After considering our judges’ reports on the range of entries
submitted for our 2018 Pat Skinner Award for writing about ocean
pools, our Committee agreed to immediately institute a separate
Research Award.

2018 Research Award

Prize-money for our 2018 Research Award was
provided by our major sponsor, Diverse Productions Pty Ltd.

Prize-money of $500 (equal to the maximum prize-money
ever awarded to one individual for any of our
awards) for our new 2018 Research Award was
awarded to Valentin Rey for Piscines de marée six
essais, his six ground-breaking essays on the
aesthetics and architecture of the ocean pools of the
Azores and Madeira Islands. Valentin’s research on
Portugal’s Atlantic islands was undertaken as part of
his postgraduate architectural studies at a Swiss
University, the EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale
de Lausanne – see https://www.ep:.ch/en/home/)
and written in French.

Valentin described his 160-page document as ‘a
theoretical approach on architecture. It seeks to reveal
the qualities of ocean pools in terms of materiality,
resistance, time and as a constructed object strongly
related to the site where it is built.’

Kim Mettam was awarded an Honourable
Mention in our inaugural Research Award for
Explosive History behind Mettam’s Pool, his entry for
the 2018 Pat Skinner Award for writing about ocean
pools.

His account of the development of Perth’s Mettams
Pool written ‘with support from all of Frank Mettam’s
grandchildren’ had been published as a one-page
article in the Weekend West Australian of October
29-30, 2016. Kim’s entry stated ‘This beach was
largely wall to wall reef until the early 1930s. Out of
this Grandfather created a natural swimming and
snorkelling pool and a sandy shoreline. It took over
35 years of hard work but to the family it was a
labour of love for their community’.

2018 Pat Skinner Award for writing about ocean pools

Our writing judges decided not to award any prize-money
for the 2018 Pat Skinner Award for writing
about ocean pools. They did however award two
Honourable Mentions.
– our member, Caroline Josephs (yes, the same
Caroline Josephs awarded prize-money for our
2018 members-only Shirley Ellis Art Award) for
Memory — Palm Beach Ocean Pool, her memoir
of the time ‘in 1947 at four and three quarter years
of age I learned to float in Palm Beach Ocean
Pool. This bodily experience began a lifetime of
love of ocean pools. I am now 75 years’, and
– Jane Downing for her story Hurly-Burly,
‘a piece of short fiction remembering the
Burleigh Heads ocean pool’ that once existed on
Queensland’s Gold Coast.