page_title: Swimming pool
section_title: Ocean pools
hierarchical_section_title: Swimming pool / Types / Ocean pools
caption_attribution_description: The Ross Jones Memorial Pool at Coogee Beach, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
context_page_description: A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool is a structure designed to hold water to enable swimming or other leisure activities. Pools can be built into the ground or built above ground, and are also a common feature aboard ocean-liners and cruise ships. In-ground pools are most commonly constructed from materials such as concrete, natural stone, metal, plastic, or fiberglass, and can be of a custom size and shape or built to a standardized size, the largest of which is the Olympic-size swimming pool.
  Many health clubs, fitness centers, and private clubs have pools used mostly for exercise or recreation. Many towns and cities provide public pools. Many hotels have pools available for their guests to use at their own leisure. Educational facilities such as high schools and universities sometimes have pools for physical education classes, recreational activities, leisure, and competitive athletics such as swimming teams. Hot tubs and spas are pools filled with hot water, used for relaxation or hydrotherapy. They are common in hotels and health clubs, and can also be found in many private homes.
context_section_description: In the early 20th century, especially in Australia, ocean pools were built, typically on headlands by enclosing part of the rock shelf, with water circulated through the pools by flooding from tidal tanks or by regular flooding over the side of the pools at high tide. This continued a pre-European tradition of bathing in rockpools with many of the current sites being expanded from sites used by Aboriginal Australians or early European settlers. Bathing in these pools provided security against both rough surf and sea life. There were often separate pools for women and men, or the pool was open to the sexes at different times with a break for bathers to climb in without fear of observation by the other sex.
  These were the forerunners of modern "Olympic" pools. A variation was the later development of sea- or harbour-side pools that circulated sea water using pumps. A pool of this type was the training ground for Australian Olympian Dawn Fraser.
  There are currently about 100 ocean baths in New South Wales, which can range from small pools roughly 25 metres long and "Olympic Sized" (50m)  to the very large, such as the 50 × 100 m baths in Newcastle. While most are free, a number charge fees, such as the Bondi Icebergs Club pool at Bondi Beach. Despite the development of chlorinated and heated pools, ocean baths remain a popular form of recreation in New South Wales.
  A semi-natural ocean pool exists on the central coast of New South Wales; it is called The Bogey Hole.
caption: An ocean pool at Coogee in Sydney, Australia
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