October 2015 (ROTM#82) Burrill Beach, South Coast NSW, Australia

The south coast of NSW is a stunning coastline with many beautiful surf beaches, but be careful if you visit - many of those beaches are not patrolled by lifeguards. At the same time, most south coast beaches are popular tourist destinations with many coastal tourist parks situated on them. The proximity of tourist amenities to hazardous and unpatrolled surf beaches was actually the focus of some of our recent research at UNSW.

Not surprisingly, every year there are unfortunately numerous rip current drownings along this section of coast and several have occurred at Burrill Beach, which is pictured here. It's not hard to see why. You can see the paths through the vegetation that connects the tourist park with the beach and when people get there there are no lifeguards and LOTS of rips. There are rips in channels on either side of the rock headland at the top of the photo and there are two more channelised rip currents along the beach. They can be spotted by the dark green gaps between the whitewater of breaking waves across the adjacent shallow sand bars.

What is scary about this picture is that the rip at the bottom of the picture has experienced a sudden increase in flow speed, something called a rip pulse, that has resulted in water and suspended sand being ejected well offshore of the surf zone. That's a long way offshore if you're not a good swimmer. Most pulses last on the order of a minute or so and occur after large sets of waves have broken.

The rips on this beach are not always in the same place, but you can be sure that more often than not, there's likely to be rips. So what do you do when no lifeguards are around? Don't swim in the dark gaps. Stick to the whitewater and if you are a non-swimmer either don't go in or don't go in past your waist. Be very very careful and vigilant....and spot those rips. Thanks to Daryl Gama for sending me this pic. I've met Daryl several times at the summer Science of the Surf talk I often do at the Mollymook Surf Club.

A swirling plume of a rip.