The Big Rock and the Bondi Mermaids
The Big Rock and the Bondi Mermaids
This is a great double-headed Bondi story; first the rock, and then the mermaids.
At Ben Buckler, on the northern headland of Bondi Beach there is a big rock, known locally as The Big Rock. (Down here we like to call a spade a spade.) The Big Rock is a 235 tonne boulder, which was believed to have been thrown up by heavy seas on 15 July 1912. Seems incredible, but images of the headland from before that date do not show the rock. It’s actually a bit controversial. There are other theories as to how it might have got there, and a cover story exploring same by Lee Cass in a Bondi View issue from 2002. Other theories: it actually fell down from the headland, was always there but was previously surrounded by smaller rocks, etc. Having said all that, the generally accepted version is that it got plonked there by a once in a 100 year cyclonic storm.
In April 1960 two sculpted mermaids appeared on The Big Rock, which is why it is also often referred to as Mermaid Rock.
The mermaid statues were modelled on two local women: Jan Carmody, who was Miss Australia Surf in 1959; and Lynette Whillier, champion swimmer and runner-up in the same contest. The sculptor Lyall Randolph created the mermaids from bronze-coloured fibreglass that he filled with cement.
Lyall initially tried to sell the idea of the mermaids to Waverley Council, but the Council refused to pay for them. So he erected them on The Big Rock at his own expense.
One month after they appeared university students chiselled (some say dynamited!) mermaid Jan from The Big Rock and removed her as part of a Commemoration Day prank. She was later recovered under mysterious circumstances at the Engineering School at the University of Sydney. Repaired, she was restored to The Big Rock to rejoin her fellow mermaid Lynette. The public loved the mermaids so much that they paid for Jan to be put back together again. Heavy seas claimed Lynette in 1974. She was swept off the Big Rock in a storm, and disappeared forever. Jan lost an arm and her tail in the same storm. For two years she sat alone on her rocky throne until Waverley Council removed what was left of her in 1976, storing her in a Council Depot where she was forgotten for many years. Re-found in the late 1980s she was moved to Waverley Library where, in 1999, the Friends of Waverley Library paid for her remains to be preserved by Sydney Artefacts Conservation. She remains on permanent display in a special perspex case on the 1st floor of the Waverley Library in Bondi Junction.
It’s unlikely we’ll ever see the return of the mermaids to their original spot given not only the danger of losing them again to the high seas but even more so is the risks the public might take in the interest of the perfect Instagram post.
Submissions are now closed but there was a call out for a reimagining of the mermaids to be placed at another location in the area. Nothing very inspiring was turned up in that process. See HERE.
