The Bastards – Thomas and Charles – teach thousands to swim and compete while in charge of Adelaide city baths
Swimming was a popular Adelaide spectator sport in the 1920s with major events along the River Torrens.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
Thomas Bastard and his son Charles gave swimming in Adelaide flying start in the 19th Century through to early 20th Century.
Thomas Bastard and wife Elizabeth emigrated to South Australia on the William Stuart in 1852 and later found South Australia’s Old Colonists Association. Arriving with them was son John, who would become posts and telegraph master at Port Adelaide, and several other children, including one born during the voyage.
A bootmaker, Thomas Bastard had been taught to swim by the father of Fred Beckwith, the English swimming champion and an early proponent of the long-distance sidestroke. Thomas Bastard passed on his swimming knowledge to South Australian colonists in what was 1850s Adelaide’s bathing pool: a fenced-off section of the River Torrens, upstream of the Morphett Street bridge.
Adelaide’s original city baths (1863–1913), on King William Road, near parliament house, were built for the city council, and its first manager ("keeper of the baths") was council employee John Cox, former works overseer. No tenders were received to lease the baths due to the high cost of the first water piped from Thorndon Park reservoir. Three years later, Thomas Bastard was granted the first three seven-year leases of the baths.
Bastard taught swimming at the baths with its one pool 75 feet by 25 feet, open to men and boys only. No bathers were won and admission to the baths was threepence. The genial Bastard, known as “cockney Tom” and “the Professor” was universally honoured for his devotion to teaching swimming. He was successful in 1864 in trying to form a South Australian Swimming Club, taking on the role of treasurer, with J. Kemp Penney as secretary and Leglislative Council member Anthory Forster, who son was a leading swimming, as president. In 1874, Bastard was appointed the first swimming master at the South Australian government’s model primary schools.
Adelaide city baths were rebuilt in 1883 and reopened a few months after Thomas Bastard died. The new baths had two pools:100 by 30 feet and 40 feet by 30 feet. Charles Bastard and his brother Philip inherited the baths lease. In 1885 Charles bought out his brother Philip. (A champion swimmer, Philip from 1877 had managed the baths for his father but in 1880 left for New Zealand and was mistaken for a wanted criminal and arrested in Denver City, Colorado.)
Charles Bastard first came to public notice in 1869. Already a strong swimmer in several styles, he would amuse baths patrons with feats such as retrieving a shilling coin thrown into the deepest part of the pool. In May 1887, he converted the pool to a (roller) skating rink for the colder months when patronage by swimmers was low. The floor of 117 feet by 35.5 feet was entirely of jarrah planks, supported on jarrah posts and beams. In 1888, Bastard had time as manager of the Columbia Rink in Calcutta for the firm of Ridgley & Raymond, leaving longtime employee Fred Needham in charge at Adelaide.
The baths had a major makeover in 1910, with viewing platforms and showers installed and walls tiled. Women had been admitted for years but their numbers only grew after Annette Kellermann made bathing fashionable.
Charles Bastard continued to be in charge of the baths until his death in 1939, Next year, the baths were replaced and built to Olympic standards, with a separate diving pool and tiered stands for spectators. A plaque – reading "To commemorate the services rendered by the late Charles Bastard, lessee of the City Baths 1885-1939, who taught over 10,000 people to swim" – was installed at the rebuilt centre.
The city baths were totally demolished in 1972 to make way for the Adelaide Festival Centre.
