into the pier with every south-easterly "blow" was unrelenting. Sadly for many Sydneysiders, Randwick Council & the Pier's management inevitably capitulated in the face of mounting & un-economical repair costs

- Indeed, by as far back as January 1930, the developers had already sunk £78,300 into the project - around $7,000,000 in todays money (they never made any profit at all during the short life of the project).

- By January 1931, Randwick Council were demanding Coogee Ocean Pier Co., immediately pay rent owed to the Council (but the Company was already trading insolvent & would soon have to declare bankruptcy!)

- On 25 May 1932, following serious mounting financial losses over the remainder of the financial period 1931-1932, a notice appears in the Construction & Real Estate Journal (Sydney) on page 10, reporting that the Coogee Ocean Pier Co., had gone into liquidation.

- Future operation of the by now closed pier was placed (by contractual default) into the hands of Randwick Council, who immediately commissioned a detailed structural & safety engineering report, which in May 1933 found repairs alone would cost Council an estimated prohibitive £4,000 (over $480,00 today).

- After a further seven months of lying derelict while various plans to save the project were raised then dashed, the salvageable parts of the pier were quietly sold off by Randwick Council for a relatively paltry £2,800 (around $230,000 today), with the final pier pieces being demolished during the period December 1933-March 1934.

****************************

SOURCE INFO

- One copy of a nitrate photonegative, 9 x 15 cm real photo postcard from the "Samuel Wood - postcard photonegatives of Coogee, ca. 1928-1932 Collection".

- The original was digitized by the State Library of New South Wales

- The digitized original is available from the SLNSW online collection here:

digital.sl.nsw.gov.au/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps...

******************************

CREDITS

- Samuel Wood (1876-1957) for the original B&W real photo postcard.

- Mitchell & State Libraries of New South Wales for their valuable work in digitizing, archiving & making available online this rare historical content.

******************************

COPYRIGHT STATUS

- Per SLNSW advice:

Out of copyright: created before 1955

- Regarding my own work in creating this unique cropped, restored & duo-toned version from the digitized original, I have applied "Attribution-Share Alike".

*******************************

PROCESS INFO

- I downloaded a copy of the digitized original (very badly faded with uneven exposure).

- Using Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 8.0, I enlarged by ~100% , adjusted areas of uneven exposure, restored contrast & sharpness & used a dark sepia duo-tone curve for better tonal range.

Done