May 2022 (ROTM#161) Buddina Beach, QLD, Australia

I am not a huge fan of social media, it’s so time consuming! But it definitely has its advantages. This photo was posted on Facebook by my friend Claudia Boesch Hancox showing off one of the beautiful beaches on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast that she lives close to. Aside from being a bit jealous, I couldn’t help notice the fantastic rips in her picture! This is a classic!

Buddina Beach is one of the lesser known beaches of the Sunshine Coast, situated just north of Caloundra and below Maroochydore, but it’s typical of most of the beaches in the region in that it’s sandy and long and prone to waves and rips. The first rip in this picture is the boundary rip running out against the rock platform/headland. You should be able to see the darker feeder channel leading into the darker rip channel against the rocks.

A little further down the beach is a classic channelised rip recognisable as another dark gap and a very prominent rip embayment eroded into the beach. You can then see another one further down the beach and even more if you look closely. This sort of beach topography is called ‘transverse bar and rip’ where the bears are connected to the beach (transverse bars) and separated by a channelised rip. It’s a classic beach state that’s very common on the south-east coast of Australia. This picture also shows the advantage of spotting rips with the help of a little bit of elevation.

 Thanks for letting me use the pic Claudia! It’s one of the best one’s in this collection I think!

Two type of rips in this one - boundary rip and channelised rip