Dawn Fraser Baths

While many Australians will be familiar with the long-running dispute around Melbourne’s Margaret Court Arena, there is little demand to rename a site named after another controversial sportswoman.

 Sydney’s Dawn Fraser Baths is still affectionately referred to as “Dawnies” after the four-time Olympic gold medallist, despite Fraser telling the ABC in 2007 she wished she could “be as outspoken as Pauline Hanson and say, look, I'm sick and tired of the immigrants that are coming into my country.”

The 85-year-old swimmer reiterated her beliefs about migrants and their families in a 2015 interview with Channel 9’s Today show. Fraser said Australian tennis players Bernard Tomic and Nick Kyrgios should “go back where their parents came from” as a result of their behaviour at the 2015 Wimbledon Championships. Fraser's comments were criticised by former Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, and she later apologised for her remarks.

Inner West Mayor Darcy Byrne waded into the debate around the time of the bath’s recent refurbishment. Byrne said on Facebook: “I think Dawn's attitudes and statements on race have been very poor, but I think there would be lots of local opposition to changing the name. The name of the pool has been part of our local identity for decades.”

Former local Mayor Carolyn Allen is a founding member of The Friends of Balmain Baths, and part of the conservation group The Balmain Association. Allen said the site has often changed name over its 141-year history.

Records show when the site opened in 1882, the facilities were simply called “The Baths”. 

Allen said one year later the baths were formally named the Elkington Park Baths, after a local councillor who had been instrumental in acquiring the land. 

By the 1920s, the name Balmain Baths was in vogue. A concrete relief at the baths dated 1921 reads Balmain Baths, not Elkington Park Baths. 

Allen said the baths have carried the name Dawn Fraser since around the time of Fraser’s final Olympic Games in 1964.

Records from the NSW Department of Planning and Environment also reference the names “Corporation Baths” and “Whitehorse Point Baths”.

The name may fall out of popular use with the rise in the dual naming of sites, a practice where the Aboriginal name for a location or geographical feature is used alongside its English name. The NSW Government has officially supported the practice of dual naming for more than two decades.

NSW Minister for Indigenous Affairs and Treaty, David Harris, recently told The Sydney Morning Herald he believed the government’s dual-naming policy had broad community support.

Inner West Council, which is responsible for the site, did not respond to a request for comment.

The book Our Dawn: A Pictorial Biography, provides insight into Dawn’s political identity. Born into a working class family in what was then Labor heartland, Dawn saw jobs move out of Balmain as heavy industry exited the area. In 1988, she decided to run as an Independent for the NSW Legislative Council, and said: “I feel I can be a voice for the [working class] community I grew up in. I have felt for some time that Labor has not been listening to the people. It is no longer a worker’s party.” Dawn is now 85. Should Dawn be censured further, or, like the Baths, be treated as a product of a different time? For the moment, it appears Sydneysiders appear keen to turn a blind eye.