December 2018 (ROTM#120) Sunshine Beach, Queensland, Australia

Sunshine Beach, as the name suggests, is situated on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast and is the last long beach heading north before you get to the tourist mecca of Noosa. I first visited Sunshine as a backpacker way back in 1992 and remember getting fried by the sun and unable to swim because the water was full of gigantic blobs of jellyfish. Plus the surf was rough and I wasn’t sure swimming was a good idea anyway. At that time in my life, I didn’t know much about rip currents, but they would have been there for sure. It’s an energetic surf beach with sand bars and deep channels – a perfect recipe for rips.

 I took these pictures on a visit last month and it shows that perhaps I was wise not to go in the water during my first visit. The beach (and all the beaches along the coast) was stacked up with churning channelised rips running the entire length of the beach. The picture on the left shows a narrow ‘dark gap’ rip. The one on the right shows another ‘dark gap’ channelised rip situated about 150 m to the south.  You can see how just how close the red and yellow flags were placed to it. One of the challenges lifeguards face is finding a safe place to swim when so many rips are present along the beach. Just another reminder why it really is so important to only swim between the red and yellow flags on Australian beaches.It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Two rips. One on the right is perilously close to the flags!