A Sporting Life
In the Pool

Swimming at Victor

29/09/2025 by Tom Wyman

Victor Harbor has long been one of South Australia’s most loved seaside towns.

As the weather starts to turn, soon the crowds will flock to the Fleurieu in search of coastal calm. But when asked where to swim at Victor, the answers lie further north or south, never at Victor itself.

A trip to the Victor Harbor Branch of the National Trust will, however, remind people of a time when afternoons were spent swimming off the Granite Island Causeway. Some years ago Steve Reynolds, now President of Marine Life Society of South Australia, penned an article referencing an old photo showing the Victoria Pier.

The baths off Victoria Pier were popular in the mid-1900s. (State Library of South Australia)

Named after Queen Victoria, the pier was opened on August 4, 1864 – the same day as the opening of the extension of the railway from Port Elliot to Victor Harbor.

Swimming baths were constructed on either side of the Causeway for men and women to bathe in separately.

A deeper swimming area was then built between the Causeway and Victoria Pier in 1899 and a larger area was made by 1905.

The baths included a shark-proof fence around the perimeter, but unfortunately they were demolished in 1955.

Longtime Victor Harbor resident Val Brown, in a 2014 interview with Rob Linn, described the Victoria Pier as the go-to swimming spot back in the mid-1900s.

“Victor was never very popular I suppose as far as swimming goes,” Brown explained.

“We had the baths, which were halfway across to the island on Victoria Pier. That’s where we swam.

“It was a jetty…which originally was the lifeboat area. It was demolished in about ‘55 but right through my growing up days that’s where we swam.”

Brown described the baths as “a bit bigger than an Olympic sized swimming pool”.

“There was a rope across where Mr Eric Rumbelow used to teach at one end, and down at the other end we had two diving towers (and) a slippery dip,” Brown said.

“The boys’ change rooms were all there and then a little shop – Mr and Mrs Pearson owned the shop.

“Then around the other side we had all the ladies’ little cubicle rooms and big rooms.

“They had seats around where you could watch the swimmers in the water.

“We had swimming carnivals there when I was at high school.

“But always the thing, you came out of the water and you’d buy a bush biscuit and eat that,” Brown recalled.

For many the alternative to Victoria Pier was Petrel Cove, where the waves were often slightly bigger.

Others opted to swim off the tiny beach on Granite Island, immediately right of the Causeway, sometimes unofficially referred to as Jefferys’ Beach.

You have to wonder whether an ocean pool, like the one at Port Lincoln, could one day return to Victor Harbor, providing a swimming alternative to the ever-crowded Horsehoe Bay.

Eric Rumbelow

Eric Leslie Rumbelow
1898 - 1945
Descendant of Malen Rumbelow 2nd

SWIMMER AND LIFE SAVER

Turning the scales at 202 lbs., 5 ft. 10 in. in his socks, and just over the age of 28 years, Eric Leslie Rumbelow, fourth son of the late Mr. David Malin Rumbelow and Mrs. Rumbelow, is a fine specimen of robust Australian manhood.

Fond of all outdoor sports, swimming and football claimed his most serious attention.

It was not, however, until the inauguration of the Victor Harbour Amateur Swimming Club, in October, 1925, that life-saving was specialised in.

Classes were started by Mr. F. C. Willoughby, secretary of the South Australian Branch of the Royal Lifesaving Society, and Mr. Rumbelow quickly took the bronze medallion.

Going to Adelaide late in the swimming year, he essayed the difficult task of doing the practical work for the diploma at the Gilberton Baths. A high standard of efficiency was obtained. The theoretical part of the award entails writing a lengthy paper on the subject, and this is sent overseas to the authorities in England. Word was received this week that this had been safely passed; thus Mr. Rumbelow wins the highest possible award in life-saving, and is the only man in South Australia to hold the diploma.

Mr. Rumbelow plays football for the Victor Harbour Club, and he has won many swimming prizes, both professional and amateur. He is an adept at the long dive.

By profession, Mr. Rumbelow is a certificated plumber, and prior to becoming a master plumber at Victor Harbour, he had six years’ experience in Adelaide.

His brother Lionel holds the bronze medal of the Royal Humane Society.