Pearl Beach history to be launched
To celebrate 80 years of the Pearl Beach Progress Association, historian Ms Beverley Kingston of Pearl Beach has written a small book to be launched at the Pearl Beach Memorial Hall on Friday, December 18.
Gosford mayor Cr Chris Holstein will present the book "Pearl Beach and Progress - the Story of a Community and an Ideal 1929-2009" to local residents and guests at the launch.
The book was researched and written with the help of a $5000 community grant from Gosford Council last year, according to Ms Kingston.
"Pearl Beach was one of several estates on the Woy Woy Peninsula developed after World War I by father and son C.R and C.J Staples," Ms Kingston said.
"By 1921 they had consolidated the existing land holdings at what was then known at Green Point and were planning a new estate to be called Pearl Beach with its streets named after gem stones.
"The first land sale was registered in 1927 and the first house built soon after.
"But for some years, partly because of the depression of the early 1930s, sales were slow, few houses were built and Pearl Beach continued as a fishing camp, one of many up and down the coast of NSW.
"According to legend (for there are no surviving records till the 1940s) the Pearl Beach Progress Association came into being in 1929.
"Rather than direction of greater suburbanisation Pearl Beach preferred trees to kerbs and gutters.
"There was a growing awareness that the confined space of the valley, with its creeks and lagoon, its encircling national park and nature reserves, would not support a large population or too much modern development.
"Progress in Pearl Beach came to mean the ability to sustain a bushland environment, a peaceful place to live, somewhere to get away from the excitements of modern life - though in time the Progress Association would also campaign for better mobile phone reception and access to fast broadband."
The book is available for $15 and can be purchased at the launch on December 18.
Press Release, 7 Dec 2009
Lynne Lillico, Pearl Beach Progress Association