July 2009 (ROTM #7) Burwood Beach, NSW Australia

This picture was taken at Burwood Beach which is a "remote" beach just to the north of Merewether Beach in Newcastle, NSW. Strange little beach is Burwood. It's just a 10-15 minute walk south of the very popular Merewether Baths and yet is virtually empty except for a small group of surfers and some nudists. I used it for bodysurfing away from the crowds, which was probably a no-no as there are no flags or lifeguards on the beach.

Anyway, the reason why this picture is interesting is that there is a fairly obvious dark area where there's very few breaking waves, a good example of a rip. A recent study by the University of New South Wales and Surf Life Saving Australia incorporated this picture in a questionnaire given to over 400 beachgoers and when they were asked to spot the rip in the picture, 20% said they didn't know what a rip was and about 40% pointed to the wrong place, which means 60% didn't know how to spot the rip! In fact, a lot of people actually pointed at the rip as the safest place to swim!

 This was the motivation to focus the research study on trying to figure out the best way to improve people's ability to spot rips and led to the development of the slogan "Don't Get Sucked in by the Rip" which was devised by Julie Hatfield of the UNSW Injury Risk Management Research Centre. I think that is the best educational slogan I've ever heard when it comes to rips as it's preventative in nature. In other words....don't get in a rip in the first place!

Big green gap = rip