Drowning prevention campaign comes to the Central Coast

Australia’s largest community engagement for a drowning prevention campaign is coming to Umina and Pearl Beach between April 12 and 18.

The campaign will see lifesavers on the beach teaching participants the rip current safety skills needed to stay safe at unpatrolled beaches.

The number of drowning fatalities on Australian beaches is not decreasing.

Last Summer, 54 people drowned along the Australian coast, which is a 10 per cent rise above the 10-year average.

The drownings included 28 fatalities on the NSW coast – the highest number in the state’s recorded history – and they all occurred at an unpatrolled location.

Leading beach safety researcher Professor Rob Brander is concerned that reliance on the message to swim between the flags is not enough.

“It is important to also help people learn what rips are and how they can safely avoid them to make sure, their families and friends can safely enjoy a day at the beach,” he said.

A team of researchers from the University of Melbourne in partnership with the University of New South Wales and Surf Life Saving Australia are coming to the Central Coast to measure the impact safety lessons can have on drowning risk prevention.

The team will be assessing whether the safety lessons run by volunteer lifesavers are enjoyable, whether participants learn anything and how likely they are to apply the safety skills they learned at an unpatrolled beach.

Four months later, participants will be followed up and asked if they had changed their behavior the next time they visited an unpatrolled beach.

“This new research that connects communities with lifeguards and lifesavers through safety lessons on the beach is a fantastic and a much needed initiative that will help expand beach safety education and drowning prevention efforts beyond the flags,” Brander said.

The research team and local lifesavers would love the Central Coast community to participate in this research by engaging with lifesavers about risk.

Rip current safety lessons will be held at Umina Beach on April 12,13 and 14 before the team moves on to Pearl Beach on April 16, 17 and 18.

Safety lessons will be at 11am, 12.30am, 2pm and 3.30pm.

The project leads are Associate Professor Brian Cook and Dr Peter Kamstra from the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospherics Sciences at the University of Melbourne.

Central Coast lifesaver and beach safety educator Louise Lambeth from Ocean Beach Surf Life Saving Club is the Central Coast contact.

This project was developed by Cook as part of the Community Engagement for Disaster Risk Reduction research program run out of the University of Melbourne.