The murky history of Box Hill's former swimming hole

Walking along Surrey Dive in Box Hill, it’s hard to imagine hundreds of divers launching themselves from the edge into the water.

But in the first half of the 1900s, it was renowned as an Olympic-standard swimming hole where people could spectate champion swimmers showing off their skills.

Along with the positive memories, there are also darker myths around this iconic swimming hole, including drownings and other deaths.

The lake itself didn’t originally start off as a lake, but was a hole which provided the clay used by the Haughton Park Brick Company to make bricks during the land boom of the 1880s.

The former Shire of Nunawading then converted the old clay pit into a swimming hole, along with a springboard and bathing sheds in 1907, creating an explosion in popularity among locals and others making the trip to take a dive.

The Box Hill Brickworks then opened next to Surrey Dive in 1913 and continued to operate until the 1980s.

Surrey Dive, however, did not last as long, with the water used as a source of relief for local trees and water for cleaning gutters during the droughts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

With the advent of chlorinated swimming pools, Surrey Dive slowly drifted out of fashion, eventually closing in 1976.

Walkers still feed the ducks, while the Surrey Park Model Boat Club still hold regular meets on the water. However, it seems like its history as a swimming spot is now lost to the ebbs and flows of time.