October 2023 (ROTM #178) Bronte Beach, Sydney, Australia
A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be invited by the Sydney Morning Herald to have lunch so they could do a profile on me to talk about my work, career and my new book (Dr Rip’s Essential Beach Book – updated 2nd edition!). All while having lunch - it’s a regular feature. I was interviewed by Julie Power, an SMH journalist who has done a lot of great work reporting on beach safety and drowning prevention in the past – and she’s great company!
We picked Tamarama Beach in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs because that was my old stomping ground for many years and we ate at the Tamarama Kiosk, which was fitting, because Alan the owner was around in the 90s when I was the caretaker at the surf club (he’s aged much better than me). Anyway you can read about it all here!
After lunch Julie was giving me a lift back to the train station, but as there were no rips at Tamarama we thought we’d check the other beaches. The swell was a decent size and lo and behold when we drove past nearby Bronte Beach there was a fantastic flash rip forming through the middle of the beach. I asked Julie to stop the car and ran to grab this picture – flash rips are hard to catch!
That’s because they are a different type of rip – they don’t flow through channels. Instead they form when a few large waves, or a set of larger waves breaks. The water level immediately rises and a flash rip forms and flows offshore. They only last a minute or so before disappearing, and can reappear at another location when the next wave set breaks.
Where’s the flash rip in the photo? Look offshore of the lifeguards blue rescue board and at the end of the whitewater region you’ll see churned up choppy and sandy water and then a narrow extension of turbulent water heading offshore into a bit of a mushroom cloud. That’s the flash rip and it was flowing fast! Flash rips occur a lot with big, slightly messy wave conditions – like this one. So it’s no surprise the beach was closed.
There’s one more interesting thing about this rip. The same thing happened back in 2008 when we were filming rips with Mary O’Malley and UNSW TV….we were driving past Bronte, saw a flash rip and captured it on what was the first big rip current YouTube video: How to Survive Beach Rip Currents. Check out the 3:43 mark.
I wasn’t going to use this picture this month, but Julie said I would in the article, so I felt obliged.
Flash rip at Bronte - catch it while you can!