From its earliest years as a ‘tourist town’ a great deal of emphasis was put on Healesville’s healthy environment – pure air, clean water, and beautiful green spaces. In 1904 Healesville was being touted as ‘the future sanatorium of Victoria’; during the major guest house era of the 1920s advertising brochures stressed the mountain air, scenery, and ‘invigorating climate’ of ‘Healthy Healesville’.
In 1933 ‘outsiders’ apparently saw an opportunity to take advantage of such features. An organisation called the Sun Bathing Society of Victoria believed that a healthy body may best be achieved by exposure to the sun and air.
The Society apparently considered building a hostel in Healesville for sunbathers – an up-to-date house containing a large lounge, a smoke room(!), nine bedrooms, office, cloak room, kitchen, pantry store, separate ladies’ and gents’ lavatories, and a large hall open to the east, to be used as a dining hall suitable for dance concerts and lectures.
Outside would be two tennis courts, a basketball court, running track, putting green, swimming pool with water chute, and so on.
It was claimed that well-known swimmers, divers, physical health and eurythmic instructors had offered their services. The dress worn by men would be ‘knickers’ and the women would wear brassieres ‘which are quite decent and display far less of the human form than the modern bather does’.
The plans and enthusiasm were tempered somewhat by the statement that ‘there is a chance of Healesville being chosen as the site’. Today we might think of the idea as a mere ‘thought bubble’. For whatever reasons, it did not happen. Perhaps the Sun Bathing Society could not find a suitable site in Healesville or even that our civic fathers (and Councillors then were all men) were overwhelmed by the vision of men and women cavorting in our town in only ‘knickers’ and ‘brassieres’! Unfortunately there are no photos to enhance that possible vision.
Whatever the reason, no such project was undertaken in the 1930s and none since.
