Every Sunday all across Australia Australians go to church, but not in a building- they go to the beach, its called Surf Life Saving Club. There is no government run Coast Guard here and while there is a volunteer coast guard that works with the Australian Navy most of its duties involve marine vessel rescue and recovery. With 23,000 miles of beach along the coast of Oz there is simply too much sand and surf to effectively monitor and patrol. In 1906 the Bondi Beach Surf Bathing Association was formed, sparking the largest volunteer movement of its kind in Australia. Today three hundred and eleven clubs operate all along the coasts with 165,000 members. To date they have saved 650,000 beach goers from the fierce rips and pounding waves of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
The religion of surf safety starts early with weekly Sunday morning training sessions beginning at age four- its called Nippers, and no it has nothing to do with the temperature of the water. Each age group is assigned a color and all the kids don their speedos and colored beanies and hit the beach for an hour and a half of what can only be described as iron man training for children. Sand sprints, push-ups, rescue board relays- it is exhausting just to watch!
Vee and Davis have been going now for the past four weeks and it is amazing to see their confidence build with each session. When we arrived in June I would only let them get in the water up to their knees- I had never seen such big waves nor did I know the first thing about rip currents. I DO know enough about water to respect it, so it was safety first. Now they are learning how to spot rips and get out of them, to dolphin dive through the waves and what the warning flags on the beach mean.
The first day when we were standing on the beach watching 200 kids run in and out of the water it was mind blowing to think that the same thing was happening up and down the beach all over Australia. The motto of SLSC is, Aussie for Life. While our stint here in Oz may not be forever this experience will definitely stay with us always.
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