The remains of the bathhouse (from the coal mining era).
The bathhouse was acquired through union agitation. Before that, miners had to bathe in a tub at home. The bathhouse was a place for politics, jokes and relaxation. Sports teams used it on weekends after a game, and children were brought here weekly to wash.
The information board shows an excerpt from "The late great Blackball Bridge Sonnets" by Jeffrey Paparoa Holman and gives a sense of what it must have meant to have escaped the dark, dusty, dirty mine and to stand under the hot spray of the shower and be able to cleanse your body. Anyone who has ever struggled to blow the dirty snot out of their nose and seen the black-brown soapy dirt disappear into the drain after a long day's work knows what I'm talking about.
Coal mining took place from 1898-1964.