It doesn’t get much more Newcastle than this.
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These photos, taken by the Herald’s team of staff photographers – Jonathan Carroll, Marina Neil, Max Mason-Hubers and Simone de Peak – capture the beautiful and subtle nuances of life at the Newcastle and Merewether ocean baths.
In August, 2018, Lambton’s Phil Mahoney caught the eye of the Herald’s Topics writer with a post on the We Grew Up in Newcastle Facebook page.
As a young kid in the 1950s, Phil said he loved getting pluto pup “treats”.
He was the youngest of eight kids. The family would arrive at the baths on the bus from Lambton for a penny each way.
“After a day in the baths, we were treated to the best pluto pups ever made for the cost of around threepence,” he said.
“In the ‘70s, Peter Walmsley and his wife arrived as caretakers of the pool. They lived on site and ran the canteen.”
He said Peter was so popular that actor Vic Rooney from E Street nicknamed the ocean baths as Walmsley Water Wonderland.
“Peter and his wife Jan found a former canteen lady who knew the secret pluto pup recipe from the ‘50s,” he said.
“They gave her a job to recreate her magic because her pluto pups were exactly like the old days, not like the ones you get at most shops that were from a factory.”
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