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. Often the bathing boxes are passed down through generations however they are occasionally auctioned. Seen as a ''life style investment'', limited supply and high demand has driven prices up from $58,000 in 2000 to over $400,000. In late 2023 a bathing box was sold for $450,000.The Age Financial Review, Prestige Magazine 26 Feb 2025 p.16 ''Thinking outside the (beach) box''

Brighton Bathing Boxes - A Snapshot

The Brighton Bathing Boxes are located on Dendy Street Beach behind the Dr Jim Willis Reserve, the last vestige of natural vegetation along Brighton's foreshore. The Bunurong (also known as the Boonwurrung) have a strong connection with the coastline here. The Dendy Street Beach foreshore is an area of high aboriginal sensitivity protected by both State and Federal legislation.City of Brighton 1992 Brighton Foreshore Coastal Management Plan p17 The Brighton Bathing Boxes are protected under State heritage legislation."Welcome to the Brighton Bathing Box Association Inc. Home Page". 2009-04-14. Archived from the original on 2009-04-14. Retrieved 2022-08-20.

The first bathing box was built in the 1860s further along the Brighton coastline, but most of the bathing boxes at Dendy Street Beach were built between 1907 - 1933.Brighton Southern Cross 23 Mar 1907 Municipal Notes p6Larkin J.P. Department of Ports and Harbours,1933, Plan of Port Phillip and Foreshore of Brighton from Pt.Cole to Green Pt. In recent times the City of Bayside has built 14 more bathing boxes, raising the total number to 93. Owners are allowed to repair and restore the boxes including painting the boxes a variety of different bright colours.

The bathing boxes were built as changing rooms to maintain the modesty of bathers. They do not have water or electricity connections. Today as well as changing rooms, they are used to store beach equipment and for gatherings of family and friends. More recently they have become a popular tourist destination.

Erosion threatens some of the Brighton Bathing Boxes and sandbags have been installed to protect them. The Dendy Street Beach has also been renourished artificially.  However, the seasonal movement of sand along the coast still occurs, gradually moving the sand north until it is trapped behind the Brighton Yacht Club marina. Sea walls, groynes and breakwaters have had permanent adverse effects along the Port Phillip coastline. Consequently rather than add to the groyne system it is preferable to undertake regular beach renourishment that supports natural processes.

The Bunurong

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.

Described in 1925 as, ''between Middle Brighton Baths, and the Bluff, at Brighton Beach ... 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.''

A more recent reference notes that a large midden of shell and charcoal extends behind the Brighton Bathing Boxes at Dendy Street Beach.Meyer Eidelson 2014 ''Melbourne Dreaming A Guide to Important Places of the Past,'' 2nd Edition p 114 The whole of the Brighton foreshore is designated an area of high aboriginal sensitivity protected by both State and Federal legislation.

Location and surrounding environment

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

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.

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.G.R Holdgate, B.Wagstaff & S.J.Gallagher (2011) Did Port Phillip Bay nearly dry up between 2000 and 1000 cal.yr BP? Bay floor channeling evidence, seismic and core dating, Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, 58:2, 157-175, The waves of Port Phillip are likely to have actively eroded the escarpment of the Brighton Coastal Plain here.Dr Jim Willis Reserve Information Signs, Esplanade Brighton

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. 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.

The foreshore vegetation near the beach is a habitat for a variety of native animals including the superb fairywren, 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.

The intertidal zone from the high-water mark to where the water is 2m deep at any time is a protected area. All animals and plants that live in the intertidal zone are critical parts of the food chain. Crabs, marine snails, sea urchins and shellfish cannot be collected. This includes molluscs such as abalone, limpets, periwinkles and turbo shells. Under Victorian law, these must not be collected.

History

Bathing boxes were first built in the 1860s, across the Brighton coastline, to protect the modesty of bathers. In the 1890's there were six bathing boxes on Dendy Street Beach and a single bathing box on Middle Brighton Beach.

By 1907 there were seventeen bathing boxes on Dendy Street Beach and still only a single bathing box on Middle Brighton Beach Approximately twenty three ratepayers were noted as owning bathing boxes along the Brighton coastline at that time. By the mid 1910's, the number of bathing boxes had increased to about forty on Dendy Street Beach and twenty eight bathing boxes on Middle Brighton Beach.

The number of bathing boxes significantly increased after the First World War. By 1933, there were 246 bathing boxes 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 Boxes No.132 to No 267.

Between 1935 and 1936 work was completed to move the bathing boxes to the top of the beach, instead of the high-water mark, where they were located previously. 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.

Protecting the bathing boxes

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.

During the 1920s and 1930s the large number of bathing boxes, storm damage and their disrepair, prompted calls to abolish the granting of licenses and remove them from the beach.

In 1983, the Coastal Caucus Committee decided to phase out 2000 buildings along the Port Phillip Bay, including the Brighton Bathing Boxes. Amongst 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.

In 2009, the City of Bayside built 9 more boxes at the southern end of the beach to raise money during the Great Recession, increasing the number to 88. This was done despite the objections of heritage groups, as boxes previously built there had flooded. By 2017 the City of Bayside had built another 5 boxes, 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.

In 2019, the Draft Marine and Coastal Policy document proposed that the boxes 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.”

Construction

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 boxes causing a mass of different bright colours. They do not have water or electricity connections.

Brighton Beach coastal processes, geomorphology and erosion

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

Originally the erosion of cliffs along the coast of Port Phillip supplied the sand that formed the beaches of the Brighton Beach coastline. The construction of seawalls and other erosion management works has stopped the supply of sand and the beaches are no longer being naturally replenished.City of Brighton 1992 Brighton Foreshore Coastal Management Plan p.39 Beaches are now renourished artificially including Brighton Beach (1987), Dendy Street Beach (1982 -1983 and 2022) and Middle Brighton Beach (1982–83). However the complex and interrelated processes by which sand moves along the coast still occur, but with sand from the renourished beaches.

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. Within this seasonal oscillation, there is a gradual accumulation and then loss of sand northwards along Brighton Beach coastline. 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.Bird E. 2011 Changes on the Coastline of Port Phillip Bay p. 30 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.

Northward sand drift from Holloway Bend and Dendy Street Beach 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.Bird E. 2011Changes on the Coastline of Port Phillip Bay p.30-31 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.

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.Bird E.C.F. 1974 Man's Impact on the Melbourne Coast p 15 - 18

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''.Bird E. 2011 Changes on the Coastline of Port Phillip Bay p.62

References

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Culture of Melbourne
Buildings and structures in the City of Bayside
Tourist attractions in Melbourne
Heritage-listed buildings in Melbourne
1860s establishments in Australia
Buildings and structures completed in the 1860s