With temperatures soaring above 35 degrees in the city on Friday and Saturday, it is clear that summer has well and truly arrived.
This summer, there are more places for Sydneysiders to cool down in the natural environment, with new swimming holes the rewards reaped from efforts to clean up the harbour and the Parramatta River, as well as to prioritise recreational water access in the city’s west.
Barangaroo’s Marrinawi Cove reopened last week and Penrith’s “Pondi” beach welcomed its first swimmers of the season a day early, in response to Saturday’s scorching temperatures, each following refurbishment. A new swim spot on the Parramatta River at Gladesville’s Bedlam Bay has opened for the first time.
These swim spots are all welcome additions to the city, giving more people access to a local, free place to cool down outside. With concerns about temperatures in Sydney’s western suburbs – exacerbated by poor design choices, such as building new houses with dark-coloured roofs and streets with no tree canopy – making more bodies of water in the city swimmable is an excellent development.
But, as Julie Power wrote in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald, Royal Life Saving Australia continues to raise the alarm about the public’s water safety knowledge, particularly among people born overseas.
The organisation found 34 per cent of the 357 drowning fatalities on Australia’s beaches, rivers and dams last year were born overseas. Of those, 36 per cent had been living in Australia for less than five years.
Loading
The question is: how do you teach people – mostly adults – about the dangers of Australia’s waters? Children receive swim and water safety education at school, but how do we capture new adult arrivals, to make sure they are also receiving critical messages about where and when to swim, and how to identify danger in the surf?
As detailed in yesterday’s story, the work by Tamarama lifesaver and water safety researcher Dr Masaki Shibata to integrate water education into Australia’s English proficiency tests, a prerequisite for many visas, university admissions and jobs, is an innovative solution.
His pilot, run with Royal Life Saving Australia and the UNSW Beach Safety Research Group, revealed some dangerous misconceptions held by people about Australia’s beaches and management.
Read the full article here
