There’s nothing better than spend a sunny day in the beach. But we live in a country where beaches are sometimes dangerous because rips, waves, the sun… That’s the reason why it’s necessary to have trained people to save and protect life in the beach.
The Surf Life Saving movement in Manly began in the first decade of 1900 when volunteer lifesavers began to protect the lives of fellow beachgoers by performing patrols and rescues.
Officially Manly Life Saving Club members have saved an average of over 200 lives here at Manly every year in the last 25 years. The real number would be several times that, because many young surf life savers don’t bother filling in rescue statistics, they just keep doing the job.
Our volunteer lifesavers have also performed around 10,000 preventions each year – where dangerous surf conditions have arisen and swimmers have been prevented from getting into danger in the surf.
Government statistics value each life saved at over $900,000. So lives saved by Manly Life Savers each year are worth approximately $180 million. (We think those lives priceless). Now we don’t care about race, religion, color or creed when we save a life. We just save them.
And that doesn’t count the huge community benefits of our youth education and training programs and our support of training of school kids in basic surf safety when they visit our club. That’s worth millions of dollars a year as well.
So Manly Life Saving Club’s contribution to our society is worth well over $180 million each and every year. Yet our members have to pay fees to keep the Club going, and spend valuable time raising funds to save the lives of strangers. In some cases our members put their own lives at risk to save someone else.
Now, red and yellow colours of our surf lifesavers have been etched into the hearts and minds of all Australians.
Everyone knows that when you come to Manly beach, you have to watch for us, find the red and yellow flags and always swim between them. Because, remember, if we can’t see you, we can’t save you.
