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Craig Adams is the Director of Lifesaving at Wamberal Surf Life Saving Club, and knows the beach as well as anyone. At Wamberal, there are certain no-go zones with dangerous rip currents that locals know to avoid. Unfortunately, the year six students had unknowingly entered one of these areas.

 

“They’d jumped into this massive rip in the worst part of the beach,” Craig said.

 

As chance would have it, Craig was finishing up a final theory assessment with a group of his bronze medallion trainees in the surf lifesaving club at the time.

 

“We were almost done, wrapping things up and one of the mums from the function came running into the room screaming, ‘there’s kids in trouble in the surf’,” Craig said.

 

“I was like, ‘what - kids in the surf? It’s a quarter past eight?’.”

 

The panic and desperation on the mother’s face was enough for Craig to know this was serious. Craig sent the trainees to get rescue equipment while he went to the lookout at the front of the club to get assess the situation.

 

He had never seen a situation like this before.

 

“It was almost like a movie scene after a boat had sunk,” Craig said. “All these bobbing heads… it didn’t look real. There were just so many kids caught in this rip.”

 

Rip currents present one of the biggest challenges for surf lifesavers. In fact, 43% of coastal drowning deaths this past summer were sadly as a result of rip currents. This is an astounding 70% increase on the 10-year average.

 

Craig and his trainee surf lifesavers grabbed rescue boards and rescue tubes and raced down to the beach as quickly as they could.

 

“It was just a scene of chaos,” Craig said. “The parents were onshore, screaming. Kids were in the water, screaming. Total panic.”

 

Craig issued instructions and the trainees followed. He sent his fellow board paddlers in different directions while he went to the person he thought to be most in trouble.

 

“It actually turned out to be one of the mums who had gone out to try and save her kid,” Craig said.

 

“So I went to her and she was in trouble. Real, real trouble. I secured her on the board and got the other kids around me. I probably had six or seven kids on my board.

 

“I had another dad on my board who had gone out to save his wife, because she got into trouble trying to save her kid.”

 

Bystander drowning deaths are tragically becoming more common on our coastline. Almost one in 10 of this summer’s coastal drowning deaths were from people going to the aid of someone else in trouble. More often than not it was a family member.

 

Craig and his crew quickly reached those in distress and secured them on rescue boards. Some were in worse condition than others and they knew they still had to get everyone safely to shore.

 

Craig and his trainees weren’t just fighting the conditions. As they moved closer to the sandbank to allow waves to ease them back to shore, panic struck the children and parents.

 

“It probably took us about 10 minutes to work our way back to the beach to a spot where I could finally stand up, and I told everyone they could stand up; they were safe,” Craig said.

 

“But they were so panic-stricken they wouldn’t let go. I had to drag the board with them all on it until we were in shallow water.”

 

It took the next hour or so for things to finally calm down. Ambulances were called and paramedics assessed the worst cases.

 

A final headcount was taken – everyone had made it back to shore alive.

 

If it was not for Craig and his crew being at the surf lifesaving club for training that night, we would not be able to report such a positive outcome. These individuals who volunteer their time to help the community truly are heroes. They can be there on our beaches thanks to amazing supporters like you.

 

“It was just fortunate that we were there on the night and we had a group of extremely competent trainees thrown into the midst of what will probably end up being the biggest rescue they’ll do in their entire lives,” Craig said.

 

“Afterwards we had a debrief and a couple of them were really impacted by the whole thing, but they just did incredibly well.”

 

Surf Life Saving NSW recognised the group’s heroic efforts with the Rescue of the Month award.

 

Joel Wiseman, Director of Lifesaving for Surf Life Saving NSW knows that the service surf lifesaving clubs provide throughout Australia can only occur with the ongoing support of the public.

 

“Clubs aren’t there without our community,” Joel said. “Surf lifesaving is here to provide a service, free of charge, but these services incur costs to run and we need community support.

 

“When you donate to surf lifesaving, you’re not only investing in a volunteer on the beach, but the investment in our members, giving them skill sets which support the wider community be it in their workplace or elsewhere.

 

“We’re extremely fortunate that donations allow us to not only support the community but also our other emergency services partners. We’re able to deploy members and assets in a volunteer capacity to support when there is a natural disaster.”

 

That investment in the education of new members almost certainly saved lives that night at Wamberal. Had it not been for those surf lifesavers undertaking training to patrol our beaches, that year six function may have turned into a far more solemn farewell.

 

“You don’t want to get too dramatic about these things,” said Craig, “and thankfully we’ll never know how many may not have made it back if we weren’t there.

 

“On the night, everything went right. But it could have gone so bad.”

 

While those year six students and their parents were unfortunate to find themselves in a potentially fatal situation, they were fortunate that surf lifesavers were on hand when they needed them most.

Volunteer surf lifesavers like Craig and his crew at Wamberal need ongoing community support to fund their high level of training, as well as the rescue gear and equipment that helps them to save lives.