The origin of Coogee's mysterious concrete pylons - Randwick City Council

Back in 2022, a mystery surfaced on Coogee Beach. During a spell of rough weather, a series of concrete pylons emerged from the sand. Council, concerned for public safety, removed them and put them into storage.

But the question remained - what exactly were they?

At first, it was assumed that the pylons were part of the ill-fated Coogee Pier. The ambitious structure, which had its first spike driven 100 years ago, on the 24th of July 1926, only stood for eight years before being dismantled. Designed by Randwick Council as a means of enticing people back to the beaches in the aftermath of World War 1, the pier was pitched as an entertainment and dining hub. Built to stretch 936 feet (about 285 metres) from the sea wall into the ocean, it was set to boast a full-sized theatre seating 1,400 people, along with a ballroom for 600 dancers, a café, and accommodation for 400 guests.

But despite the potential of the pier, it was quickly beset by financial difficulties and concerns from the community: many in Coogee worried that the structure would negatively impact surf conditions. When it did open, it was less impressive than promised (no theatre, no café) and debuted under less-than-ideal circumstances: the great depression was in full swing. The pier needed healthy visitor numbers to cover its high maintenance cost. It didn't get them. By 1933, Alderman O'Riordan was calling it a "liability and an eyesore", and just a year later, the pier was demolished - leaving behind, so it was thought, the mysterious concrete pylons.

Only, as Ashley Kingston, the Vice President of the Randwick & District Historical Society, discovered in 2022, the pylons weren't from the pier at all.

Kingston stumbled across the mystery of the pylons in a somewhat sideways manner. A longtime member of the Coogee fishing club, Kingston was fascinated by the club's storied past and decided he wanted to write a history of it. With no background in local history, Kingston thought he should practice with a research project first. When the storm of July 2022 revealed the pylons, Kingston thought he'd have a go at writing an article about them and their supposed connection to the Coogee pier.

When he took a series of photos of the exposed pylons, he almost immediately realised something was up. He researched the construction of the pier through files held by the Randwick Historical society and discovered that no concrete was used in the pier's supports - instead, it was pinned to the sand by screw piles. But if the pylons weren't from the pier, what were they from? A trip to the archives at the State Library provided Kingston with his eureka moment.

"I was looking through photos and I found one that showed the bases of the shark net tripod structure, and the first shark tower," Kingston says now. He recognised the structure immediately. The mysterious concrete pylons were from the base of the shark net, and from the tower. A later heritage assessment confirmed Kingston's discovery.

The shark net and the tower were a response to a series of highly publicised shark attacks. Two attacks had been reported within a month in 1922, both in broad daylight. Fuelled by heavy media coverage, there was a frenzy of concern - and more shark attacks to come. "Between 1922 to 1934, there were eight fatalities up and down the beaches of Sydney," Kingston explains. "Council wanted to have a response."

The shark tower was designed as a means of better protecting Coogee's residents, but it was also a very public response to the attacks: residents could look at it and know something was being done. Its visibility was part of the point. Moreover, Kingston's research shows that it was also something of an innovation: as far as he can see, the tower at Coogee might have been one of the first built in the world.

Certainly, the tower and the net were more conventional than some of the other anti-shark measures being proposed at the time. In the course of his research, Kingston found photographs depicting lifeguards firing rifles into the water to scare sharks off, and there was one instance where a group of shipbuilders from Samoa, hearing of the shark threat, armed themselves with knives and claimed they were going to kill the sharks themselves. (Luckily for the sharks, they were conspicuously absent from Coogee that day.)

As the years after the construction of the net and the tower passed without shark-related incident, the net began to degrade. By the end of the Second World War, resources were scarce, and when the net sank back into the ocean, it was not rebuilt. A later tower, constructed in the 40's, was "flimsy", Kingston says, and eventually it collapsed too.

With the mystery solved, the pylons now sit in a council depot. For Kingston, unravelling the story was the beginning of a serious passion for Randwick Council's history that continues to this day. "It's how I discovered that I love local history," he says, happily

Last Updated: 22 July 2026