Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club: Difference between revisions

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==Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club==

==Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club==

The Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club, Australia’s oldest Surf Life Saving Club, was officially established at a meeting at the [[Royal Hotel, Bondi|”Royal Hotel”, Bondi]] on 21 February 1907.<ref>The Club’s [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VhVgxcZS_8R_aDa5Hm42r_5GdX0GZynU/view Fifth Annual Report (1910-1911)] refers to “the inception of the Club in February 1907” (p&nbsp;2).</ref> Based upon the mistaken views of Maxwell (1949), the Bondi club held (for 50 or more years) that it had been formed in February 1906; hence the references to “established 1906” and “6 February 1906” in incorrect histories. However, in 2006, based on the SLSA historians’ (2005) research, Bondi resolved to officially change all foundation dates to recognise the more accurate information: viz., 21 February 1907.<ref>Laney (2007).</ref>

The Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club, Australia’s oldest Surf Life Saving Club, was officially established at a meeting at the [[Royal Hotel, Bondi|”Royal Hotel”, Bondi]] on 21 February 1907.<ref>The Club’s [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VhVgxcZS_8R_aDa5Hm42r_5GdX0GZynU/view Fifth Annual Report (1910-1911)] refers to “the inception of the Club in February 1907” (p&nbsp;2).</ref>Based upon the mistaken views of Maxwell (1949), the Bondi club held (for 50 or more years) that it had been formed in February 1906; hence the references to “established 1906” and “6 February 1906” in incorrect histories. However, in 2006, based on the SLSA historians’ (2005) research, Bondi resolved to officially change all foundation dates to recognise the more accurate information: viz., 21 February 1907.<ref> (2007).</ref>

==”The Reel”==

==”The Reel”==

Bondi
Founded 1907 (118 years ago) (1907)
Colors Navy Blue / White[1]
Members 1435 (2018)
Website Official website Edit this at Wikidata

The Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club is Australia’s oldest Surf Life Saving Club, founded in 1907. The club was officially established on 21 February 1907 at the Royal Hotel in Bondi, New South Wales. The club’s aim is to ensure “No Lives Lost” at Bondi Beach and is a volunteer organisation that patrols Bondi Beach from October to April every year.

Bondi Baths (1930).

The first reference to any settler entering the water at Bondi, was in 1818:

“A young man of the name of Allen, clerk to Messrs. Jones and Riley, was drowned on Sunday last at Bundye [sic], by venturing within the surf, which was very high and rapid at the time, from the force of which, when once involved, he could not extricate himself. The body was found on Monday, and interred.” — The Sydney Gazette, 18 July 1818.[2][3]

In 1888, what had originally been little more than a rock pool at the south-eastern end of Bondi Beach was converted into the longer, wider, and deeper ocean pool, known as the Bondi Baths, allowing pool swimming in sea water that was regularly refreshed by the tide.[4][5]

The Bondi Swimming Club was formed at a meeting, in Bondi, on 17 February 1893,[6] and its first intraclub event (100 Yards Handicap) was contested on 4 March 1893 at the Bondi Baths, its home base.[7]

According to Booth (2016, pp.26-29), the question of who was the first bodysurfer at Bondi will never be settled,[8] given the difficulty in (historically) separating the true bodysurfers at Bondi from (a) those who went to Bondi to just paddle ankle-deep at the ocean’s edge, (b) those who, knee-deep, “happily splash[ed] themselves and others, without ever revealing the confidence to float, swim or surf in the water” (Jaggard, 2007, pp. 90-91), (c) those who (during the droughts of the mid-1890s) were being encouraged to conduct their ablutions in the sea (Jaggard, 2006, p.31), (d) those who were pool swimming at Bondi Baths, and (e) those who were simply open water swimming at Bondi — rather than bodysurfing.

On 13 November 1902, two policemen attended Bondi and started taking names of those dressed in “small trunks” (i.e., as distinct from “proper”, conventional bathing suits).[9] The Rector of St Mary’s, Waverley, Rev. Robert McKeown (1847-1936), and one of the original members of the Waverley Cricket CLub, Frank McElhone (1866-1925),[10] were apprehended by the police for bathing outside the permitted hours. According to police sub-inspector McDonald, in his submission to Edmund Fosbery, the inspector-general of NSW police, “the beach had been used as a bathing-place for 20 years”;[9] and, in response, Fosbery informed the Waverley Council of his position on the matter:

“So long as bathers wear suitable costumes, and public decency is not outraged, I am unable to see that a practice permitted for so many years should be stopped. Indeed, I do not suppose that the magistrates would inflict penalties for any breach of the Act under the circumstances. Unless, therefore, I receive instructions from the Government to the contrary I do not see my way to take action beyond instructing the police that decency is to be observed.”[9]

As the laws were relaxed, more and more people chose to swim in the ocean, and it became obvious that they needed to be protected from the strong currents and rips. Between November 1902 and February 1907, groups were formed at many Sydney beaches with a view to protecting beachgoers.

On 2 January 1907 two 9-year-old boys, “Chas. Smith, living at McMahon’s Point”, and “Rupert Swallow, a resident of Darlinghurst” were rescued at Bondi Beach, having been swept out to sea by a stong undertow. Swallow was safely brought to shore; whilst Smith, brought to shore unconscious, was only revived by the “restorative measures” that had been applied by Nurse Sadie Amy Sweeney (1872-1907), the matron at her own private hospital and nursing home in Quirindi,[11] who just happened to be on the scene at the time, and who had taken over when the Bondi rescuers had given up all hope.[12][13] At the time of her life-saving intervention Sadie Sweeney was far from well;[14] she died seven weeks later, failing to recuperate following the second of two surgical interventions.[15][16]

The rescued “Chas. Smith”, who would later be known as Charles Kingsford Smith, and “Rupert Swallow” were cousins;[17] their mothers were sisters.[18]

On Sunday 10 February 1907 a number of swimmers were caught in an undertow at Bondi Beach. Two distressed swimmers were eventually rescued (by “a number of bathers”) with the aid of the lifeline supplied by the local council.[19] A number of onlookers who had been swimming at Bondi Baths were certain that they had seen a third man bathing in the surf who had subsequently disappeared from view; and, on the basis of the discovery of his unclaimed suit of clothes at the Bath’s change-room by his brother, it was supposed that the missing man was Reginald Bourne, a 17-year old youth from Paddington.[20][21] A body, later identified as Reginald Bourne, was discovered the next day floating in shallow water at Bondi Beach.[22][23]

Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club

[edit]

The Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club, Australia’s oldest Surf Life Saving Club, was officially established at a meeting at the Royal Hotel, Bondi on 21 February 1907.[24][25] Although the identity of those who attended the 21 February 1907 inaugural meeting are not known,[26] it is certain, based upon the subsequent (1919) award of life membership, that there were 23 “original” club members:[27]

The Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club (24 March 1907): the Club’s original members in club costume, displaying the reel, line, and harness.
The inventor of the reel, Lyster Ormsby, is the lifesaver at the left of the back row.[28][29]

The Surf Line and Belt (commonly called “the Reel”) was chosen as the logo of the Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club because Lyster Charles Irwin Ormsby (1885-1941),[30][31][32] one of the Club’s founding members and its first Club Captain, was responsible for its creation.

Ormsby constructed a model “contrived from hair pins and a cotton reel” and took it to Olding and Parker, the Paddington coachbuilders, who built the surf reel that was displayed and first used on Bondi Beach on 23 December 1906.[33] Ormsby’s apparatus — reel, cotton (coated in beeswax) line, and harness[34][35] — allowed a lifesaver, wearing a cork jacket, to swim out and reach a patient and, then, both would be pulled back to the shore, per medium of the line connecting the cork jacket to the reel, by the crew on the beach.[36] Ormsby’s reel, line, and harness apparatus was soon proving itself to be far superior to the previously-standard lifeline.[37] While lifesaving competitions still include the use of the reel, line, and harness, they wer phased out of active service for rescues in 1994; and, since then, “Rubber Duckies” and “Boards” carry out most rescues.

Australia’s oldest Surf Life Saving Club

[edit]

Although Manly Surf Club and Bronte Surf Lifesaving Club once claimed to be the ‘first life saving club’, there are no primary sources to support their claims. Bronte’s claim was based on an affidavit made in 1931 that they were first, and some meeting minutes in 1907 which stated that it was the 4th AGM – but there are no documents to verify either of these. This may be due to confusion as the Bronte Surf Bathing Association President sent a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald on 8 May 1907 saying “this association has lately formed, or is now forming, a brigade consisting of strong surf swimmers, and known as the Bronte Surf Life Brigade”.[38] A brief news item on the same day in the Evening News states “The Bronte Surf-Bathing Association is about to establish a life-saving brigade”;[39] this “brigade” eventually became the Bronte Surf Lifesaving Club.

In 2005, Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA) historians, having reviewed all claims, stated that they recognised Bondi as the first surf life saving club.[40]

“A hardly perennial in surf lifesaving history is the question of the first surf club — Bondi or Bronte. As this study has shown, the first group of organised lifesavers formed on Manly Beach in 1899. While moves on Bondi, Bronte and Manly in early 1907 saw the organisation of irregulars, it was the surf bathers of Bondi who first organised themselves as a formal club in February 1907.” — Sean Brawley (2006)[41]

Bondi is the 2018[42] & 2017 Australian Masters Champions in the Australian Titles and 2017 Australian Pool Rescue Championships.[43]

In November 2023 it was announced that the club was one of 14 people or places commemorated in the second round of blue plaques sponsored by the Government of New South Wales alongside Kathleen Butler, godmother of Sydney Harbour Bridge; Emma Jane Callaghan, an Aboriginal midwife and activist; Susan Katherina Schardt; journalist Dorothy Drain; writer Charmian Clift; Beryl Mary McLaughlin, one of the first three women to graduate in architecture from the University of Sydney; Grace Emily Munro, Sir William Dobell, Syms Covington, Ioannis (Jack) and Antonios (Tony) Notaras; Ken Thomas of Thomas Nationwide Transport and the first release of myxomatosis.[44][45]

  1. ^ “Constitution and Club Rules”.
  2. ^ (News Item), The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, (Saturday, 18 July 1818), p. 3.
  3. ^ According to Booth (2016), the young man who might have been “swimming”, also might have been “bathing a horse” (p.32) — or even, given that it was the middle of winter, might have committed suicide (p.25).
  4. ^ “Bondi Baths”, The (Sydney) Daily Telegraph, (Thursday, 28 March 1889), p. 6.
  5. ^ “A Heavy Sea at Bondi Baths”, The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, (Wednesday, 13 February 1907), p.407.
  6. ^ “Bondi Swimming Club”, The Sydney Morning Herald, (Tuesday, 21 February 1893), p. 5.
  7. ^ “Bondi Swimming Club”, The Sydney Morning Herald, (Tuesday, 7 March 1893), p. 6.
  8. ^ The first-ever colonial bodysurfer was Frederick Charles Williams (1875-1940), who had acquired the techniques and skills from Tommy Tanna, a Polynesian islander brought to Sydney to work as a gardener. Williams first bodysurfed at Manly in the early 1890s (some sources have 1891, others 1892). (“First Shot the Breakers”, Smith’s Weekly, (Saturday, 22 Jan 1921), p. 8; “Surf Art Amazed the Crowd”, The (Sydney) Sun, (Monday, 29 April 1940), p. 16; Jaggard, 2007, pp.91-92.)
  9. ^ a b c “Bathing at Bondi Beach: Attitude of the Inspector-General of Police”. Sydney Morning Herald. No. 20, 182. New South Wales, Australia. 15 November 1902. p. 7. Retrieved 19 April 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
  10. ^ “Mr Frank McElhone”. Sydney Morning Herald. No. 27, 306. New South Wales, Australia. 11 July 1925. p. 14. Retrieved 19 April 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
  11. ^ “Advance Quirindi”, The Quirindi Herald and District News (Tuesday, 6 February 1906), p. 3.
  12. ^ It took “about half an hour” to resuscitate Smith (“The Perilous Undertow: Two Lads Nearly Drowned: Exciting Experience at Bondi”, The (Sydney) Daily Telegraph, (Thursday 3 January 1907), p. 7).
  13. ^ “Another Sensation at Bondi: Narrow Escape of Two Boys”. Sydney Morning Herald. No. 21, 516. New South Wales, Australia. 3 January 1907. p. 4. Retrieved 19 April 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
  14. ^ “Near Death: ‘Smithy’ Rescued: Plucky Nurse”, The (Sydney) Sun, (Sunday, 26 October 1930), p. 5.
  15. ^ Obituary: Nurse Sadie Sweeney, The Quirindi Herald and District News (Tuesday, 26 February 1907), p. 4.
  16. ^ Funerals: Sweeney, The (Sydney) Daily Telegraph, (Saturday, 23 February 1907), p. 8.
  17. ^ Kingsford-Smith (1928).
  18. ^ Blainey (2018), Chapter 2.
  19. ^ “Surf-Bathing Sensation at A Heavy Sea at Bondi Baths”, The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, (Wednesday, 13 February 1907), p.407.
  20. ^ “The Perilous Undertow: Youth Drowned at Bondi”, The (Sydney) Daily Telegraph, (Monday, 11 February 1907), p. 5.
  21. ^ “Surf Bathing Fatality: Some Narrow Escapes at Bondi”, The Sydney Morning Herald, (Monday, 11 February 1907), p. 7.
  22. ^ “Casualties: Bondi Surf-Bathing Fatality”, The Sydney Morning Herald, (Tuesday, 12 February 1907), p. 8.
  23. ^ “A Dangerous Spot”, The (Sydney) Evening News, (Wednesday, 13 February 1907), p. 5.
  24. ^ The Club’s Fifth Annual Report (1910-1911) refers to “the inception of the Club in February 1907” (p 2).
  25. ^ Based upon the mistaken views of Maxwell (1949), the Bondi club held (for 50 or more years) that it had been formed in February 1906; hence the references to “established 1906” and “6 February 1906” in incorrect histories. However, in 2006, based on the SLSA historians’ (2005) research, Bondi resolved to officially change all foundation dates to recognise the more accurate information: viz., 21 February 1907 (see Laney (2007).
  26. ^ “[The] exact numbers for this meeting are not known because the minutes taken have not survived” (Brawley, 2007, p. 36).
  27. ^ BSB.1, pp. 4,7; BSB.2, p. 89 (first 23 in list).
  28. ^ “Bondi Surf-Bathers’ Life Saving Club”, The Australian Town and Country Journal, (Wednesday, 24 April 1907), p. 27.
  29. ^ According to Sean Brawley (2007, p.45) the photograph was taken on 24 March 1907.
  30. ^ Deaths: Ormsby, The Sydney Morning Herald, (Saturday, 27 December 1941), p.17.
  31. ^ “Surf Reel Inventor’s Death”, The Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, (Saturday, 27 December 1941), p.8.
  32. ^ “Death of Inventor of Surf Reel”, The (Melbourne) Herald, (Friday, 26 December 1941), p.5.
  33. ^ “History of Waverley – 1859 to 1959” (PDF). Waverley Council. p. 82. Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 March 2016. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
  34. ^ “Bondi Bathers”, The Australian Star, Monday, 15 October 1906), p.4.
  35. ^ “Surf Referee vetoes Lifeline”, The (Sydney) Sunday Herald, (Sunday, 11 February 1951), p. 11.
  36. ^ “Life-Saving Demonstration in the Surf at Bondi”, The (Sydney) Daily Telegraph, (Monday, 25 March 1907), p.10; “Bondi Surf-Bathers’ Life Saving Club”, The Australian Town and Country Journal, (Wednesday, 24 April 1907), p. 27.
  37. ^ “Plucky Rescue at Bondi”, The Clarence And Richmond Examiner, (Saturday, 14 September 1907), p. 3.
  38. ^ “BRONTE SURF-BATHING ASSOCIATION”. The Daily Telegraph. No. 8724. New South Wales, Australia. 18 May 1907. p. 19. Retrieved 19 April 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
  39. ^ “BREVITIES”. Evening News. No. 12, 461. New South Wales, Australia. 18 May 1907. p. 1. Retrieved 19 April 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
  40. ^ Jaggard (2006).
  41. ^ Brawley (2006), p. 34.
  42. ^ “Laura leads Bondi’s masterful Aussies display at Scarborough – Surf Life Saving”. Archived from the original on 23 April 2018. Retrieved 24 August 2018.
  43. ^ “2017 Australian and Interstate Pool Rescue Championships – Results Circular” (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 March 2019. Retrieved 24 August 2018.
  44. ^ Power, Julie (19 November 2023). “The ‘clever girl’ who helped build the Harbour Bridge”. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 21 November 2023.
  45. ^ “New round of Blue Plaques recognises the stories of NSW”. Blue Plaques. 20 November 2023. Retrieved 21 November 2023.

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