subsidy, and exactly five years after opening, the Beaumaris extension closed on 31 August 1931. Until the 1960s when roads were surfaced, traces of the asphalt and timber foundations of the tramway remained in the centre of Holding Street. Sea baths Sea baths were constructed in Beaumaris and used for more than thirty years from 1902 to 1934. In the 1890s, there were proposals to build fenced and netted baths with changing facilities in the sea at Beaumaris, like those at Sandringham and Brighton Beach, and others at Mentone and Mordialloc which were operated by the Shire of Moorabbin. Support for the idea came in 1896 from the proprietor of the Beaumaris Hotel Mrs. Finlay, who offered £20 per year for use of the baths by her boarders free of charge, and John Keys, the Shire Secretary and Engineer envisaged additional income to the council of £15 from its lease. By August that year, Cr. Smith reported that residents would raise a subscription and requested that plans be drawn up and tenders called. An alternative proposal was to use the hulk Hilaria floated off-shore to house the baths. That caused some dispute but came to nothing, delaying progress until 1902 when tenders were finally called for a conventional bath. Charles Keefer was ultimately successful in his bid for £105 to build, with additional rooms, the structure planned for a site beneath the cliffs east of Beaumaris Hotel, and it was he who was accepted to lease the baths at a rent of £15. Charges were £1 per annum per person, or a monthly ticket of five shillings, while a single bath cost three pence. Keefer managed both the Beaumaris Baths and a boat hire facility operated from a jetty he constructed nearby until, on 30 November 1934, a storm destroyed the baths, which were never rebuilt. The same storm's destruction of bathing boxes appears in paintings by Beaumaris artist Clarice Beckett. Factory village In 1939, Dunlop Rubber Company purchased 180 hectares of land in Beaumaris, intending to build a large factory and model village in an area bounded by Balcombe Rd., Beach Rd., Gibbs St. and Cromer Rd. Plans were shelved a month later with the outbreak of World War II. 1944 bushfires In the midst of WW2 and a severe drought, came disastrous bushfires on 14 January 1944, which killed 51 people across Victoria. The maximum temperature in Melbourne