June 2025(ROTM#198) Moorina Beach, Tasmania, Australia

Rip city. Don’t swim here.

If you’ve read my book, you know that I collect sand. Not for scientific purposes, but just because it looks amazing. I take sand samples from beaches I visit or get friends to bring me back sand from their trips and put it in these nice little bottles, slap on a label and then put them…mostly in boxes because I haven’t got room at home to display them all. I’m pushing 400 samples at the moment!

 Everyone loves the sand collection because it honestly looks fantastic. Recently one of my PhD students came back from a trip to Tasmania with some sand for me from Moorina Beach on Bruny Island in Tasmania. I’ve been to Bruny Island a few times, but never to that beach so I looked it up on Google Maps and to my horror I saw these massive rip currents – but my student said they didn’t go swimming – thank goodness for that! It’s also an unpatrolled beach.

 The rips were so impressive that I took a screenshot from Google Maps and here it is. 3 massive channelised rips spaced about 100 metres or so apart. In fact the one on the left is sort of a 2 pronged rip. It’s pretty easy to spot rips like this from a vertical view – just look for the dark green gaps between the breaking waves. It’s just a shame we never get to see this sort of view before going to the beach. Although I hate drones, I have to admit they’d make a great rip spotting safety device – a much better use of drone technology than looking for sharks in my opinion!

 If you search ‘Moorina Beach in Google Maps’ there’s even more rips than what’s shown in this picture. So please visit this beautiful beach, but please don’t go swimming.