I went looking for the poo at Coogee beach but all I found was a beautiful day for a swim

In the Dharug language spoken by the local Aboriginal people, Coogee, derived from “koojah” or “koojay”, translates to “bad smell”, “rotting seaweed” or “stinking place”.

It was with some precedent, then, that this week Coogee ranked as the Sydney ocean beach most polluted with faecal matter, for the fifth year in a row.

Coogee’s grading in the 2026 state of the beaches report, an annual survey by the New South Wales environment department, indicated “microbial water quality is susceptible to faecal pollution, particularly after rainfall”.

An unsavoury finding indeed, yet one hard to reconcile with the clear blue water seen on a sunny morning at Coogee beach, as hundreds of revellers stretch out on beach towels and paddle gleefully in the ocean.

I am here on Friday in search of poo, or any visible signs of the poor water quality grade the popular swimming spot has held for several years now, but instead all I spot are happy children and families.

Among them is Paul Sampson, who is towelling himself off after a swim. I ask him if he feels the water is safe, and he replies: “Well, I’ve swum here for about 25 years, and I’m still alive.

“Sure, compared to the south coast, the water’s not as clean, but what are you going to do? Generally speaking, the water’s a lot cleaner today to 10, 20 years ago.”

He’s not wrong. In 1989, a Turn Back the Tide concert at Bondi beach drew more than 200,000 people protesting severe ocean sewage pollution on Sydney’s coastline.

Things have improved since then, but the city is still dealing with the collective trauma of the “mystery balls”. Coogee was one of several beaches that were closed in 2024 and 2025 after poo balls were carried back to shore by waves and wind. The fear of a giant fatberg which, ominously, remains behind a closed door at the Malabar wastewater treatment plant, is alive and real.

Prof Stuart Khan, a water quality expert and head of the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney, said the dreaded poo balls were a “negligible contributor” to Coogee’s water quality, as those deep ocean discharges occurred kilometres out to sea.

He said Coogee’s “poor” rating was largely due to storm water runoff that brought sewage contamination during times of heavy rain instead of any mass faecal event.

After several days without rain, Charlie Herbert doesn’t mind hitting up Coogee’s ocean pool with her young daughter – though she says the water quality findings were “disappointing”.

“We only came because we were meeting some friends here – it’s definitely not my first port of call,” she says. “But my kids don’t really like the water, so it’s not too much of a worry.”

David Goldstein has lived in the eastern suburbs for four decades and Coogee has always been his beach of choice. On Friday, he’s sitting at a cafe by the water with his dogs, Harriet and Peanut, after completing a swim.

He likes Coogee because of the community – you see the same people all the time, and the pollution issue, he says, isn’t new.

“You get some resilience to it,” he says. “I started swimming in the mid-90s and may have got sick once.

“It’s not great, I’d prefer it not to be like that, but it hasn’t really made that many people sick.”

Of greater concern to Goldstein is sharks. He had to divert his morning swim on Friday after one was spotted out on the headland. “If a shark won’t get you, pollution will,” he says with a laugh.

With this advice on board, I am ready to try the water myself.

Diving under, I feel that familiar brace of the ocean, the shock of icy water and salt on skin. Soon, I am just a body moving with the waves, and all around me is miles and miles of blue.

As Goldstein says, there is so much in the ocean that can kill us: sharks and currents and rips and rocks and maybe, but probably not, faeces.