With summer almost upon us, once again the surf life saving people are lamenting that increasing numbers of people are ignoring the “swim between the flags” message.
Why, when considerable effort is put into campaigns to reinforce this message and the related “never swim at unpatrolled beaches” warning, are more and more people not doing what they’re told?
A large part of the explanation seems obvious to a greenie like me.
The numbers of people wanting to swim at Australian beaches is constantly expanding due to a combination of (a) growth in Australia’s population; (b) increasing material living standards permitting more people to go to the beach more often and (c) globalisation leading to more overseas visitors knowing that Australia has excellent beaches and coming here to experience them.
However, the extent of safely swimmable beach on patrolled beaches, whilst no doubt physically variable, is not continuously expanding, and cannot be expected to continuously expand, to keep pace with the growth in numbers of beachgoers.
This means that, if the life savers’ advice is adhered to, the spaces between the flags become increasingly crowded, with obvious consequences for the kinds of activities in which swimmers can safely engage. Younger and more vigorous beachgoers wishing to bodysurf, swim vigorously or play vigorous games in the water increasingly complain about the virtual impossibility of doing so between the flags without crashing into the bodies of more sedate bathers. As swimming between the flags increasingly gives way to moshing between the flags, it is hardly surprising that people will want to enjoy the freer, if riskier, spaces outside the flags rather than obediently doddling up and down in the safe stretches.
The other point that must be made is that many people (of whom I’m one) prefer to spend their summer holidays in smaller coastal hamlets, or in coastal national parks, which are likely to abut unpatrolled beaches. Some such places where I’ve stayed include South-West Rocks, Wooli, Minnie Water, Sandon River, Black Rocks in the Bundjalung National Park, Noosa North Shore, Fraser Island and Woodgate National Park. On a seriously warm or hot day visitors to such locations are hardly likely to resist the temptation of a refreshing dip in the surf just because some smiling face on Channel Nine has told us “never swim at unpatrolled beaches”.
It seems to me that the life saving people and their supporters are deluding themselves if they think they can persuade, cajole or force every beachgoer, when faced with a choice between the safe option and the enjoyable option, to always take the former. The message has to shift from a catalogue of don’ts and nevers to one which, even if still declaring a preference for people to swim in the safety zone, also tries to educate and empower people to bathe skilfully and sensibly to minimise the risks involved in swimming outside the zone.
Don’t underestimate the irrational hatred of lifesavers and their officious flags.
Life’s a beach … eh
Bill #1, do you mean the irrational hatred exhibited by lifesavers or the irrational hatred expressed towards lifesavers?
Is that you on my beach? It’s getting that way that every beach outside of a metropolitan area is overrun with urban greenies fleeing the crowds. Can’t wait for the petrol run out and you lot can stay at home or better still, go to bali
If I see one more yuppie sydneysider south of the clyde, I’ll not be responsible for my action…
David, we Brisbane residents inflict ourselves on the northern coasts of NSW, giving rise to the joke that the Gold Coast is something we travel through on the way to Byron Bay.
Safety Nazis everywhere. A few years ago there was a govt ad on the TV (might have been NSW during the Great Pulic Liability Insurance Crisis) which strongly implied “If you drongos won’t stop drowning, we’ll have to fence the beach off.” Made my blood boil, it did. It’s not your bloody ocean mate and I’ll drown in it if I please!
As to irrational hatred, the Bondi inspectors used to inspire it with those damned whistles rather than the flags themselves.
God don’t I know it. Its been hell these past two weeks during Qld school hols. The Ewingsdale traffic jam was 2 or 3 kms long on most days.
Yeah it’s been hell here too, the Hume Highway chockers with people going to Melbourne for the school hol…
Oh wait, no one does that.
In the interest of the planet and the future of humanity it must be apparent to everyone that we should all stay at home all the home.
Think of the children – stay home and stay in doors with all the windows closed.
Sell your car, never go on holiday again and grow vegetables in a window box or your balcony.
No more pets,make your own clothes,recycle all your waste and save all your personal waste for use in the window box.You don’t need to cook – that is a luxury not to be indulged in and raw food is so much healthier.
Do it for the planet and the future of everyone else.
Hey at least no-one will drown.
I think one of the problems is that said flagspace is frequently very small – I remember the flagged areas on Sydney’s northern beaches being nice and wide, but the ones on the Sunshine coast tend to be about 25m tops. On a dead straight beach several kilometres long, the implied assertion that everything outside that little strip is a deathtrap looks pretty shaky to most.
http://tinyurl.com/abepks
Yes, there’s an arguable case that this can be framed as a “Tragedy of the Commons” problem. So what policy solutions follow from such a problem diagnosis which would be acceptable to most would-be beachgoers?
I can’t speak for this myself, but the anecdotal evidence from my parent’s generation (and possibly misleading period photographs) is that beaches, including Bondi, which is the most trafficked tourist beach are less crowded than they were in the 50s and 60s. I don’t know how this conflicts with anyone else’s experience. There’s a plausible story behind this too, since alot of beach activity involves simply cooling down and the alternative of staying at home in air conditioning was not available. And perhaps the trams made the beach more accessible.
In any case, I’m not sure the proposition that the beaches are more crowded, whilst apparently probable, is completely sustained.
But on that note, what real basis do we have for saying that the number of people refusing to swim between the flags is increasing? This might just be the lifesaver’s equivalent of complaining that kids these days are rude and crime is going up and everything was once better!
I would also wonder if some kind of risk rating could be displayed. My summer holidays as a child were spent with my grandparents in Batemans Bay, NSW, and some beaches were patrolled, but many weren’t (mostly surf beaches were patrolled, non-surf beaches weren’t). The one where my mother and I (with four others) were pulled out to sea in a rip was patrolled, but the strong current pulled us outside the flags and away. We were all rescued by some windsurfers. That patrolled beach was considerably more dangerous than other non-patrolled beaches, but there is no way for an inexperienced inland Victorian to tell that.
Sort of tragedy of the commons. I’ve never been to an Australian beach where there just wasn’t room to swim. It’s that the local community can’t provide enough SLSC volunteers to widen the patrolled area.
I suppose we really need to remember the difference between “I’m prepared to help out if you get in trouble” and “RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH!” Those confident enough to swim outside the flags are actually freeing up space within for the less accomplished swimmers. You can’t trust everyone to realistically appraise their dreams vs their (current*) capabilities, I suppose, but in the end they’re still their own responsibility.
You want more patrolled beach areas?
Hey, stop worrying guys!
Thanks to global warming and sealevel rise, there’ll be lots of new places to swim.
Better still, instead of diving for shipwrecked artifacts, people can snorkel about the Jupiter casino and dive for treasures in submerged billionaire mansions!
And we’ll have tens of millions of Bangladeshi refugees by then, who may be keen to take up lifesaving duties, so there’ll be no shortage of patrolled areas…
How good can it get!
Not a very funny joke.
But excellent travel advice.
Best to preserve the ambiguity.
As someone who spent an agonizing twenty minutes or so (which genuinely felt like hours) before being towed to safety by life savers when a sandbar collapsed I’m always reluctant to swim outside the flags. I suspect that Sean has nailed it however. The problem is there aren’t enough life savers to widen the spaces. Once the role came with huge status and had less competition for uses of one’s time. I’m grateful for those who give up their summers to be lifesavers, but struggle to understand the motivation these days.
Perhaps many readers have seen thse figures or heard them elsewhere but 94 people died from drowning/ swimming accidents last year.
All were male .
4 were foreigners on holiday . The largest group – 25% were men aged 30-39.
The influence of alcohol wasn’t mentioned but it would be likely to be a major factor in a large % of cases.
Sean’s point about people overestimating their ability is very good and is an influence even on those who really should know better.
Maybe once people are on holiday (for which they may have paid an extortionate rent for their house) they seem to have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.What this promotes is behaviour where they put themselves in situations far beyond their experience.
They try to surf at places without enough experience and endanger all the others there. Yesterday was a great example – big swell on the east coast , packed with tourists bobbing about basically running into each other and damaging themselves and their equipment.
The flagged swimming area was about 30 metres wide reflecting the strength of the water movement but swimmers were still edging away trying to get away for each other.Stupid and dangerous.
But what good is a holiday without a sense that you can have a break from being responsible all the time? So good judgement lapses and after a few drinks , hey yeah let’s all get in our car and drive down the beach and have a swim there.
Banning beach driving would be a great place to start if you wanted to achieve a couple of goals – preserving the biosphere in the sand and stopping remote area water activity.Having 1000′s of passages of heavy vehicles over a sand strip crushes all the shell fish and worms leaving the beach fish without feed.
So instaed of catching a few fish the idle mind wanders to drinking and swimming and presto – you are a statistic!
People go to the beach? and lie in the sun? get skin cancer? and swim in the rips with the sharks? what’s that about anyway?
Every time you banana benders drive through the GC you car tyres pick up GC spores.
They fall off on the Pacific Highway between Tweed and yuppiesville and as a result we have the parts of the festy Gold Coast infection springing up everywhere from Mooball to Kunghur.
Thanks gals and guys. Really.
Jules stop stealing my posts.
Murph the Surf @20: “The influence of alcohol wasn’t mentioned but it would be likely to be a major factor in a large % of cases.”
You could be right on the money there Murph!
Interesting statistic – the Norwegian authorities looked into the problem of significant numbers of men drowning on boating holidays every summer, mainly from falling overboard, and discovered a strong correlation to having their fly undone…
There are apparently supporting correlations between beer consumption, the need to undo the fly, and reduced ability to maintain balance…
Not quite QED, but interesting circumstantial evidence which may be worthy of further investigation!